Linguistics Stack Exchange
Linguistics Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [sociolinguistics]

The study of societal effects on language use and of language use on society.

183 questions
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In what ways do the fields of linguistics and sociology overlap?

I'm a linguistics major and I'm considering a minor in sociology (among others). In what ways do these fields overlap? More specifically, what types of sociology classes are good for a linguistics major? I assume anything having to do with epidemics…
Nick Anderegg
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In cultures where genders speak different language varieties, how do genders quote each other?

In some cultures, females and males speak different language varieties[1]. When retelling, for example, what a man said, would a female say it in the male variety or translate it into the female variety? Would a male do the same when retelling…
diN0bot
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Is it usual for facultative phenomenons to be socially connoted?

The sandhi phenomenon known as liaison in French bears a strong social connotation, that is to say when its realisation is facultative, it is a marker of a high social class. Are there facultative phenomenons that bears no social connotation?
Evpok
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Is there a recognized foremost social factor from which idioms are derived?

I've heard some people posit that the reason a large amount of idioms in American English come from sports terminology (e.g. "ballpark figure" or "the whole nine yards") is due to the "competitive nature" of Americans. While I'm not completely…
Andy
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Overt prestige and covert prestige vs convergence and divergence

Hi I've been reading a lot about overt and covert prestige from Labov's experiments in the department stores and convergence and divergence from Howard Giles' Communication Accommodation Theory and was just wondering if someone could explain the…
user13193
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Is there any academic research on what kind of speech makes the speaker sound smart?

In other words, what kind of language-use (independent of content) makes the audience think more highly of the speaker’s qualifications and intellect? I am aware that the answer will heavily depend on the type of audience. Clearly, what sways a…
J Li
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How do concepts folk linguistics and language ideology relate to each other?

I'm looking to understand the relationships between two areas of study, folk linguistics (as in Niedzielski & Preston, 2003) and language ideology (as in e.g. Woolard & Schieffelin, 1994 or Silverstein, 2003). They seem to deal with similar…
puslet88
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Differences in referring to people's houses in different languages

In my mother tongue Armenian it is customary to refer to people's houses with a plural noun in the genitive case, e.g. Armenenc‘ tun ‘Armen's [and his family's] house/home’ (literally ‘Armens' house/home’). This is sometimes said by force of habit…
Bill Heap
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diglossia vs. register

How does Diglossia differ from Register? This author never defines or mentions "register", nor this Bristol University website on British Sign Language or Reddit. 2.3 Diglossia Diglossia is a sociolinguistic situation in which two very different…
user5306
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Is Language a social fiction or a social reality?

Is Language a social fiction? I'm required to write an essay about the following : "Is language a social fiction?" and honestly I've had a hard time to determine whether language is a social fiction or a social reality and WHEN CAN LANGUAGE BE A…
Manou
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How does the use of slang words / language among young people affect their relationship with older generation?

I'm doing a research for my sociolinguistics class. Do you think this is a good topic?
Jah
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What is the go-to reference for a distinction between language attitudes and language use?

The areas of study for language attitudes/language regard/language ideology have developed with a somewhat intuitive contrast to studies of language use. Is there a good reference that explains where the boundary between attitudinal (or meta-level)…
puslet88
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Linguistic Variation (Sociolinguistics)

I'm trying to understand the meaning of linguistic variation. What are some linguistic variations and how are they different from the definition of identity? I mean, if someone speaks American English vs someone who speaks British English, that is…
Dimitri
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Are there any objective and universal criteria to identify taboo words?

I'm trying to tag taboo words in a corpus. I wonder if there are any objective and universal criteria to identify them. I know taboo words are culturally determined, but I want to be as objective as possible.
Asdoost
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What evidence does Tannen offer for the rapport-/report-talk distinction?

Regarding gender differences in conversation style, Tannen draws bold conclusions which seem to get at what men and women want out of conversation, how they approach the world, and so on. For example: I now see that my husband was simply…
Robin
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