Is it Life?

SOLIDARITY AND POLITENESS SOLIDARITY AND POLITENESS The purpose of the present research from a sociolinguistic stance is to consider the aspects of solidarity and politeness including face-threatening acts from the point of view of their linguistic components, relevance for social interaction and their usage in male/female discourse.       In essence, this research will show that certain linguistic choices a speaker makes indicate the social relationship that the speaker perceives to exist between his or her interlocutor. Generalizations concerning address systems Aspects of social relationships, such as distance, solidarity or intimacy are given linguistic expression by address systems consisting of a  T/V  distinction and address terms. This way, speakers are given the chance to either be more formal or less formal with their interlocutor on certain occasions (Hickey 2007: 3). Basic concepts and origin of  T/V  disti...

TALK AND ACTION TALK AND ACTION In speaking to one another, we make use of sentences, or, to be more precise, utterances. We can attempt to classify these utterances in any one of a variety of ways. We can try to classify them by grammatical structure, e.g., their clausal type and complexity: active–passive; statement–question– request–exclamatory; various combinations of these; and so on.                  We may even try to work out a semantic or logical structure for each utterance. But it is also possible to attempt a classification in terms of what sentences do, i.e., to take a ‘functional’ approach, but one that goes somewhat beyond consideration of such functions as stating, questioning, requesting, and exclaiming. Through conversation we establish relationships with others, achieve a measure of cooperation, keep open for further relationships, and so on. The utterances we use in co...

Word and Culture Word and Culture A few words are necessary concerning what I mean by ‘culture.’ I do not intend to use the term culture in the sense of ‘high culture,’ i.e., the appreciation of music, literature, the arts, and so on. Rather, I intend to use it in the sense of whatever a person must know in order to function in a particular society . Various aspects/approaches of word and culture 1. Whorf 2. Kindship 3. Color 4. Taxonomies 5. Prototypes 6. Taboo words and Euphemism Kindship One interesting way in which people use language in daily living is to refer to various kinds of kin. It is not surprising, therefore, that there is a considerable literature on kinship terminology, describing how people in various parts of the world refer to relatives by blood (or descent) and marriage   Kinship systems are a universal feature of languages, because kinship is so important t in social organisation. Some systems are much richer than other...

REGIONAL VARIATION ( SOCIOLINGUISTICS ) REGIONAL VARIATION  In this model  of language change and dialect differention, it should always be possible to relate any variation found within a language to the factors of time and distance alone. E.g. the  British and American varities, or English are separated by over two centuries of political independence and by the Atlantic ocean, Northumbrian and Cockney English are nearly 300 miles and any centuries apart. Dialect  geographies have traditionaly attempted to produce their findings onmaps in what they call dialects atlases. They try to show the geographical boundaries of the distribution of a particular linguistics feature by drawing a line on a map. Such line is called an isoglosses. Alternatively, a particular area, a relic area, may show characteristic of being unaffected by changes spreading out from one or more neighboring areas. Very oftn the isoglosses for individual phonological features do not coi...

Speech Communities 1. Introduction Language is both an individual possession and a social possession. We would expect, therefore, that certain individuals would behave linguistically like other individuals: they might be said to speak the same language or the same dialect or the same variety. 2. Definition Lyons(1970,p. 326) offers a definition of what the calls a 'real' speech community : 'all the people who use a given language or dialect. However, that really shifts the issues to making the definition of a speech community. If speech communities are defined solely by their linguistic characteristics, we must acknowledge the inherent circularity of any such definition in that language itself is a communal possession. Giles, Scherer, and Taylor (1979,p. 351) say: "Through speech markers functionally important social categorization are discriminated, and these have important implications for social organizations. For human, speech markers have clear paral...