Sociolect

In sociolinguistics, a sociolect is a form of language (non-standard dialect, restricted register) or a set of lexical items used by a socioeconomic class, profession, an age group, or other social group.[1][2]

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.[3] The term sociolect might refer to socially-restricted dialects,[4] but it is sometimes also treated as equivalent with the concept of register,[5] or used as a synonym for jargon and slang.[6][7]

Individuals who study sociolects are called sociolinguists. Sociolinguists study language variation. Sociolinguists define a sociolect by examining the social distribution of specific linguistic terms. For example, a sociolinguist would examine the use of the second person pronoun "you" within a given population. If one distinct social group used 'yous' as the plural form of the pronoun then this could indicate the existence of a sociolect. A sociolect is distinct from a regional dialect (regiolect) because social class rather than geographical subdivision substantiates the unique linguistic features.[8]

  1. ^ Wolfram, Walt (2004). "Social varieties of American English". In E. Finegan and J.R. Rickford (ed.). Language in the USA: Themes for the Twenty-first Century. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-77747-X.
  2. ^ Wilkoń, Aleksander (2000). Typologia odmian językowych współczesnej polszczyzny (in Polish) (2 ed.). Katowice: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego. pp. 87–88. ISBN 83-226-0975-2.
  3. ^ Durrell, Martin (2004). "Sociolect". In Ammon, Ulrich; et al. (eds.). Sociolinguistics. An International Handbook of the Science of Language and Society. Walter de Gruyter. pp. 200–205.
  4. ^ Smith, K. Aaron; Kim, Susan M. (2017). This Language, A River: A History of English. Broadview Press. p. 281. ISBN 9781770486652.
  5. ^ Mrázková, Kamila (2017). "REJSTŘÍK". In Karolak, Petr; Nekula, Marek; Pleskalová, Jana (eds.). Nový encyklopedický slovník češtiny (in Czech).
  6. ^ Grzenia, Jan (2005-04-25). "gwara a żargon". Poradnia językowa PWN (in Polish). sjp.pwn.pl. Retrieved 2019-04-26.
  7. ^ Mistrík, Jozef (1993). Encyklopédia jazykovedy (in Slovak) (1 ed.). Bratislava: Obzor. p. 385. ISBN 8021502509. OCLC 29200758.
  8. ^ Eifring, Halvor. "7 Language and Variation". Linguistics for Students of Asian and African Languages.

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