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"We can take 2 different routes to the description of social variation in language.
...We can consider various sections of the population, and determine the values of the
linguistic variables for each group... college-trained professionals... [or] longshoremen.
The alternate approach is to chart the overall distribution of the variables themselves and
then ask, for certain values of each variable, What are the characteristics of the people
who talk this way? ..[This] will tell us what group membership we can expect from a
person who talks in a certain manner.

"The first approach, through social groups, seems more fundamental and more
closely tied to the genesis of linguistic differentiation.. When we have finished this type
of analysis, we may turn to the second approach.. [Thus] we will be able to avoid any
error which would arise in assuming that a group of people who speak alike is a
fundamental unit of social behavior."

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"Sociolinguistics.. is that part of linguistics which is concerned with language as a


social and cultural phenomenon. It investigates the field of language and society & has
close connections with the social sciences, especially social psychology, anthropology,
human geography and sociology."

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á. "First, those where the objectives are purely linguistic;

2. Second, those where they are partly linguistic and partly sociological; and

3. Third, those where the objectives are wholly sociological.

"Studies of [the first] type are based on empirical work on language as it is spoken in its
social context, and are intended to answer questions and deal with topics of central
interest to linguistics... the term ¶sociolinguistics· [here]... is being used principally to refer
to a methodology: sociolinguistics as a way of doing linguistics.
"The 2nd category... includes [areas] such as: sociology of language; the social
psychology of language; anthropological linguistics; the ethnography of speaking; &
[interactional] discourse analysis.

"The third category consists of studies... [like] ethno-methodological studies of


conversational interaction... where language data is being employed to tell us, not about
language but only about society... [This] is fairly obviously not linguistics, and V 
not sociolinguistics."



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"An integration of linguistics and anthropology, of urban ethnography and cross-


cultural ethnology, is taken for granted... The congeries of interests that coalesced in the
á s around the goal of a sustained social study of language have tended to separate out
again. In arguing for the social study of language, each had its specific opponent, its
specific disciplinary world to conquer. For some, it was conventional sociology, for some
conventional linguistics, for others philosophy, for still others anthropology... the impulse
to band together depended on a sense of marginality in a home discipline. Achieved
legitimacy has weakened the impulse. Old methodological fault lines tend to prevail ²
logic, intuition, transcripts, cultural ethnography, survey and questionnaire, and the like...

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   ] is micro-evolutionary in both its model of the human actor & its
contextualization of language... People are not tacitly reduced to what phenomenological
sociologist Harold Garfinkel has called ¶cultural dopes·, actors who can do only what
cultural roles provide. Yet the existence of indeterminacy, the fact that behavior and
meaning can be newly interpreted and constituted with each situation, does not lead to a
view of actors whose action is an unchartable miasma... What people do is variable
according to situation, interest, need, yet intelligible to themselves and others in terms of
recurrent patterns... The ingredients required for an adequate analysis of the social life of
language in the modern world are[:] technical linguistics, quantitative and mathematical
technique, ethnographic inquiry, ethnohistorical perspective."

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"Sociolinguistics is that branch of linguistics which studies just those properties of


language and languages which REQUIRE reference to social, including contextual,
factors in their explanation."

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"The sociolinguist·s aim is to move towards a theory which provides a motivated


account of the way language is used in a community, and of the choices people make
when they use language."

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"Some distinguish between theoretical and applied sociolinguistics. The former is


concerned with formal models and methods for analysing the structure of speech
communities and speech varieties, and providing a general acount of communicative
competence. Applied sociolinguistics deals with the social and political implications of
fundamental inequalities in language use in various areas of public life, e.g. school, courts,
etc. ... [Ñ 
  ] Macro-sociolinguistics takes society as its starting-point and
deals with language as a pivotal factor in the organization of communities. Micro-
sociolinguistics begins with language and treats social forces as essential factors
influencing the structure of languages. c     
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« This [is] an artificial and arbitrary division of labor,
which leads to a fruitless reductionism... The large-scale socio-political issues typically
addressed by the sociology of language... and the forms and uses of language on a small
scale dealt with by sociolinguistics... are manifestations of similar principles, albeit
operating on different levels. Variability is inherent in human behavior."

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"Upon observing variability, we seek its social correlates. What is the purpose of
this variation? What do its variants symbolize? « [These] are the central questions of
sociolinguistics."

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"[á] Social structure may either influence or determine linguistic structure and/or
behavior« [2] Linguistic structure and/or behavior may either influence or determine
social structure [Whorf, Bernstein]« [3] The influence is bi-directional: language and
society may influence each other« [4] There is no relationship at all between linguistic
structure and social structure« each is independent of the other« [4a] Although there
might be some such relationship, present attempts to characterize it are essentially
premature« this view appears to be the one that Chomsky holds."

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The primary concern of sociolinguistic scholarship is to study correlations between


language use and social structure« It attempts to establish causal links between language
and society, [asking] what language contributes to making community possible & how
communities shape their languages by using them« [It seeks] a better understanding of
language as a necessary condition and product of social life« Linguistic theory is« a
theory about language without human beings.

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