Language, Society and Culture

The way you speak provide you with some information about your social context or your region.

But there are some other variations.

A speech community is a group of people who share a set of norms, rules and expectations regarding the use of language.

Investigating language from this perspective is sociolinguistics.

Sociolinguistics: Deals with the inter-relationships between language and society.

Social Dialects:

Is the result of the taking into account that we are able to make studies on social dialects.

Interaction between social values and language we recognized.

Over prestige: Positve valued ways of speaking in social communities.

Covert prestige: Hidden positive values.

Social Class and EducationThere are variation according to

social class and also according to education level. It will depend on the level of education the speaker has and their social position.

Age and GenderVariation according to age is

possible to be found among parents and their children, for example. But it is most noticiable across the grandparents – grandchild time span.

Among male and female speakers there are some other variations. Women and men do not use the language in the same way.

For example, women tend to use more formal style.

Ethnical BackgroungOne of the social varieties is

according to ethnical background. A clear example of this is the one used by the African-Americans known as Black English Varnicular (BEV)

Idiolect:

Personal dialect of each speaker of a language.

Style RegisterAccording to the style of register

used by the speaker it goes from the informal to the very formal.

This differences can also be found in written language with business letters versus letters to friends.

*Written language will always be more formal than spoken language.

Jargon:

Technical vocabulary associated with a special activity or group.