2009, Vol.17, No.1

The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea 2023 KCI Impact Factor : 0.57

pISSN : 1226-4822
https://journal.kci.go.kr/socioling

Tanzania has been rightly known as one of the most successful instances of having pursued an active endoglossic language policy as well as of promoting an indigenous African language, namely Swahili, as the medium of instruction. Since the early years of independence Swahili has been adopted as the medium of instruction for primary education. Currently, students at secondary and tertiary levels have to use English as the medium of instruction. The sudden transition from Swahili to English has been blamed as one of the root causes of the current crisis of educational standards. Many scholars both from Tanzania and abroad have consistently pointed out that the problem of the medium of instruction results in educational failure, but the Tanzanian government has continued to be half-hearted in this matter based on an exaggerated belief that English plays a pivotal role in the age of globalization. English in today's Tanzania is almost synonymous with upward social mobility, and even English-medium primary schools have been mushrooming in recent years. The conflict between individuals and official language policy is inevitable, because the former prefers English as a medium of instruction at all levels and the latter tries to maintain Swahili at least at primary levels. For a language-in-education policy to be viable, multi-faceted approaches need to be introduced and applied to reflect changing social realities in Tanzanian society. The language-in-education policy also needs to be considered in the context of social inequalities and the distribution of limited resources among members of the society.

The purpose of this paper is to look into theoretical features of the three leading sociolinguists, Dell Hymes, William Labov, and John Gumperz. On the basis of meta-theoretical terms, which help one to see the differences and similarities of given theoretical viewpoints, this study attempts to delineate main characteristics of the sociolinguistic approaches of the scholars. They are discussed by getting answers to questions such as how they see language or language use, how they perceive sociolinguistics as a discipline in relation to linguistics, to what extent they differ regarding their sociolinguistic approaches and where they can be positioned in the tradition of the philosophy of science as well as that of language study. Dell Hymes' approach, along with his view on the ethnography of speaking, is characterized as featuring sociolinguistic relativism. His major concern is to understand and describe socioculturally-bound ways of speaking or communication. In contrast, William Labov's approach, along with his study of sound change at social and regional level, is characterized as featuring sociolinguistic realism. This means that he is concerned with scientific description of language shifts as they happen as a whole in the context of actual language use. In addition, John Gumperz's approach is characterized as sociolinguistic interactionism. Unlike the previous two scholars, his sociolinguistic approach is uniquely microscopic in that his main focus is placed on communicative interactions at the level of individual encounter, like interviews or face-to-face conversation.

With the development in the means of communications such as internet and broadcasting, we are witnessing a fast growth of neologism in every sector of our lives. Although neologism has often been a subject of criticism, we need to look at it from a different perspective for the following reasons. First, neologism is righteously a part of our language. Second, there are many newly created words that economically and efficiently convey variety of meanings reflecting a current culture. Third, it not only enriches our communication, through increased vocabulary and the expansion in the use of pre-existing words. This article aims to focus specifically on the neologism in campuses of Korean, Australian and Japanese Universities. 'Campus terms’ in this study are defined as the terms related to a university which play a role of slangs among the students. The related terms dealt in this study are the name of schools, class subjects, students, professors, grades and graduation. Although anyone can make or use the ‘Campus Terms’ both inside and outside of the university, the subjects of this study was limited to university students only. The similarities and differences in the campus vocabularies across the three countries have been compared and analysed. It is hoped that this research could provide some lights in the various ways of neologisms of Korean, English and Japanese.