Sociolinguistics and the Sociology of Language

Some investigators have found it appropriate to try to introduce a

distinction between sociolinguistics or micro-sociolinguistics and the
sociology of language or macro-sociolinguistics. In this distinction,
sociolinguistics is concerned with investigating the relationships between
language and society with the goal being a better understanding of the
structure of language and of how languages function in communication;
the equivalent goal in the sociology of language is trying to discover how
social structure can be better understood through the study of language,
e.g., how certain linguistic features serve to characterize particular social
arrangements. Hudson (1996, p. 4) has described the difference as follows:
sociolinguistics is the study of language in relation to society, whereas the
sociology of language is the study of society in relation to language. In
other words, in sociolinguistics we study language and society in order to
find out as much as we can about what kind of thing language is, and in
the sociology of language we reverse the direction of our interest. Using the
alternative terms given above, Coulmas (1997, p. 2) says that microsociolingustics investigates how social structure influences the way people
talk and how language varieties and patterns of use correlate with social
attributes such as class, sex, and age. Macro-sociolinguistics, on the other
hand, studies what societies do with their languages, that is, attitudes and
attachments that account for the functional distribution of speech forms in
society, language shift, maintenance, and replacement, the delimitation
and interaction of speech communities.
Depending on the scope of the analysis, sociolinguistics may try to analyze
specific differences of a group of speakers in a speech community at a
micro level. In this case the analysis would refer to speech differences in
pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary within a single speech
community in order to determine some features such as educational
background, economic status or social class. In India, for example, there
are many castes (traditional social classes in the Hindu society) and there
are distinct linguistic features that distinguish one from another.
Discovering which languages and language varieties are spoken by
members of different speech communities in different situations, and why,
has been one of the primary descriptive tasks of sociolinguistics. When we
examine the distribution and use of languages within communities (cities,
regions, states, nations and the world) we are dealing with fundamental
sociological concerns, and indeed often with matters of social policy, where
the use of languages needs to be consciously planned and implemented. A
separate, national language, for example, is often perceived as a necessary
condition for a nation to exist, although the globalizing of modern work,
lifestyles and politics makes this seem a dated idea in many environments.

Once again, there are both objective and subjective aspects to the sociology
of language. Serbian and Croatian are good examples of languages which,
until the war that broke out in the former Yugoslavia in 1991, were treated
as one language, Serbo-Croat. The main difference between the two
varieties was that they were written in different alphabets, Cyrillic and
Roman respectively. But, after the war started, linguists and non-linguists
in the former Yugoslavia went to considerable lengths to establish the
varieties as separate languages by asserting how much the two codes
differed structurally. Ethnic identity is often tied to a national or ethnic
language, but there are important exceptions. For example, the Irish have
lost Irish Gaelic but not a sense of nationhood. Many American aboriginal
(or native) peoples have lost their indigenous languages but have not in all
cases lost their ethnic identity or cultural vitality.
Much of the early intellectual impetus for the sociology of language was
provided by Joshua Fishman (e.g. Fishman 1971), who exposed the
political and moral questions surrounding language and ethnic identity.
Generally, sociolinguists have lobbied for ethnic and linguistic diversity,
not only as a universal and normal condition, but as a necessary and
desirable one. A good deal of sociolinguistics has dealt with the problems
suffered by minority language groups and threats to their survival, as for
example in Dorians research on language obsolescence (Dorian 1981,
1989). On the other hand, a good example of the stable coexistence of
language varieties within some communities is what Ferguson (1959)
called a diglossic situation, when high and low language codes or
dialects exist alongside each other in a community (e.g. classical Arabic vs.
a regional form of Arabic). In a diglossic community, political, religious and
educational views and values are established and perpetuated.
Discussion
1. Labov (1970, p. 30) has described the sociology of language as
follows: It deals with large-scale social factors, and their mutual
interaction with languages and dialects. There are many open
questions, and many practical problems associated with the decay
and assimilation of minority languages, the development of stable
bilingualism, the standardization of languages and the planning of
language development in newly emerging nations. The linguistic
input for such studies is primarily that a given person or group uses
language X in a social context or domain Y. What are some of the
questions and problems you see in your society, either broadly or
narrowly defined, that fall within such a sociology of language?