Sociolinguistics

Sociolinguistics
Key concepts
Code-switching Language change Language ideology Language planning Multilingualism Prestige Variation
Areas of study
Accent Bilingual pun Dialect Diglossia Homophonic translation Macaronic language Phono-semantic matching Register Discourse analysis Language varieties Linguistic description Loanword Pragmatics Pidgin Soramimi
People
Sociolinguists
Related fields
Applied linguistics Historical linguistics Linguistic anthropology Sociocultural linguistics Sociology of language
Category Linguistics portal
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Sociolinguistics is the descriptive, scientific study of how language is shaped by, and used differently within, any given society. The field largely looks at how a language changes between distinct social groups, as well as how it varies under the influence of assorted cultural norms, expectations, and contexts. Sociolinguistics combines the older field of dialectology with the social sciences in order to identify regional dialects, sociolects, ethnolects, and other sub-varieties and styles within a language, as well as the distinctions and variations inside each of these.

A major branch of linguistics since the second half of the 20th century, sociolinguistics is closely related to and can partly overlap with pragmatics, linguistic anthropology, and sociology of language, the latter focusing on the effect of language back on society. Sociolinguistics' historical interrelation with anthropology^[1] can be observed in studies of how language varieties differ between groups separated by social variables (e.g., ethnicity, religion, status, gender, level of education, age, etc.) or geographical barriers (a mountain range, a desert, a river, etc.). Such studies also examine how such differences in usage and in beliefs about usage produce and reflect social or socioeconomic classes. As the usage of a language varies from place to place, language usage also varies among social classes, and some sociolinguists study these sociolects.

Studies in the field of sociolinguistics use a variety of research methods including ethnography and participant observation, analysis of audio or video recordings of real life encounters or interviews with members of a population of interest. Some sociolinguists assess the realization of social and linguistic variables in the resulting speech corpus. Other research methods in sociolinguistics include matched-guise tests (in which listeners share their evaluations of linguistic features they hear), dialect surveys, and analysis of preexisting corpora.