Questions:

1. What is the distinction between sociolinguistics and the sociology of language?

2. What is meant by sociolinguistics or communicative competence?
3. To what extent is sociolinguistics a dissatisfaction with structural linguistics?

Answers:
1) Sociolinguistics- also called Micro- Sociolinguistics- is, as Hudson (1996, p.4) states, « the study of
language in relation to society ». Therefore, the focus here is emphasized on the structure of language and
the way society with its different aspects from social classes and culture, to gender and ethnicity, influences
the kind of linguistic structures we use and the way we talk. This leads us to conclude that Sociolinguistics

studies, for example, how social situations require a change in the way we talk as there is a difference
between ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ speeches, ‘discussions’ and ‘arguments’, and ‘requests’ and ‘demands’.
The Sociology of language- also called Macro- Sociolinguistics- is, as Hudson (1996, p.4) affirms, « the study
of society in relation to language ». Accordingly, we study the language of a particular community with the aim

of discovering and understanding the use of the social structures and the way the people of this community
use them to communicate properly. This leads us to the idea that the Sociology of language studies, for
example, the way linguistic structures are formed when different members of a tribe, including the Chieftain,
address each other to identify the different social classes of that tribe.

2) Sociolinguistics is considered to be a young discipline as its actual growth started to take place with William
Labov who is often regarded as « the founder of the discipline of variationist sociolinguistics ».

Another name for sociolinguistics is micro-sociolinguistics. This should be borne in mind when examining the
statement of Coulmas (1997, p.2) which states that « micro- sociolinguistics investigates how social structure
influences the way people talk and how language varieties and patterns of use correlate with social attributes
such as class, sex and age ». This means it is society that determines how to use language in an appropriate
way; how to address certain people with different social variables (gender, ethnicity, social status, etc.), and
what words and types of intonation and attitudes must be used to express ‘request’, ‘order’ and ‘certainty’.
Let us take an example that investigates the appropriate usage of the words ‘black’ and ‘nigger’. We all know
that the latter is racist; but, only when it is used by nonblack people. In fact, it is allowed to be used
exclusively by black men. In this case, it is the social variable of ethnicity that determines which word to be
used by which people.

3) Structuralism appeared in the early 20th century with the Structural linguistics developed first by the Swiss
linguist Ferdinand De Saussure, and afterward by the American linguists Leonard Bloomfield and Noam
Chomsky.
De Saussure’s main interest in language is deviated to the study of grammatical rules rather than the act of
speech itself. In fact, his focus is on the common feature of a language, which is structure, in place of the
variable feature which is speech. To make such thought more explicit, he uses the terms ‘langue’ and ‘parole’,
about which it was said that “La langue denotes the abstract systematic principles of a language, without
which no meaningful utterance (parole) would be possible”. This means that ‘langue’ makes the ‘infrastructure’
of language especially with the fact that De Saussure makes a distinction between language and speech, as if
to say that speech is not really part of language or even speech is an incorrect and distorted version of
language. Likewise, Chomsky’s competence holds that the most important aspect in the linguistic theory is the
abstract knowledge of grammar rules; a competence that, later on, comes to be contrasted by Hymes (1972)
with his communicative competence.
After modern linguistics became the focus of attention of many linguists, the latter became more and more
involved as far as to consider De Saussure’s theory of structural linguistics out-of-date, as it is stated by Jan
Koster (1996, p.115-120) that “Saussure, considered the most important linguist of the century in Europe until
the 1950s, hardly plays a role in current theoretical thinking about language.” Similarly, Chomsky’s theory of

competence was refuted by Hymes (1972). The latter held that Chomsky’s theory is ‘sterile’, and led to the
final conclusion that the communicative language is much more developed and effective for language learners
than that of Chomsky’s as it includes both knowledge of grammar rules (Chomsky’s competence) and the
ability to apply those rules in real life usage, i.e in society.

In a nutshell, sociolinguistics comes with a revolutionary ‘triangular relation’ between communication, society
and language. Each of the previous elements complete each other as language is studied in context of
communication as well as of society. This makes us look at language not from a mere mental point of view,
but also a social one. Here we refer to an argument developed especially by William Labov (1972a: 8) who

states that we cannot study a “language X” without both referring and studying “the group who speak X”.
Another view supports this argument is the one of J. R. Firth which affirms that as speech is part of language,
the former is so important in communication that it enables us to identify and classify different speech
communities. And the fact of excluding society in the study of speech will definitely lead us to finding less

developed explanations to the linguistic structures of language than the ones we would find when studying
speech in the context of society.

References:
B. Leitch, V. Structuralism. < http://mural.uv.es/madelro/structur.html> [accessed 26/10/2012]
C. Richards, J. 2001. Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Koster, J. (1996) "Saussure meets the brain”, in R. Jonkers, E. Kaan, J. K. Wiegel, eds., Language and
Cognition 5. Yearbook 1992 of the Research Group for Linguistic Theory and Knowledge Representation of
the University of Groningen, Groningen, pp. 115-120.
Philips, J. Langue and Parole. < http://courses.nus.edu.sg/course/elljwp/langue&parole.pdf> [accessed
26/10/2012]

Trudgil, P. 1983. On Dialect: Social and Geographical Perspectives. Oxford: Blackwell.

Wardhaugh, R. 2006. An Introduction to Sociolinguistics. Blackwell.

The sociology of language is the study of the relationship between

language and society. It ‘focuses upon the entire gamut of topics related to the social
organization of language behavior, including not only language usage per se but also
language attitudes and overt behaviors toward language and toward language users’
(Fishman, 1971, p. 217). The field begins from the assumption that language is a social
value, and pursues research on language in contact among social groups, especially
phenomena such as language conflict and multilingualism. While Fishman tends to
characterize the study at two levels: descriptive sociology of language, describing ‘who
speaks what language to whom and when’, and dynamic sociology of language,
explaining the different rates of change of language behavior in different groups, his
definition is far from clear in terms of levels of analysis. This gap was bridged by McKay
& Hornberger (1996, p. x), who have established a distinctive four-level model for
approaching the study of language and society. The scope of this essay falls within the
macro-macro level in their model, i.e. the area of sociolinguistics dealing with the
relationship between the larger social and political contexts and language use at a macro
level.

Sociolinguistics is concerned with the relationship between language use and

social variables. One of the major debates in the field of sociolinguistics is whether to
take social or linguistic factors as primary in investigating this relationship. As evidence
of this debate, Wardhaugh ( 1992) and others make a distinction
between sociolinguistics and the sociology of language. Whereas sociolinguistics takes
linguistic factors as primary in its investigations of language and society, the sociology of
language investigates the manner in which social and political forces influence language
use. Trauth and Kazzazi ( 1996) in the Routledge Dictionary of Language and
Linguistics make a similar distinction, noting that sociolinguistics can have either a
sociological or linguistic orientation. The dictionary, however, adds a third possibility,
namely, an ethnomethodological orientation. Hence, three areas of sociolinguistic
investigation are delineated