Sociolinguistics

Sociolinguistics is a discipline that deals with the relationship between language and society. As such, it is a branch of linguistics, but also closely related to sociology. It studies the different aspects of society that influence the use of the language, such as cultural norms and the context in which the speakers operate; Sociolinguistics deals with language as a system of signs in a social context. which implies working with real speech acts, not with ideal speakers and listeners. It differs from the sociology of language in that the latter examines the way in which the presence of different languages affects a society, studying topics such as social multilingualism, diglossia or code-switching.

Sociolinguistics also has points in common with the ethnography of communication, dialectology, linguistic anthropology and pragmatics.

It can be said that the greatest achievement of sociolinguistics is having shown that the use of language depends not only on the rules of a grammar but also on forms or rules that belong to social interaction, necessary for any conversational activity.

For Juan Manuel Hernández Campoy, there are five defining and inherent characteristics of this discipline:

(i) is a science; (ii) is a branch of linguistics, although, as Labov points out, it is a different way of doing linguistics; (iii) looks at language as a social and cultural phenomenon; (iv) studies language in its social context, in situations of real life, through empirical research; and (v) is related to the methodology and contents of social sciences, mainly social anthropology and sociology.

Language and society

The need for interdisciplinary studies for the development of sociolinguistics had been raised from the beginning. In this way, he had no objection to incorporating the ethnography of speech and the analysis of conversation as his own. ^{[citation required]} In addition, it contemplates and draws on the following disciplines: the sociology of language, William Labov's secular linguistics, dialectology and geolinguistics, discourse analysis, the social psychology of language, the ethnography of communication, and anthropological linguistics.

As part of linguistics, it coexists with other disciplines such as phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, psycholinguistics, pragmatics, and others.

Labov makes explicit the cultural dimension of the discipline, which he defines as "the study of language in its sociocultural context". Sociolinguistics showed that linguistic production depends also of forms or rules that belong to social interaction: it is the rules of linguistic use that guide our real linguistic constructions (the statements); For this reason, it is essential to think of language as a non-isolated phenomenon. For Labov, the context of language is the whole of society.

A fundamental achievement of sociolinguistics is to have shown that languages vary in a systematic way. Sociolinguistics, by seeking its data within actual uses of language, expanded the traditional unit of analysis of grammar. This resulted in an approach to discourse analysis and speaker performance analysis: it is about determining not only why a speaker says something, but why he says it, to whom he says it and what he does when he says something.

Urban quantitative sociolinguistics or variationism is primarily concerned with the study of linguistic variation and language change. It studies the different linguistic variants that occur in human groups stratified according to certain social variables such as age, sex, socioeconomic level, educational level, profession, geographical origin, ethnic group. In the same way that a language presents varieties known as dialects in the different regions in which it is used, also the use of the language changes from one social group to another; these sociolects are the object of study of sociolinguistics. When the variety is linked to a specific culture, it is called an ethnolect. The use of these linguistic varieties can serve to categorize individuals into social or socioeconomic classes, although the same individual can use different varieties of the language according to the social situation and the context in which the interaction takes place.

The synchronous sociolinguistics focuses on the sociolinguistic structure and the linguistic variations that depend on the situations and attitudes of the speakers; historical sociolinguistics or diachronic, for its part, deals with linguistic change and the acquisition and diffusion of languages.

Origins of Sociolinguistics

According to Hernández Campoy and Manuel Almeida Suarez, Thomas Kuhn's thesis on the epistemological break caused by the scientific revolution and the adoption of a new paradigm is a fundamental fact. It is after World War II when the crisis of historicist conceptions and the emergence of a neopositivist current in the world of science take place in the Anglo-American world, and later in other countries, which will be the so-called «revolution». quantitative» where the qualitative and the quantitative face each other, in which they are opposed: theories, methods, work techniques and two different conceptions of scientific research. It is thus that before the Second World War, studies about language were only contemplated in the concepts contributed by Ferdinand de Saussure in its most structuralist part, where the axis of study was focused purely and exclusively on language. In this way, the scientific revolution allowed a new approach that focuses on the study of speech in a sociocultural context, "the science of speech never developed, but the science of language has been extremely successful for the last half century" (Labov 1972a: 186).

Thus, the development of socio-culturally contextualized studies in the 1960s is due to the need to refute the structuralist and generative conceptions of language, since the object of study of both currents is focused on the microlinguistic. On the one hand, the Saussurean theory understands language from the language/speech dichotomy. Its object of study is language since it is understood as a system of homogeneous linguistic signs, while speech is discriminated from its object because the use of language is individual, unable to study it. On the other hand, Chomsky's interest lies in studying competence, a concept that refers to the knowledge that a speaker of the language has, while discriminating performance, which it is the putting into operation of that language. These language approaches are focused on analyzing the formal features of an idealized language. For this reason, linguists are beginning to be interested in the macrolinguistics and to study the heterogeneity of language in relation to the specific linguistic performance of the speakers.

Sociolinguistics begins with the work of William Labov in the 1960s. His conception of the language-society relationship was based on linking a linguistic variable with a non-linguistic one, that is, a social variable. Labov relied on the quantitative paradigm; he managed to substantiate in a statistical way the regularity of the linguistic variation. However, studies of the language-society relationship do not end there. Sociolinguistics studies language as such and considers that to do so it must cover the use of language, without limiting itself to describing or proposing formal and ideal models, so the proliferation of studies on the use of language did not focus on following a single paradigm..

Macro-sociolinguistics and micro-sociolinguistics

The distinction between macro and micro-sociolinguistics draws methodological distinctions.

Macrosociolinguistics deals with language in a broader sense, that is, it tries to establish general theories about the social functioning of language of universal scope, that is, problems of linguistic variation, linguistic change, contact and/or conflict between languages, the birth and death of dialects, the comprehension and social production of statements, the differentiation and/or discrimination due to the differentiated use of language by part of the members of a community, power relations expressed in the use of language, the social production of meaning, the conditions of production, circulation and reception or consumption of texts.

Microsociolinguistics, for its part, deals with language in a restricted sense. It tends to focus on interactional analysis (the conversation) and/or analysis of particular situations such as teacher-student, doctor-patient interaction, and also some versions of discourse analysis. However, the difference between the two approaches often lies in the fact that microsociolinguistics accepts a hermeneutic stage in the analysis, while macrosociolinguistics, supposedly, does not.

In the taxonomic division of linguistics, sociolinguistics derives from and is part of macrolinguistics, which deals with language in a broader sense, directing its interest towards the acquisition and use of language and the interdependence of culture, society and language.

Joshua Fishman develops two conceptually and methodologically complementary paradigms: macro-sociolinguistics and micro-sociolinguistics. The first deals with large-scale studies of language use in terms of group behaviour. It includes branches such as the sociology of language, Labov's secular linguistics, dialectology, and geolinguistics. The second is devoted to the description and analysis of languages and the characteristics of users. It refers to face-to-face interaction, discourse analysis, conversation analysis, and other sociolinguistic areas that involve the study of relatively small groups of speakers.

Sociology of language

On another level of analysis, the sociology of language (a term popularized by Joshua Fishman) is interested in sociological phenomena such as bilingualism, diglossia, the choice, substitution and maintenance of languages and the contact between different languages. The sociology of language focuses on the interaction between language use and societies, while sociolinguistics mainly studies the effect of social structure and organization on language use.

A sociologist of language studies how social dynamics are altered or affected by individual or collective use of language. This study would seek to find out who is "authorized" to use which language, with whom and under what conditions. Similarly, the sociology of language would examine how language affects individual and group identity, and how this identity is established.

Ethnography of communication

On the other hand, the ethnography of communication is an interdisciplinary current closely linked to ethnology that studies communicative interaction in small communities and the way in which language influences the worldview of community members. This discipline has created the concept of communicative competence.

Dialectology

Both sociology and dialectology study oral language and the relationships between certain human groups and the linguistic traits that are characteristic of them. However, in practice, sociolinguistics has been mainly concerned with studying urban centers, while dialectology has traditionally been especially dedicated to exploring the geographical boundaries between dialects in rural areas. Urban dialectology appeared combining both a linguistic and a social function, and it is one of the bases of current sociolinguistics.

A sociolinguist can explain, through the analysis of social attitudes, that the use of jargon such as lunfardo is considered inappropriate in certain professional contexts in Argentina; he can also study the grammar, phonetics, vocabulary and other aspects of this sociolect, while that same researcher if he studies the geographical variation of the language, the borders between the different dialects, he will tend to be called dialectologist .

A widespread and erroneous conception is the existence of a language from which the different dialects are derived, by contamination or deformation. Actually, the facts show that this process is totally different. National languages were established out of political necessity and by political authority, never by actual speakers. In all the processes in which a language is established, a particular dialect is chosen, but the speaking universe is not covered. This national language will be used in education, in official documents, etc. and an attempt will be made to implement it on other dialects in use. 'It's not that one dialect is better than another. It is an imposition of language policies".

Sociolinguistic reflexivity

Sociolinguistic reflexivity is conceived as a constitutive, intentional and regulative mechanism of linguistic communication, which is expressed through cognitive representations, reasoning, regulations, evaluations and descriptions of the linguistic and sociocultural resources of the speakers. Reflexivity in the field of sociolinguistics can be seen as the continuation of discussions on linguistic awareness, attitudes towards language and the social valuation of languages, cultures and identities in intercultural contexts. The importance of this approach Qualitative research shows that sociolinguistic reasoning, communicative interaction patterns, and language preferences have great flexibility and a wide range of adaptability and transformation. For this reason, each ethnolinguistic group adopts symbolic mechanisms to transmit the meanings and distinctive features of culture from one generation to another, and also from one community to other external ones (Muñoz, 2010).

Critical Sociolinguistics

Critical sociolinguistics is responsible for collecting, analyzing and integrating into a single discourse the theories of those researchers who, from sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, anthropology, sociology or psychology, share a socially critical vision of linguistic phenomena. Likewise, critical sociolinguistics differs from other sociolinguistics orientations by the fact that it tries to establish how linguistic uses contribute to reproducing and transforming social relations and, especially, the relations of inequality between social groups defined by criteria of linguistic repertoire, social class, gender, age, religion, race or ethnicity. Thus, while traditional sociolinguistics has tried to identify linguistic phenomena as a result of social processes, critical sociolinguistics shuffles the hypothesis that social categories and meanings they are a discursive production and, therefore, it does not establish a cause-effect relationship between society and language, but rather understands that society is constituted on the basis of linguistic practices (A.K. Halliday, 1978).

It must be taken into account that, from the second half of the 20th century, post-structuralism marked a turning point in the social sciences, affecting practically all disciplines, from literary studies to archaeology. In sociolinguistics, the break arises when the concept of discourse starts to replace the concept of language. Discourse refers to any social practice characterized by its symbolic nature, that is, by the fact that it constitutes itself as a signifier and, at the same time, a signified, unlike the traditional sociolinguistics that refers us to a closed system of signs and meanings independent of social practice (Foucault, 1969).

Thus, traditional sociolinguistics works with the notion of language as an independent system of signs and defines society as an interrelated structure where individuals act based on rational reflection based on norms. and values of the cultural system. Critical sociolinguistics, on the other hand, considers that discursive productions are the very process of structuring society —it does not, therefore, establish a difference between linguistic and social aspects— and adopts the idea of the language of social struggle in which individuals act to legitimize their ideologies or to access resources (Bourdieu, 1982).

That is why the field of study of critical sociolinguistics is especially interested in those issues that have to do with social inequalities of any kind —language and ethnicity, intersectionality and feminism, ideologies languages and globalization, etc.—or with the ideological struggles between the different groups of the same society.

Linguistic variation

Linguistic variation is the result of the interaction of both geographic and other factors. It is defined as the use of a linguistic element instead of another without this implying any change in referential meaning. The element that has various expressions is a sociolinguistic variable, and each of the alternative forms of a variable is called a variant. An example of a sociolinguistic variable in Spanish can be the pronunciation of the ending -ado of the verbal participles, and its two main variants would be [aðo] and [ao]/[au].

There are four main types of variation: phonetic-phonological variation, syntactic variation, lexical variation, and discourse variation. ^{[citation required]}

Genetic-phonological variation

Since it is not affected by problems of meaning, the phenological variation was the first to be analyzed. This is very important because it makes it the easiest to study, being the most studied. William Labov initiates a methodology by applying the study of five phenological variables in New York, and it will be imitated later by other researchers. Later, Bailey, insists on the simplicity of the Labov variant concept. One example was the studies carried out on some English dialects in which the variation of (r) was analyzed at the end of a syllable, in which a significant difference was not taken into account: if [r] influences or not on the silabical vowel. This causes a loss of information at the linguistic level. Several authors concluded that the initial wording position is more important than the subsequent one. As for social factors, the hypothesis is made that the tense variant (imitation of the correct sound) is more frequent the higher the sociocultural level. There are three groups of linguistic factors that can determine the phenological variation:

• Contexts: they conform the elements that follow or precede the variable.
• Distributives: they refer to the place where the fonema appears.
• Functional: it has to do with the nature of the grammatical categories in which the variable is included.

Syntactic variation

Carmen Silva-Corvalán states that the nature of syntactic variation is not analogous to phenological for these reasons:

• Syntactic variation is less common than phenological in languages.
• The low frequency with which a context of occurrence can be counted and the difficulty of obtaining examples of the use of one and another variant make syntactic more difficult to measure or quantify.
• In syntactic variation the contexts of occurrence are more difficult to identify or define.
• Possible differences in meaning between variants are a problem in syntactic variation.
• Syntactic variation is usually not stylistically or socially stratified, it is determined by completely linguistic factors.

There are several types of variables that are also included in this group:

• Morphological type: those that affect morphology, especially grammatical, whose variation does not usually involve pragmatic and syntactic levels.
• Category: These are those that sometimes affect morphological elements and, almost always, syntactics, whose variation usually involves semantic and pragmatic levels.
• Functional type: These are those that influence syntax and, partly, morphology. These are often not related to other semantic factors, they are usually determined by geographical, sociolinguistic, historical and stylistic factors.
• Positional type: the intonation is usually wrapped in all of them, and here is their importance.

Lexical variation

Your study faces the same problems as syntactic. Among them is the establishment of equivalences between variants, which leads us to the old discussion of the existence or not of the synonym. Lexic units may be semantically neutralized, but it is very complicated to prove that two or more variants are equivalent. This is more complicated when the use of a certain way is influenced by connotations, impressions of its own, communicative uses, that is, when the transmitter applies to its selection of lexical criteria that can go unnoticed for listeners. The study of lexical variation seeks to explain the alternation in the use of lexical forms in certain linguistic and extralinguistic conditions.

Variation in discourse

It is complicated to establish where the lexical or morphological variation ends and the variation in the discourse begins. The change of reference, shift or emphasis are some discursive type variables. These examples perhaps suggest the little convenience of a variable-type analysis independent of syntactic variation. We must keep this type of variation aside since there are also cases of discursive variation of a phonic or lexicon type.

Linguistic attitude

The linguistic attitude refers to an abstract construction that is manifested in individual evaluations of the language and its use in society. There can be favorable (or positive) or unfavorable (or negative) attitudes towards different languages, dialects, sociolects, styles or simply towards certain linguistic expressions. Attitudes vary according to factors such as the age of the speaker, gender, social group, schooling or instruction received, aptitude or linguistic competence, the linguistic, group and cultural context. These assessments may have various reasons, among which are those social, subjective or affective.

For sociolinguistics, studies of linguistic attitudes are relevant because they offer information about speakers, their belonging to a social group, their values or linguistic prejudices. Such data can indicate the future or the orientation of a variable phenomenon, insofar as any of its variants can spread to a greater or lesser extent. In addition, this type of research is often used to define a speech community, conceived as a group of speakers who share the same evaluative norms with respect to a language.

For example, in an investigation carried out in San Juan, Puerto Rico, the phonetic phenomenon addressed was the velarized realization of /rr/. The results obtained indicated that in the metropolitan area, 70% of the speakers maintained a negative attitude towards realization, motivated by the belief that the phenomenon was regionalism or typical of rural areas. However, the minority percentage that expressed a positive attitude did so considering that it is a typical feature of Puerto Rican Spanish and therefore, a linguistic mark of cultural identity.

Main theorists

Among the authors from the Anglo-Saxon world, William Labov and Charles A. Ferguson (considered by various specialists as the fathers of the discipline), Joshua Fishman, Dell Hymes, Basil Bernstein, David Sankoff, Peter Trudgill, stand out. In the Hispanic world, Humberto López Morales, Francisco Moreno Fernández, Carmen Silva-Corvalán, Pedro Martín Butragueño, Beatriz Lavandera, Paola Bentivoglio, Leonor Acuña, among others, stand out.

Both Labov (1972) and Hudson (1980) focus on the study of language in relation to society, that is, the real situations of enunciation. For its part, Lavandera (1988), also makes explicit the cultural dimension of the discipline, that is, it focuses on the sociocultural aspect of language.