sociolinguistics ( Language, Dialect, and Varieties )

Language, Dialect, and Varieties

- Language is the method of human communication, either spoken or written, consisting of the use of words in a structured and convensional way.

- Language Varieties = Language variety refers to the various forms of language triggered by social factors. Language may changes from region to region, from one social class to another, from individual to individual, and from situation to situation. This actual changes result in the varieties of language

- Dialect = A language variety, spoken by a speech community, that is characterized by systematic features (e.g., phonological, lexical, grammatical) that distinguish it from other varieties of that same language • Idiolect: the speech variety of an individual speaker. 

- Varieties = Hudson (1980: 24) a set of linguistic items with similar distribution  Ferguson (1971: 30) any body of human speech patterns which sufficiently homogeneous to be analyzed by available techniques of synchronic description and which has a sufficiently large repertory of elements and their arrangements or process with broad enough semantic scope to function in all normal context of communication. 

Varieties • Wardaugh (1988: 20) a specific set of linguistic items or human speech patterns (presumably, sounds, words, grammatical features) which we can uniquely associate with some external factors (presumably, a geographical area and a social group)

Facts about dialects • All languages consist of dialects (a language is a group of dialects; to speak a language is to speak a dialect of that language) • Therefore, everyone speaks at least one dialect • Dialect differences are usually minor and dialects of a language are usually mutually intelligible.

LANGUAGE AND DIALECT

 • What is the difference between language and dialect? • Variety is a term used for to replace both terms - Hudson says “a set of linguistic items with similar distribution” • Variety is some linguistic shared items which can uniquely be associated with some social items

KIND OF DIALECT

Regional Dialects = There may even be very distinctive local colorings in the language which you notice as you move from one location to another. Such distinctive varieties are usually called regional dialects of the language. 

Social Dialects = The term dialect can also be used to describe differences in speech associated with various social groups or classes. There are social dialects as well as regional ones

One such attempt has listed seven criteria that may be useful in discussing different kinds of languages. According to Bell, these criteria (standardization, vitality, historicity, autonomy, reduction, mixture, and de facto norms) may be used to distinguish certain languages from others. 

1.Standardization refers to the process by which a language has been codified in some way. That process usually involves the development of such things as grammars, spelling books, and dictionaries, and possibly a literature. (sudah ada tata bahasanya, cthnya dari kamus/sudah ketetapan)

2. Vitality, the second of Bell’s seven criteria, refers to the existence of a living community of speakers. This criterion can be used to distinguish languages that are ‘alive’ from those that are ‘dead.’  (mengacu pada keberadaan komunitas penutur yang hidup)

3. Historicity refers to the fact that a particular group of people finds a sense of identity through using a particular language: it belongs to them. Social, political, religious, or ethnic ties may also be important for the group, but the bond provided by a common language may prove to be the strongest tie of all.

4. Autonomy is an interesting concept because it is really one of feeling. A language must be felt by its speakers to be different from other languages. However, this is a very subjective criterion.

5. Reduction refers to the fact that a particular variety may be regarded as a sub-variety rather than as an independent entity

6. Mixture refers to feelings speakers have about the ‘purity’ of the variety they speak. This criterion appears to be more important to speakers of some languages than of others, e.g., more important to speakers of French and German than to speakers of English. However, it partly explains why speakers of pidgins and creoles have difficulty in classifying what they speak as full languages: these varieties are, in certain respects, quite obviously ‘mixed,’ and the people who speak them often feel that the varieties are neither one thing nor another, but rather are debased, deficient, degenerate, or marginal varieties of some other standard language.

 7. Finally, having de facto norms refers to the feeling that many speakers have that there are both ‘good’ speakers and ‘poor’ speakers and that the good speakers represent the norms of proper usage. Sometimes this means focusing on one particular sub-variety as representing the ‘best’ usage,