Summary: An Introduction To Sociolinguistics | 9781317860716 | Janet Holmes

Read the summary and the most important questions on An Introduction to Sociolinguistics | 9781317860716 | Janet Holmes

• 1 What do sociolinguists study?

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• Why is the first chapter about what sociolinguists study?

  In the first chapter the author explains what will be dealt with in the book. It shows why the rest of the book is organized as it is. It also gives a taste of what can be expected.

• 1.1 What is a sociolinguist?

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• What aspects of language are Sociolinguists interested in?

  - Why people speak differently in different social contexts.
  - The effect of social factors (social distance, social status, age, gender, class) on language varieties (dialects, registers, genres, etc.
  - identifying the social functions of language and the way they are used to convey social meanings.

• Mention four social dimensions

  -participants
       * solidarity -social distance scale
       * status scale
  - setting - formality scale
  - topic +        reference and effective scale
  - function

• 1.4 Social factors, dimensions and explanations

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•  What do we mean by Formality and Informality

  Formalityincreases between participants (speaker and hearer) when the social distance is greater.
  
  
  Informality(Solidarity) increases when the social distance is little between participants (speaker and hearer).

• What does social status mean

  
  - The person with the higher social status has the choice of using formality or informality (solidarity) when addressing other  persons of lower social status.
  - But, the person with the lower social status uses only formality when addressing a person of higher social status.

• 2 Language choice in multilingual communities

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• 2.1 Choosing your variety or code

• H and L varieties

  the 'High' and 'Low' versions of a language which are used for different purposes in a society

• 2.2 Diglossia

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• What is the difference between Diglossia  and Bilingual

  Bilingual describes people.
  Diglossia describes societies

• 2.3 Code-switching or code-mixing

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• Why do we switch language?

  We switch languages often not to communicate any information at all. Purely to give a feeling to the listener.

• What is the difference between code-switching and lexical borrowing?

  Code switching involves a choice between the words of two languages or varieties, but language borrowing is resulted from the lack of vocabulary

• What is Metaphorical switching

  
  
  
  
  code-switching for rhetorical reasons, drawing on the associations of both codes"