SOCIOLINGUISTICS is the study of:

-Speakers choices.
-Why people speak how they do when they do it.

DIVISION OF SOCIOLINGUISTICS:
-Variationalist: Statistics, Macrolevels.
-Ethnographic: How people use language, Microlevels.

VARIATION AND VARIABLES

-VARIATION:The range of acceptable uses of a language.
-VARIABLE: Is a linguistic element that co-varies not only with other linguistic elements, but also with a number of
extralinguistic independent variables like social class, age, sex, ethnic group or contextual style.
-STANDARD: Language empowered by the upper class.

TYPES OF VARIATION:
-GRAMMATICAL:
+Phonological: cambio de sonidos,por ejemplo: seor-jeor
+Syntactic: S+V+O ,PERO,lleg el bus V+A+N
+Semantic
+Morphological:
+Pragmatics:
High:Drugs-Position
Perro:Los hombres son muy perros- el perro se orin
Do: do someone well-To do
+Prosodic:Rhythm of speech
+Lexical: Flat-Apartment

Characteristics of Language:
1.Arbitrariness: There is not a relationship between sounds and their meaning.
2.Discreteness: Language can be said to be built up from discrete units (eg. phonemes in human language).
3.Displacement: Communicating about things or events that are distant in time or space.
4.Duality of patterning:Large numbers of meaningful signals (eg. morphemes or words) produced from a small number
of meaningless units (eg. phonemes).
5.Productivity: Language is an open system. We can produce potentially an infinite number of different messages by
combining the elements differently.
6.Semanticity: There is a fixed relationship between a signal and a meaning.
7.Infinite Creativity: Language can be created indefinitely.

-Phonetics does not vary, it does not have to do with language

LEVELS OF VARIATION
Sociolect: A sociolect or social dialect is a variety of language (a register) associated with a social group such as a
socioeconomic class, an ethnic group (precisely termed ethnolect), an age group, etc. Sociolects involve both passive
acquisition of particular communicative practices through association with a local community, as well as active
learning and choice among speech or writing forms to demonstrate identification with particular groups.

Social Classes:
Established upper class
Technical upper class
Established middle class
Technical middle class
Intermediate lower class
Established lowest class
Ethnolect: is a variety of a language associated with a certain ethnic or cultural subgroup. An ethnolect may be a
distinguishing mark of social identity, both within the group and for outsiders. The term combines the concepts of an
ethnic group and dialect.

Dialect: Is a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. Despite
their differences, these varieties known as dialects are closely related and most often mutually intelligible, especially if
close to one another on the dialect. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also
be defined by other factors, such as social class or ethnicity.
-Dialects are not usually uniform
-A dialect is a variation based on a region.

Genderlect: Tannen believes that the best way to describe communication between the genders is in a cross-cultural
format. Women use rapport talk to establish meaningful connection with others, while men use report talk to gain
status in relation to others. Because women and men use language differently, Tannen suggests they are speaking
different dialects, or genderlects. The goal of genderlect theory is to acknowledge and appreciate the language of the
opposite sex and achieve mutual respect and understanding.

Sexualect: is a variety of a language associated with a certain sexual orientation. A sexualect may be a distinguishing
mark of social identity, both within the group and for outsiders. The term combines the concepts of an sexual
orientation and dialect.

Ideolect: is an individual's distinctive and unique use of language, including speech. This unique usage encompasses
vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation. Idiolect is the variety of language unique to an individual. This differs from a
dialect, a common set of linguistic characteristics shared among some group of people.

Language change

Language change is a variation over time in a language's phonological, morphological, semantic, syntactic, and other
features.

Language contact: Migration, conquest and trade bring speakers of one language into contact with speakers of
another language. Some individuals will become fully bilingual as children, while others learn a second language more
or less well as adults. In such contact situations, languages often borrow words, sounds, constructions and so on. This
is an external change, some events may occur slowly like trade or quickly like conquests.

Social differentiation. Social groups adopt distinctive norms of dress, adornment, gesture and so forth; language is
part of the package. Linguistic distinctiveness can be achieved through vocabulary (slang or jargon), pronunciation
(usually via exaggeration of some variants already available in the environment), morphological processes, syntactic
constructions, and so on. This is an internal change.

Top-down Change: it's when the higher classes influence language by filtering through society.
Bottom-up change: its when low social classes people begin to use linguistic forms. It usually takes a lot of time to
occur.

Prestige: Social prestige may result from such social roles as occupation or status in an organization; it may also
result from an individuals socio political or leisure activities. In addition, social prestige may be based on such
psychological qualities as initiative, courage, and intellectualism or on such physical attributes as beauty. Other
sources of social prestige are property, consumer goods, cultural values, and, in particular, social groups, institutions,
and organizations.

- Overt: {education, power} it is generally socially acknowledged as correct and therefore valued highly among
all speakers of the language. It iss acquired by those speakers who have command of a standard dialect (or
dialects) that is socially defined as that spoken to gain social status within the wider community; often that of
the elite.

- Covert: The linguistic varieties are usually not accepted in all social groups (e.g. youth language). It is
acquired by those speakers desiring to belong; to be considered a member of a certain community.
Identity
Who a person is, or the qualities of a person or group that make them different from other.

NOTE: Psychologists most commonly use the term "identity" to describe personal identity, or the idiosyncratic things
that make a person unique. Meanwhile, sociologists often use the term to describe social identity, or the collection of
group memberships that define the individual.

Social identity Social identity encompasses participant roles, positions, relationships, reputations, and other
dimensions of social personae, which are conventionally linked to epistemic and affective stances. Ochs (1996: 424)

Social group is a set of individuals who hold a common social identification or view themselves as members of the
same social category. a social group consists of two or more people who regularly interact on the basis of mutual
expectations and who share a common identity. It is easy to see from this definition that we all belong to many types
of social groups: our families, our different friendship groups, the sociology class and other courses we attend, our
workplaces, the clubs and organizations to which we belong, and so forth. Except in rare cases, it is difficult to imagine
any of us living totally alone. Even people who live by themselves still interact with family members, coworkers, and
friends and to this extent still, have several group memberships.

Membership is widely defined in different sources as belonging, either individually or collectively, to a group which
could require or not some specific skills or characteristics. Our histories are defined in part by our membership which
could be considered as belonging to a group of people who share a tradition, position, thought in a range of social
groups into which we are born such as gender, social class, religion, and race.

Our various group memberships, along with the values, beliefs and attitudes associated with them, are significant to
the development of our social identities in that they define in part the kinds of communicative activities and the
particular linguistic resources for realising them to which we have access. That is to say, as with the linguistic
resources we use in our activities, our various social identities are not simply labels that we fi ll with our own
intentions. Rather, they embody particular histories that have been developed over time by other group members
enacting similar roles. In their histories of enactments, these identities become associated with particular sets of
linguistic actions for realising the activities, and with attitudes and beliefs about them.

Face
Face refers to one's own sense of dignity or prestige in social contexts. People manage different faces according to
the setting where the dialogue takes place.

Distance
The degree of politeness in interaction between speakers according to Brown and Levinson (1987: 15, 7480) is
dependent on three factors:

social distance between speaker and addressee;

the relative power of the one over the other;
the degree of imposition associated with

Classification of relationships that one has with people in relation with power and distance.
Power (Imposition) / Intimate Semi-intimate Unknown
Distance

+ (more power than Parents Teacher University Principal

you)

= (equal power than Best Friends A peer A new classmate

you)

- (less power than Younger siblings Students Children on the

you) street

Power
R. Brown and Gilman (1960) explicitly referred to power. They defined this as the ability of one individual to control
the behaviour of another: Power is a relationship between at least two persons, and it is non-reciprocal in the sense
that both cannot have power in the same area of behaviour

Sexuality
The term sexuality in contemporary English-speaking communities is as a shorthand term referring to same-sex
(homosexual) versus other-sex (heterosexual) erotic preference, particularly where that becomes a basis for some
ratified social identity such as gay man or lesbian

The relationship between sexual orientation and speech has focused almost entirely on the speech of gay men.
Homosexuals are often associated with heterosexual members of the opposite sex (Barron-Lutzross, 2015). While
gay men are commonly thought to be a little effeminate, lesbians are assumed to be mannish and words like butch
appear in a lot of conversations related. When a womans behavior is not conventionally feminine, her sexual
orientation comes under suspicion, even when they do not do anything to signal that they are sexually attracted to
women. Perhaps, that is the reason why Bucholtz (2014) wrote such a poetical piece when she affirmed that
language is an important dimension of sexual activities and practices. Looking at a persons behavior, body
language, lexicon, and even phonological variation, all of these aspects might be considered clues of their sexual
orientation.

Although it is true that sexual orientation defines an individuals sexuality exclusively in terms of which sex their
preferred sexual partners are, it is also about identity: people use language as a means to convey to the others what
kind of people they are.

Gender:
Research into the many possible relationships, intersections and tensions between language and gender is diverse. It
crosses disciplinary boundaries, and, as a bare minimum, could be said to encompass work notionally housed within
applied linguistics, linguistic anthropology, conversation analysis, cultural studies, feminist media studies, feminist
psychology, gender studies, interactional sociolinguistics, linguistics, mediated stylistics, sociolinguistics and media
studies. In methodological terms, there is no single approach that could be said to 'hold the eld'. Discursive,
poststructural, ethnomethodological, ethnographic, phenomenological, positivist and experimental approaches can all
be seen in action during the study of language and gender, producing and reproducing what Susan Speer has
described as 'different, and often competing, theoretical and political assumptions about the way discourse, ideology
and gender identity should be conceived and understood'.As a result, research in this area can perhaps most usefully
be divided into three main areas of study: first, there is a broad and sustained interest in the varieties of speech
associated with a particular gender; second, there is a related interested in the social norms and conventions that
(re)produce gendered language use.
 - T-V form Tutear-Ustear
- Swearing It is basically the use of offensive language. A swear word is a word or phrase that's generally
considered blasphemous, obscene, vulgar, or otherwise offensive. "Swear words serve many different
functions in different social contexts," notes Janet Holmes. "They may express annoyance, aggression and
insult, for instance, or they may express solidarity and friendliness"

- Turn taking: In conversation analysis, turn-taking is a term for the manner in which orderly conversation
normally takes place. "Once a topic is chosen and a conversation initiated, then matters of conversational
'turn-taking' arise. Knowing when it is acceptable or obligatory to take a turn in conversation is essential to the
cooperative development of discourse. This knowledge involves such factors as knowing how to recognize
appropriate turn-exchange points and knowing how long the pauses between turns should be. It is also
important to know how (and if) one may talk while someone else is talking that is, if conversational overlap is
allowed. Since not all conversations follow all the rules for turn-taking, it is also necessary to know how to
'repair' a conversation that has been thrown off course by undesired overlap or a misunderstood comment.

- Address terms: is a word, phrase, name, or title (or some combination of these) used in addressing someone
in writing or in speech. Also called an address term or a form of address.A term of address may be friendly,
unfriendly, or neutral; respectful, disrespectful, or comradely.
- Interruptions: According to Tarnen, interruption refers to when a second speaker usurps another speakers
right to continue speaking by taking the conversational floor in the absence of any evidence that the other
speaker intended to relinquish the turn. (Tannen , 1994) That means the violation of a speakers turn.
- Humour: is the tendency of particular cognitive experiences to provoke laughter and provide amusement. It
depends on a host of variables, including geographical location, culture, maturity, level of education,
intelligence and context.

- Sexist community: Words and phrases that demean, ignore, or stereotype members of either sex or that
needlessly call attention to gender.
- Racism It is the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics, abilities, or qualities specific to
that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races.
Prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the
belief that one's own race is superior.
- Homophobia:Homophobia is an irrational hatred and it thrives on diversity.People can be homophobic in
many different ways. Homophobia takes the form of insults, discrimination and even includes violence. Such
abuse is motivated purely on the fact someone is of a different sexual orientation.

Nationality vs Nationalism
Nationalism has a close relation with power. Why?Nationalism arise passionate loyalties and
hatreds that motivate acts of extreme violence and courage; people kill and die for
their nations.

physical characteristic does not define someone as part of a nation; it is the strong ideology created.

a nation in the modern sense cannot exist without a shared sense of identity, and for people to share an identity a
certain minimum level of communication between them must be guaranteed.
Standardization involves the selection of one of the dialects, or of a high-status literary variety, the most prestigious
spoken medium, termed 'standard language'.

Religion
it is a set of organized beliefs of a community

A religion is linguistically measured by ORGANISATION, LANGUAGE IMPOSITION, and REGISTER.

For Example: BUDDHISM.
L. Imposition: It was born in India and its earliest scriptures were written in Pali. They do not impose the
language since it was then translated into numerous languages.
Organisation: It is considered the Doctrine of the Elders.
 Register: There are 3 different schools. Theravada is one of them, the most conservative one. The language
found in their scriptures is very formal.

Accommodation

Is the process by which participants in a conversation adjust (or not) their accent, diction, or other aspects of language
according to the speech style of the other participant.

Convergence refers to the process through which an individual shifts speech patterns in interaction
so that they more closely resemble the speech patterns of speech partners. People can converge
through many features of communication such as their use of language, their pronunciation, pause
and utterance lengths, vocal intensities, nonverbal behaviors, and intimacy of self-disclosures , but
they do not necessarily have to converge simultaneously at all of these levels. In fact, people can both
converge at some levels and diverge through others at the same time.

Divergence is a linguistic strategy whereby members of a speech community accentuates and settles
an stance in the linguistic differences between themselves and their interlocutor. "Given that
communication features are often core dimensions of what it is to be a member of a group,
divergence can be regarded as a very important tactic of displaying a valued distinctiveness from the
other.