Reading: Week One
The Different Ways We Talk
From Holmes, J. An Introduction to Sociolinguistics. London: Longman.
What Is a sociolinguist?
Sociolinguists study the relationship between language and society
They are interested in explaining why we speak differ-
ently in different social contexts, and they are concerned with
identifying the social functions of language and the ways it is
used to convey social meaning. Examining the way people use
language in different social contexts provides a wealth of infor-
mation about the way language works, as well as about the so-
cial relationships in a community.
Example 1
Mum: You're late.
Ray: Yeah, that bastard Sootbuckct kept us in again.
Mum: Nana’s here.
Ray:: Oh sorry. Where is she?
Ray’s description of his teacher would have been expressed
differently if he had realised his grandmother could hear him. The
way people talk is influenced by the social context in which they are talking. It matters who can hear us and where we are
talking, as well as how we are feeling. The same message may
be expressed very differently to different people. We use differ-
ent styles in different social contexts. Leaving school Ray had run into the school principal.
Example 2
Ray:: Good afternoon, sir.
Principal: :What are you doing here at this tune?
Ray:: Mr Sutton kept us in, sir.
This response reflects Ray’s awareness of the social factors which influence the choice of appropriate ways of speaking in
different social contexts. Sociolinguistics is concerned with the relationship between language and the context in which it is
used.
***
The examples discussed so far have illustrated a range of social influences on language choice. Sociolinguists are also interested
in the different types of linguistic variation used to express and reflect social factors. Vocabulary or word choice is one area of
linguistic variation (e.g. that bastard Sootbucket vs my teacher Mr Sutton). But linguistic variation occurs at other
levels of linguistic analysis too: sounds, word—structure (or morphology), and grammar (or syntax) as well as vocabulary. With-
in each of these linguistic levels there is variation which offers
the speaker a choice of ways of expression.. They provide us
with different linguistic
styles for use in different social contexts. Choices may even involve different dialects of a lan guage, or quite different languages..
***
Not all factors are relevant in any particular context but they can be grouped in ways which are helpful. In any situation lin-
guistic choices will generally reflect the influence of one or more of the following component:
The participants: 'who is speaking and who are they are speaking to?'
The setting or social context of the interaction: 'where are they
speaking?'
The topic: 'what is being talked about?'
The function: 'why are they speaking?'
Discourses
From Gee, J. (1996) Social Linguistics and Literacies. London: Taylor and
Francis.
To appreciate language in its social context, we need to focus not on
language alone, but rather on what I call Discourses. Discourses include much
more than language. To see what I mean, consider for a moment the unlikely topic
of bars (pubs). Imagine I park my motorcycle, enter my neighborhood 'biker bar’,
and say to my leather-jacketed and tattooed drinking buddy, as I sit down: ‘May
I have a match for my cigarette, please?’ What I have said is perfectly
grammatical English, but it is ‘wrong’ nonetheless, unless I have used an ironic
tone of voice. It is not just what you say, but how you say it. And in this bar,
I haven't said it in the ‘right way’. I should have said something like ‘Gotta
match?’ or ‘Give me a light, willya?’
But now imagine I say the ‘right’ thing (‘Gotta match?’ or ‘Give me
a light, wouldya?’), but while saying it, I carefully wipe off the bar
stool with a napkin to avoid getting my newly pressed designer jeans dirty. In
this case, I’ve still got it all wrong. In this bar they just don’t do that sort
of thing: I have said the right thing, but my ‘saying—doing’ combination is
nonetheless wrong. It’s not just what you say or even just how you say it, it’s
also who you are and what you’re doing while you say it. It is not enough just
to say the right ‘lines’.
Other sorts of bars cater to different ‘types of people’. If I want
to — and am allowed to by the ‘insiders’ — I can go to many bars, and, thereby,
be many different ‘types of people’. A good deal of what we do with language,
throughout history, is create and act out different ‘types of people’. We create
create and act out 'different types of people' --including multiple types of
selves for ourselves--by putting words, deeds, values, other people, and things
together in integral combinations for specific times and places, letting others
do the same with us. We can' be any 'type of person' without other people. To be
a certain type of person, for a given time and place — to be the ‘right’ type of
person in the biker bar, for instance — we need to get our word-deed-value
combinations recognized and accepted by others. And they need us (or
someone) to do the same for them.
Discourses, then, are ways of behaving, interacting, valuing,
thinking, believing, speaking, and often reading and writing that are accepted
as instantiations of particular roles (or ‘types of people’) by specific groups
of people, whether families of a certain sort, lawyers of a certain sort, bikers
of a certain sort, business people of a certain sort, church members of a
certain sort, African-Americans of a certain sort, women or men of a certain
sort, and so on through a very long list. Discourses are ways of being ‘people
like us’. They are ‘ways of being in the world’; they are ‘forms of life’. They
are, thus, always and everywhere social and products of social histories.
Language makes no sense outside of Discourses, and the same is true
for literacy. There are many different ‘social languages’ connected in complex
ways with different Discourses. There are many different sorts of literacy —
many literacies — connected in complex ways with different Discourses.
Cyberpunks and physicists, factory workers and boardroom executives,
policemen and graffiti-writing urban gang members engage in different literacies,
use different ‘social languages’, and are in different Discourses. In fact,
Hispanic gangs and African-American gangs use graffiti in different ways, and
engage in different Discourses. And, too, the cyberpunk and the
physicist might be one and the same person, behaving differently at
different times and places.
***
Each of us is a member of many Discourses, and each Discourse
represents one of our ever-multiple identities. These Discourses need not, and
often do not, represent consistent and compatible values. There are conflicts
among them, and each of us lives and breathes these conflicts as we act out our
various Discourses.
***
Each Discourse incorporates a usually taken for granted and tacit
‘theory of what counts as a ‘normal’ person and the ‘right ways to think, feel,
and behave. These theories crucially involve viewpoints on the distribution of
social goods like status, worth, and material goods in society (who should and
who should not have them). The biker bar ‘says’ that ‘tough guys’ are
‘real men’; the school ‘says’ that certain children — often minority
children and those from lower socioeconomic groups — are not suited for higher
education and professional careers. Such theories, which are part and parcel of
each and every Discourse, and which thus underlie the use of language in all
cases, are what I call ideologies. And, thus, too, I claim that language is
inextricably bound up with ideology and cannot be analyzed or understood apart
from it.