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 Education
 There 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 Gender
 Variation 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 Backgroung
 One 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 Register
 According 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.