Introduction

Sociolinguistics is often defined as the study of language and society. Whereas many linguists concentrate on discovering unity beneath the diversity of human languages, sociolinguistics tries to analyze the social factors which lead to this diversity. In brief, sociolinguists are interested in language differences, and especially in variation within a particular language.

Sociolinguistics also studies how language varieties differ between groups separated by certain social variables, e.g., ethnicity, religion, status, gender, level of education, age, etc., and how creation and adherence to these rules is used to categorize individuals in social or socioeconomic classes. As the usage of a language varies from place to place (dialect), language usage varies among social classes, and it is these sociolects that sociolinguistics studies.

These papers tend to bring facts home the main aspects of sociolinguistic variation in studying language variation according to User (Dialect), as well as language variation according to Use (Sociolect).


PART ONE
Dialect (language and user)

Language is a form of social behavior and communities tend to split up into groups, each displaying differences of behavior.
How is that arbitrary rules of usage came to hold such sway over people's writing practices and trigger such strong emotional responses to the way that other people speak and write?
This is, essentially, because language has a deep social function of defining group identity. You speak like the others in your social group, which can strengthen your bonds with them, but can also divide you from people in other groups who speak differently and can tell right away from how you talk that – from the point of view of their group -- you are an outsider.

Definition

Dialect is a variety of a language that signals where a person comes from. The notion is interpreted geographically (regional dialect), but it also has some application in relation to a person’s social background.
A Dialect is chiefly distinguished from other dialects of the same language by features of linguistic structure, i.e. grammar (esp. morphology and syntax), vocabulary, and pronunciation. When a distinction can be made only in terms of pronunciation, the term “Accent” is appropriate.
Usually, speakers of different dialects have different accents; but speakers of the same dialect may have different accents too. The most famous case is the dialect known as Standard English, which is used by educated people throughout the world, but it, is spoken in a vast range of regional accent.Moreover, each member of community has a unique way of speaking due to the life experience, education, age, and aspiration. An individual personal variation of language use is called an idiolect.

Distinguishing Dialects and Languages

There is often a chain of dialects spoken throughout an area. At any point in the chain, speakers of a dialect can understand the speakers of other dialects who live in adjacent areas to them; but they find it difficult to understand people who live furthest away completely unintelligible. The speakers of the dialects at the two ends of the chain will not understand each other; but they are nonetheless linked by a chain of mutual intelligibility.
Language varieties are often called dialects rather than languages,

- Because they have no standard or codified form,
- Because the speakers of the given language do not have a state of their own,
- Because they are rarely or never used in writing,
- Because they lack prestige with respect to some other, often standardized, variety.

“A Language is a dialect with an army and navy”, published by Max Weinreich.
This expression makes the distinction between “language” and “dialect” an issue of great political importance.
A group speaking a separate “language” is often seen as having a greater claim to being separate “people”, and thus to be more deserving of its own independent state, while a group speaking a “dialect” tends to be seen not as a “people” in its own right, but as a sub-group, part of a bigger people.

All languages have complex phonologies, grammars and lexicons. And all languages can be analysed into a range of dialects which reflect the regional and social background of their speakers.

Regional Dialect

The most widely recognized features of linguistic identity are those that point the geographical origins of the speakers –features of regional dialects. But there are several levels of response to the question “where are you from?”
People belong to regional communities of varying extent, and the dialect they speak changes its name as we “place” them in relation to these communities.
Geographical identity can sometimes be established by within a broader context than that provided by rural or urban dialectology. Certain features of speech can identify someone as coming from a particular part of the world, but the area involved may extend over several countries, languages, or even language families. The study of areal features of this kind is sometimes referred to as Areal Linguistics.

As a rule, the speech of one locality differs at least slightly from that of any other place.Differences between neighbouring local dialects are usually small, but in travelling farther in the same direction, differences accumulate.
If we consider the most straightforward variety differences based on geography, it should be possible to identify what are called regional dialects within any larger variety sush as English. Fortunately, there is a vast amount of evidence bearing on this question, produced by the discipline called Dialectology (Bloomfield, Chambers and Trudjill, Hocket) which draws a line between the area where one “linguistic item” was found and areas where others were found, showing a boundary for each area called ISOGLOSS (from Greek: iso= same, gloss= tongue).

Social Dialect

Dialect differences are not, of course, only geographical, as has been implied in the discussion so far. There are two main sources of extra complexity.
Firstly, there is geographical mobility –people move from one place to another, taking their dialects with them even if they modify them in the course of time to fit their new surroundings. The second source of complexity is the fact that geography is not only one of the relevant factors, others being social class, gender, and age.
Social class
The question “what are you?” can also be answered with reference to our place in society. We acquire varying status as we participate in social structure; we belong to many social groups; and we perform a large variety of social roles.
In many localities, dialectal differences are connected with social classes, in which factors such as family, lineage, rank, occupation, education, and material possessions are taken into account. And the way people talk (and to a lesser extent, write) reflects this background to a considerable extent. Moreover, it is notable that people are acutely aware of the differences in speech patterns that mark their social class. It is especially true for the members of the middle class who seem eager to use forms associated with upper class, however in such efforts, the forms characteristic of upper class are often over used by the middle class members. The above mentioned process of adapting own speech to reduce social distance is called convergence. Sometimes, however, when people want to emphasize the social distance they make use of the process called divergence.
More usually, a person learns a new variety of language when taking up a social role –for example, performing an activity of special significance in a culture, or presenting a professional image. One of the most indications of professional role is the intonation, loudness, tempo, rhythm, and tone of voice in which things are said.
Perhaps the clearest use of varieties as markers of social structure is in the case of diglossia (two divergent varieties of the same language, each with its social functions, coexist as standards throughout a community). One of these varieties is used in ordinary conversations, “referred to as low (L)”; the other variety is used for special purposes, primarily in formal speech and writing, “referred to as high (H)”. Some of the better known cases include the distinction between Classical and Colloquial Arabic.
Gender
The relationship between language and gender has attracted considerable attention in recent years, largely as a consequence of public concern over male and female equality. In many countries, there is now an awareness, which was lacking a generation ago, of the way in which language can reflect and help to maintain social attitudes towards men and women. In other words, differences in patterns of language use between men and women, such as quantity of speech and intonation patterns. Moreover, the age of the speaker influences the use of vocabulary and grammar complexity.

PART TWO
Sociolect (language and use)

Etymologically, sociolect derives from the morphemes “socio-” (social) and “-lect” (language variety). Sociolect, is a social dialect (speech variety) spoken by a particular group, such as working-class or upper-class speech. In linguistics, a sociolect is the language spoken by a social group, social class or subculture. In this regard it differs from the idiolect, which is the form of a language peculiar to an individual. Sociolect is also distinct from dialect, which is a form of speech peculiar to a certain area. However, dialects often have a particular social status, so that a given variant may be considered simultaneously a dialect and a sociolect. For example, Parisian French is a dialect in that it is peculiar to the city of Paris, but it is a sociolect in that it is the national prestige language, and is used throughout the country by people of high social status.

Stylistic variation

The way people use language gives us information about the regional or social group they belong to. But there is more to identify than group involvement. We are individuals and the uniqueness each of us feels is reflected in a unique use of language – a personal dialect, or idiolect. Some people, however, make a living out of their idiolect, spoken or written. They go by such names as “orators” and “authors”, and the result of their labours is usually described in terms of style.
In this sense, Halliday’s systemic-functionalist approach distinguishes two kinds of linguistic variation:
- "according to the user"; what we normally think of as social dialect variation, where people speak differently because of some relatively permanent aspect of their identity as group members, such as ethnicity, region of origin,orsocialclass. "according to the use"; He calls the second type of variation 'register', & includes in it what variationist sociolinguists mean by style.
Stylistic variation in language whose properties position in language context, for example, the language of advertising, politics, religion, individual authors, etc., or the language of a period in time, all are used distinctively and belong in a particular situation. In other words, they all have ‘place’ or are said to use a particular 'style'.
Stylistics also attempts to establish principles capable of explaining the particular choices made by individuals and social groups in their use of language, such as socialization, the production and reception of meaning, critical discourse analysis and literary criticism.
Other features of stylistics include the use of dialogue, including regional accents and people’s dialects, descriptive language, the use of grammar, such as the active voice or passive voice, the distribution of sentence lengths, the use of particular language registers, etc.

Style-Shifting

The development of sociolinguistic methodology has witnessed a continual tension between two approaches to contextual style: style-shifting as a naturalistic, ethnographic phenomenon, and style-shifting as a controlled device for measuring the dynamics of
Sociolinguistic variation. In many ways, the naturalistic approach is the most. Style-shifting seems to be one of the keys to what we now see as the central problem of the theory of language change: the transmission problem.
Style-shifting refers to speech variation within individual speakers. While it may vary, every one displays a considerable amount of style-shifting in their speech. It is a term in sociolinguistics that refers to alternation between styles of speech included in a linguistic repertoire of an individual speaker.
All style-shifting exists on a continuum. The types of style-shifting outlined below are not discrete but often move along a continuum. They also overlap from time to time depending on the speech context.

1- Casual to Formal: shifts of this kind occur in specific contexts and may be marked by a reduction in the percentage use of certain casual speech features, the elimination of non-standard speech features and the use of slang or taboo words. In addition, speakers may add features which they consider to be more formal.
2- Formal to Informal: this type of shift is characterized by an increase in casual speech features and a decrease in formal speech features. Use of certain informal markers (for example, “ain`t”) are often used to signal informal speech. Thus, the informal speech may be a widespread speech shift or selective features. But formal and informal shifts may be evident at the level of phonology, grammar, lexicon (word use), semantics (meaning) and pragmatics (group interaction).
3- Shifts in dialect: this involves more widespread patterns of shifting from one regional, ethnic, or social variety to another.
4- Another type of shifting occurs when speakers shift from one recognized speech register to another.
Hypercorrection
Many of these style shift types involve hypercorrection; the extension of a language form beyond its regular linguistic boundaries when a speaker feels the need to extremely standard or “correct” dialect forms. Statistically; the lower-middle class and the upper-working class are more prone to hypercorrection, because they are often more concerned with raising their status than members of other class groups.
Another form of hypercorrection involves the use of variants which are not typically found in a speech variety at all, such as the pronunciation of “salmon” or “often”. Structural hypercorrection involves the use of a linguistic feature in a context where you don’t expect. For example, “she is going with you and I”.

Characteristics of Style-Shifting
-The primary engine of style-shifting is the speaker’s urge to gain the audience’s approval.
6
-Style-shifts are thus mainly responses to features of the context (including the audience).
-Social evaluation of particular features of a group’s speech proceeds, and is the reason for, use of those features by other individuals in style-shifting. Styles are normally associated with certain groups or situations, and carry the flavour of those associations.
-Not all audience members are equally important; their importance is proportional to the degree to which the speaker recognizes and ratifies them.
-Speakers typically make subtle adjustments of style for a range of different addressees, and to a lesser degree for other types of audience members.
Other features introduced by Bell, seen as secondary and try to integrate with the above:
-Style may be shifted according to topic or setting, but in reality it is the association of a topic or setting with a particular type of audience which gives the shift its social meaning.
-Speakers may shift styles not in response to their environment, but in order to alter the existing situation themselves through language use; this is initiative style-shifting.
In style-shifting, terms of “Style” and “Register” are used.
Style
Style is seen as the (conscious or unconscious) selection of a set of linguistic features from all the possibilities in a language. The effects these features convey can be understood only by sensing the choices that have been made, as when we react to the linguistic impact of a poetic rhyme scheme. But there are often occasions when we have to develop a more analytic approach, such as when we are asked our opinion about a particular use of language. Here, when we need to explain our responses to others, our intuition needs to be supplemented by a more objective account of style. It is this approach which is known as Stylistics.
"By ‘style…’ we mean to include any consistent… set of linguistic forms used by a speaker, qualitative or quantitative, that can be associated with a… set of topics, participants, channel, or the broader social context." (Labov’s (1984) definition)
Labov is interested in characterizing a set of linguistic forms, and in relating them to some social factors beyond the individual. In other words, speech style acquires who we are talking to, the setting and the topic, so that different styles of speech are used. However, styles of speech are susceptible to various dimensions including:
1- Pronunciation: this acquires paying attention to how we pronounce words. As in casual speech, speakers usually drop endings in words, as “hunting”, or they contract words as, “wanna” (want to). It is often due to efficiency and economy of
7
Speech-gestures, not to laziness.
2- Syntax: style- shifting in syntax occurs when we say, for instance, “Who is it?” We have a case in which people use passive voices, whereas active ones are possible.
3- Vocabulary: involves the choice of vocabulary. Some words are considered “dirty or taboo”, others are high-brow words, used to impress people or raise one’s status.
Characteristics of style
1- Style operates on all linguistic levels: phonology, grammar, lexicon and semantics, but also pragmatics and discourse (ex. irony, address forms, conversational overlap).
2- Style also may be influenced by a wide range of social factors and contexts (audience, topic, channel, mode, genre, situation and setting, etc.).
3- It’s one thing to correlate style with contextual social factors – but it is another thing to explain why style-shifting occurs as it does, and not some other way.
4- The degree of variation along the style axis, from one extreme to another, is almost always less than the degree of social class differentiation. This has been used to argue that style variation is derived from social variation (Bell 1984).
Register
In linguistic analysis, different styles of language are technically called register. Register refers to properties within a language variety that associate that language with a given situation. Register is appropriate in a specialised situation or with a group of people having the same occupation. Builders, decorators, lawyers, teachers, athletes, policemen, gardeners, computer programmers, sailors ... all have their own registers, or use their own jargon, expressed in talk, magazines and periodicals, sales literature and instruction booklets.
A Register is a readily identifiable speech variety that individuals use in specific and well-defined speech situations, as Baby-talk; Legalese (language used by lawyers); Robot-talk; Academic-discourse, etc. Moreover, Register Shifts can overlap with the formal to informal continuum.
Distinguishing “Register” from “Dialect”
The term Register is widely used in sociolinguistics to refer to “varieties according to use”, in contrast with Dialects, defined as “varieties according to user”. The distinction is needed because the same person may use very different linguistic items to express more or less the same meaning on different occasions (situations), and the concept of “Dialect” cannot be extended to include such variation. For instance, in writing one letter to a person might start: “I am writing to inform you that...”, but in another way, the same person might write “I just wanted to let you know...” this is in one hand. In the other hand, a dialect shows “who or what you are”, whilst register shows “what you are doing”.
8
This can interpret register differences in terms of the model of acts of identity in much the same way as for dialect differences. Each time we speak or write we do not only locate ourselves in relation to the rest of society, but we also relate our act of communication itself to a complex classificatory scheme if communicative behaviour.
Michael Halliday distinguishes three general types of dimension: “field”, “mode” and “tenor”.
- Field; is concerned with the purpose and subject-matter of the communication.
- Mode; refers to the means by which communication takes place –notably, by speech or writing.
- Tenor; depends on the relations between participants.
Once again, a slogan may help:
- Field refers to “why and about what” a communication takes place.
- Mode is about “how” we communicate.
- Tenor is about “to whom” (i.e. how the speaker views the person addressed).
According to this model, register differences are at least three-dimensional.
Another widely used model has been proposed by Dell Hymes, in which no less than thirteen separate variables determine the linguistic items selected by a speaker, apart from the variable of “dialect”. Nevertheless, each of these models provides a framework within which any relevant dimensions of similarity and difference may be located.
For example, the relations between “speaker” and “addressee” involve more than one such dimension called “solidarity”. In English speakers locate themselves on these two dimensions in relation to addresses largely by choosing among the alternative ways of naming the addressee, Mr. Smith, sir, mate and so on.
Social function of “Style” and “Register

- Speakers project different roles in different circumstances. The interaction of the desire to project identity with the recognition that audiences differ means that we don’t see it as purely an individual phenomenon, but rather a relational one: role relations, and speaker choice, are the focus.
- Learning the register goes a long way towards making a person acceptable to a group. It is possible to bluff your way into a group by adopting the register successfully.
- Using a register at the wrong time or in an inappropriate situation stands out as being either peculiar or humorous.
- Common choices of vocabulary and common expressions consolidate common understanding and reinforce the group. They also tend to keep out those for whom the register is unfamiliar, which again reinforces the unity of the group
References


Books:

Aitchison, Jean (1978) Linguistics: An Introduction, 2^nd edn. England: Hodder and Stoughton

Crystal, David (2007) How Language Works, 1^st edn. England: Penguin Group

Eckert, Penolope and Rickford, John.R. (2001) Style and Sociolinguistic Variation 1^st edn

Hudson, R.A. (1996) Sociolinguistics, 2^nd edn.U.K: Cambridge: Cambridge University Press



Electronic references:

- http://www.westga.edu/~dnewton/engl4300/style.ppt#257,2,Style%20Shifting



- http://www.llas.ac.uk/resources/gpg/1054



- http://www.slideshare.net/cupidlucid/language-variation-presentation-710154



- courses.essex.ac.uk/lag/.../StyleNotes.html

- www.llas.ac.uk/resources/gpg/1054



- www3.cambridge.org/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn

- http://www.putlearningfirst.com/language/13reg/13reg.html