Write 7 pages thesis on the topic the ways in which language use varies according to the relationship between the speaker and the audience.
Write 7 pages thesis on the topic the ways in which language use varies according to the relationship between the speaker and the audience. The notion of language in sociolinguistics cannot be defined on the basis of geography, or ethnicity, or mutual intelligibility of its speakers. In order to define the language as least somehow sociolinguists established the term of “a speech community”, which is defined as any group of people, who believe that they speak the same language or language variety. These groups can be quite broad ranging from a small cluster of speakers to whole nations or even supranational groups (Dirven & Vespoor, 1999)
Sociolinguistics is primarily concerned with the study of language variation, which is influenced by social factors and takes place within a particular contextual environment. It is a well-known fact that every language speaker has a number of different language varieties. In fact, there is no person on earth, whose communication is restricted to only one language variety. This can be seen only with second-language learners, however, this drawback sound is eliminated as soon as possible for the person to sound naturally in the native speaker community (Meyerhoff, 2006).
Every person has on stock a number of various speech styles and language varieties, which he/she uses in particular situations and change with the change of the external conditions. This phenomenon is known as code-switching, which is defined as the usage of different language varieties in different social situations. The speaker uses code-switching to accustom to the change of the social environment (Dirven & Vespoor, 1999).
One of the founders of sociolinguistics is William Labov, who made valuable quantitative research on language variation and change, which is considered to be the start of sociolinguistics (Labov, 1972). .
