Questions tagged [sociolinguistics]
The study of societal effects on language use and of language use on society.
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Is linguistic change pushed by humor?
Through "meme culture," young people are inventing all sorts of new linguistic constructions purely because they think they sound funny. The interesting thing is that these jokes don't end at a ...
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Reference request: ways of indicating disagreement
There are lots of ways to indicate you disagree with some aspect of an utterance. I'm thinking here of the spectrum that includes "No, not-X," "Well, not-X," "Hey, wait a minute! Not-X!" "Yes, you're ...
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Have there been any reconstructive efforts of proto-languages, where aspects of historic culture have been inferred for languages other than PIE?
I'm not sure if this is the right SE to ask this question (possibly History SE?), but here goes!
Similar to the source material for this video, have there been any efforts to infer aspects of culture ...
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What is the historical-linguistic origin of the high variety of the Burmese language?
In Myanmar (Burma), a state of diglossia exists.
How did the high (formal) variety originate historically? Did it use to have native speakers at some point in the historical development of the ...
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Is there a recognized foremost social factor from which idioms are derived?
I've heard some people posit that the reason a large amount of idioms in American English come from sports terminology (e.g. "ballpark figure" or "the whole nine yards") is due to the "competitive ...
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Can the shift in grammatical usage of "an X-ese [person]" be explained linguistically?
While reading An Introduction to Information Theory by John R. Pierce, I was distracted by a linguistic artifact (on page 251 of the second edition):
We can tell our friends apart, […] but we find ...
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Term for universally-used quote with additional, non-compositional meaning
There exist certain fixed expressions which people use to convey quite specific meanings and (at least to me) always invoke a famous saying which is assumed to be common knowledge, such as
I am not a ...
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Which are the social differences which lead to the variance in the way to address a person?
My question is: Which are the social differences which lead to the variance in the way to address a person?
An example of the difference is T-V distinction some languages abolished it while others ...
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How do people pick an abbreviation for a technical term?
Today I heard “regex,” short for “regular expression,” out loud for the first time with a /dʒ/ instead of a /g/ as I had always guessed. I felt the same experience when I first heard the abbreviation ...
user21763
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Is accent prejudice well-established in film/television hubs other than Hollywood?
In US films and television, characters with a British accent are typically smart. Characters with a deep south accent are typically foolish or uneducated. And characters with a Scottish accent are ...
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Psycholinguistic/Sociolinguistic theories of lying and/or deception
That is a very broad question, I understand. I am working in a project where my aim is to detect linguistic features of deception as a person is speaking or writing. Some work has been done for ...
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Has the use of body gestures during speech production the same importance in every culture?
I know that different cultures may use different (hand or other body part) gestures to convey the same meaning. But is the amount of gestures similar in number among cultures?
Some recent research, ...
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How common is Teke as a written language in Gabon and what variety is usually the basis of the written language?
In many instances of Gabonese media, "Teke" seems to be regarded as a single language, however there are several varieties that are distinct enough to be considered as separate languages. ...
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diglossia vs. register
How does Diglossia differ from Register? This author never defines or mentions "register", nor this Bristol University website on British Sign Language or Reddit.
2.3 Diglossia
Diglossia ...
user5306
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How have dialectology surveys changed over the years?
*Apologies for any ill terminology I may use, I'm pretty new to the field
I've been working on the transition of dialectology surveys from the traditional methods to the modern ones, now that we not ...
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Question about Michael Silverstein and Linguistics Ideology
I'm trying to understand Silverstein approach to ideological change. To my understanding he claims speakers are aware of the social and power relations reflected in the language usage and structure, ...
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Saying words aloud to confirm/disprove accuracy of written language
I had a really interesting thought the other day:
Is oral language dominant/superior in some way to written language?
I bring this up because every time I need to correct or edit my written words (I ...
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Why is direct affix borrowing generally thought to be impossible?
F. Seifart (Seifart, 2015) says:
"a widespread assumption in the language contact literature is that
affixes are never borrowed directly, but only indirectly, that is, as
part of complex ...
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Paralinguistic features
If pragmatics deal with how the extralinguistic environment affects the interpratation of an utterance, which branch of linguistics deals with how the paralinguistic environment affects the ...
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Do different Akan varities (Asante, Bono, Fante) in Ghana still have separate written standards in use in the current education system and media?
There are four varieties of Akan that have at some point been developed as distinct written standards: Asante, Akuapem, Bono and Fante. However schools today in all the Akan-speaking regions seem to ...
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Is there an instrument for measuring language vitality?
I currently am doing an anthropological research in a community where two languages are spoken. A community language X, which is the language historically spoken by the ancestors of that community, ...
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Can someone suggest resources to slang and particularly queer/ LGBTQ slang?
I am working on a paper on queer communication and I need resources for sociolinguistic studies on slang and queer/ LGBTQ slang. Thanks!
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Is the variable involved in a linguistic change from above necessarily a 'stereotype'?
William Labov's (1971) concept of the 'stereotype' is that of a dialectal variable which has attracted sufficient attention to be the subject of overt comment or metapragmatic discussion. Such ...
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How could Proto-Indo-European not get dissolved into creoles during the Indo-European expansion?
First of all, I must say that I realise that this is not exactly a linguistics question so much as it is an anthropological, sociological, or historical question, but I suspect this might be the best ...
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What is 'Category Affiliation' in sociolinguistics?
I came across this term in a paper talking about the first wave and second wave studies. Anyone know what it means?
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What is the go-to reference for a distinction between language attitudes and language use?
The areas of study for language attitudes/language regard/language ideology have developed with a somewhat intuitive contrast to studies of language use. Is there a good reference that explains where ...
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Does being educated affect the rate and the quality of second language acquisition?
People move a lot and become immigrants in other countries. Many immigrants, in every historical time frame, come to countries without an prior knowledge of the language.
However, they usually learn ...
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Metastasizing attributes of a member of a class to a class, in cognitive grammar
I would like to know if there is a theoretical analysis regarding how people cognitively process information about, and form judgments about, a class of things, based on knowledge of specific members ...
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Looking for a resource about internet language
I am looking for scholarly resources from the past decade (a little wiggle room there) that discuss the language which is used on the internet. Specifically, I would like this source to cover informal ...
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How was the Turkification of the Turkish language so successfull in the last 100 years?
Atatürk established the Turkish Language Association in 1934 to study and "purify" the language. According to wikipedia this effort has been extremely successful with many loanwords no ...
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Why do women's forms of address and honorifics vary more than men's forms of address and honorifics?
What I mean is in English, the form of address used for men we are not familiar with is "sir", whatever their age (technically, "master" is sometimes used for males under 25 years ...
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What is it called when an argumentative yes-or-no question has different meanings depending on the answer?
I'm wondering if there's a word for this specific type of informal fallacy.
An example of such a question is "Do black lives matter?", where the questioner specifies the literalness of the ...
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Analysing the data from the study on Jocks and Burnouts by Eckert
I have a question for those who are familiar with the study by Eckert. I got stuck trying to analyze the table (the screenshot is attached). Do you know what "Input" and "Sig." ...
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Languages with words for "childless wife" or "childless husband"?
Are there any languages words for a "childless wife" and "childless husband"?
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Theoretical framework of comparing linguistic landscapes of an urban and a rural location
I am working on a thesis and I chose a topic about comparing linguistic landscapes of two locations. One is urban with international community and relatively economically privileged class of the ...
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Adoption of another language by a community
I am interested in conditions under which a community adopts (or does not adopt) another language, even though this community is sufficiently isolated to be able to continue the use of its previous ...
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Languages with words for human relationships based on the marital status of the persons related?
What languages, if any, have generic words for describing the following human relationships:
Relation of: Unmarried man Married man Unmarried woman Married woman
To:
Unmarried man ? ...
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Sociolinguistics/Psycholinguistics: Does imitation play any role in child language acquisition?
Sociolinguistics and Psycholinguistics: Does imitation play any role in child language acquisition?
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In "internet Linguistics" theory, does David Crystal include sociolinguistic patterns as affecting language changes?
I'm going to discuss language changes among social sites. I'm using internet linguistics as a theoretical framework, but one of my questions related to social aspect-gender... internet linguistics ...
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How to determine word frequency based on demographic? (Does a public library of word frequencies exist by demographic)
I'm not sure "sign post" questions are appropriate however that is what this is. I am looking for a tool, a means of answering questions such as "Word X is used more by demographic Y than demographic ...
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Terminology for masculine vs. feminine speech/language styles
I'm looking for terminology to describe voices/speech/language patterns in a dataset in a publication based on whether they seem to the linguistically-educated transcriber to be "masculine", "feminine"...
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How do I report the distribution of a variant among genders?
Just a quick question as I'm slightly confused
If I want to report the use of e.g. [t] among males and females, in a graph, would the percentages be worked out as follows:
males/ all tokens ...
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Is there a model describing the relation between language and culture?
Is there a model describing the relation between language and culture ? I'm looking for a model integrating culture as part of the process of human communication.
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Philosophy of Language differences between Written and Oral Discourse
How do I best illustrate the differences between written and oral discourse; how can I illustrate the importance of spontaneity and direct contact, that the words spoken will not be the same if one is ...
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Why would sociolinguists want to study perceptual dialectology?
In other words, how would understanding non-linguists' (or the folks') beliefs about and attitudes towards language help us understand dialect diversity?
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language varieties that are languages
Language varieties
Any set of linguistic forms which patterns according to social factors: i.e. used under
specific social circumstances. The term includes different accents, different linguistic
...
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