社会语言学 第八章作业.docx

Language and Societ刘颖Sociolinguistics is the sub-field of linguistics that studies the relation between the language and society, between the use of language and the social structures in which the users of the language live. There are many indications of the inter-relationship between language and society. One of them are that while language is principally used to communicate meaning, it is used to established and maintain social relationships. Another indication is that the users of the same language in a sense all speak differently. Then to some extent, language, especially the structure of its lexicon, reflects both the physical and the social environment of a society. As a social phenomenon, language is closely related the structure of the society in which it is used, and the evaluation of a language form is entirely social.In sociolinguistic studies, speakers are regarded as member of social groups. The social group that is singled out for any special study is called the speech community. The term speech community, or linguistic community, is widely used by sociolinguistics to refer to a community based on language. Within a speech community there exist various social groups. Speech variety, or linguistic variety, refers to any distinguishable form of speech used by a speaker or a group of speakers. In sociolinguistics studies three types of speech variety are of special interest, i.e. regional dialects, sociolects, and registers.The study of the relationship between the language and society can be approached in two ways. We can look at society as a whole and consider how it reflects the social differentiations. The other approach is to look at society from the point of view of individual members of the society. The former is sometimes refers to as micro-sociolinguistics or the sociology of language, and the latter a micro-sociolinguistics or sociolinguistics proper. The notion of a language is not monolithic and there exist types or varieties of the