INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS & PHONETICS – SOCIOLINGUISTICS

INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS & PHONETICS – SOCIOLINGUISTICS

Simply put, language is not merely content; rather, it is something that we do, and it affects how we act and interact as social beings in the world.

Abundant scholarship in sociolinguistics reveals how linguistic, cognitive, ideological, stylistic, cultural, and social dimensions are inextricably intertwined. Historically, sociolinguistic scholarship reflects the influence of and contributions from a host of related disciplines from the humanities and social sciences, including anthropology, sociology, psychology, philosophy, communications, and Iiterary analyais. In turn, sociolinguistic scholarship has traveled beyond the boundaries of linguistics proper to influence these related fields.

Sociolinguistics holds broad applicability for scholars across diverse fields who are interested in exploring relationships between language, individuals, culture, and society. Studies of the power and prestige of languages and language varieties and of the linguistic, educational, occupational, legal, and health-related effects of social hierarchies represent one highly applicable area of inquiry. With continuing advancements in technology and mathematical and computational methods, as well as increasing knowledge of cognition, sociolinguistic studies will also come into closer alignment with research efforts involving language, cognition, and computation from Other fields. Through more sustained interdisciplinary collaborations, sociolinguists can continue to advance inquiry into how language plays a central, critical role in the myriad cognitive, psychological, cultural, and social processes in which speakers and group engage.

 
INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS & PHONETICS – SOCIOLINGUISTICS

INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS & PHONETICS – UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR AND THE THEORY OF PRINCIPLES AND PARAMETER

INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS & PHONETICS – UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR AND THE THEORY OF PRINCIPLES AND PARAMETER

Likewise, though there are many linguists who strongly agree with Chomsky's universal grammar, however, put forward several conflicting positions, depending upon the linguistic and social context, especially the way universal grammar evolved over the time. For example, Steven Pinker, brings a new adaptationist theory that significantly abdicates from the theory/idea proposed by Chomsky. However, Chomsky's theories have great impact on modern linguistics. He made study of linguistics thoroughly a scientific one. He is also onsidered as father of modern linguistics. His theory of Universal Grammar provides a path breaking idea that substantiates as how languages work and how do they constitute certain components, how are they so innate in every human brain and how does this innateness bring out certain principles and parameters in language acquisition of children.

INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS & PHONETICS – UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR AND THE THEORY OF PRINCIPLES AND PARAMETER

INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS & PHONETICS – SPEECH ACT AND DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS & PHONETICS – SPEECH ACT AND DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

Learning to communicate in a language involves more than acquiring the pronunciation and grammar. We need to learn how to ask question, make suggestion, greet and thank other speakers. In other words we need to learn the uses to which utterances are conventionally put in the new language community and how these uses are signaled. The terminology of such function of language is called speech acts.

 
INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS & PHONETICS – SPEECH ACT AND DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS & PHONETICS – CHANGES IN MEANING OF WORDS

INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS & PHONETICS – CHANGES IN MEANING OF WORDS

E.B. White wrote "The language is perpetually in flux: it is a living stream, shifting changing, receiving new strength from a thousand ributaries, losing old forms in the backwaters of time. It is observed that words change or develop under the influence of various factors. There seems to be a logical route from meaning X to meaning Y and sociolinguists have forwarded theories attempting to explain it. When one gives a sufficient amount of thought it is noticed that many meaning changes which, at first, seem baffling can be sourced quite easily and understood very logically. The passage of time, socio-cultural conventions, and technological developments provides plenty of opportunity for the semantic change to take place, both consciously and unconsciously. The above module attempted to explain this phenomenon of changes in meanings of words along with an overview of its types and causes and its consequent outcomes.

INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS & PHONETICS – CHANGES IN MEANING OF WORDS

INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS & PHONETICS - AMBIGUITY

INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS & PHONETICS - AMBIGUITY

Thus Ambiguity is a vast area in Linguistics, which has many types according to many critics and schools. But all those could be exhausted in the three discussed above. Those are: 

Lexical, Syntactic and Semantic Ambiguity

Lexical: Any ambiguity resulting from the ambiguity of a word which has multiple parts of speech. 

Syntactic: Structural or syntactic Ambiguity refers to the situation in which a sentence may have different meanings because; the words of a sentence are related to each other in various ways, even though each word is clear and unconnected.

Semantic: Semantics is nothing but "Meaning". If a word or phrase is Ambiguous in its meaning then we call it as Semantic Ambiguity. That is even after the syntax and the meanings of the individual words have been resolved, there are two ways of reading the sentence. 

And as it was discussed above, Ambiguity is much helpful in Language and literature, which in literature is used by the author with an intention to grasp the readers towards the text. 

Also look at the videos above to learn much about IC analysis and its role in Linguistics. Thus, everything in the creation has both positive and negative side. So does Ambiguity. It depends on the context in which it is used.

INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS & PHONETICS - AMBIGUITY