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Theories and Developments of Sociolinguistics

  • The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea
  • Abbr : 사회언어학
  • 2004, 12(1), pp.95-122
  • Publisher : The Sociolinguistic Society Of Korea
  • Research Area : Humanities > Linguistics

Kim Hye Sook 1

1경인교육대학교

Candidate

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this article is to understand a current status of sociolinguistics by reviewing previous studies and attempting to see the future of the discipline as linguistics. As Milroy and Milroy (1990:485) have defined, sociolinguistics is "the study of language as it is used by real speakers in social and situational contexts of use." It has four characteristics. (1)Those who study sociolinguistics are linguists but they have great interests in adding social variables to pure linguistics. Sociolinguists believe that criteria of correct language usage be based upon not only pure grammatical standards but also societal norms in terms of its relevance and general acceptance. (2)The goal of sociolinguistics is to identify a co-variance between language and society and to establish a theory of language performance. (3)Sociolinguistics regards synchronical and diachronical traits as an identical frame. (4)Sociolingustics pays attention to language usage in societal contexts and extends language competence, which is the main subject of pure linguistics, to communicative competence. D. Hymes predicts that the core areas of linguistics is actually sociolinguistics and, thus, the prefix 'socio' will not be necessary. Although we still have that prefix, it is true that sociolingusitics has already had its own identity and is growing rapidly as an independent discipline. In conclusion, this paper argues that sociolinguistics will receive more attention from linguists and play a key role in linguistics by explaining variation in language more systematically, and by interpreting and eliminating language conflict in everyday life.

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