Skip to main content
Glite Dictionary
sociolinguistics

sociolinguistics

7.9
Study of how people use language in different social and cultural groups
  • noun
  • /ˌsoʊsiəˈlɪŋɡwɪstɪks/
  • Specialized
translation icon : sociolingüística
  • Her research in sociolinguistics focuses on how cultural identity influences language choice.

Examples

  • The conference covered various aspects of sociolinguistics, including language use in multicultural societies.

  • Many linguistics departments are kind of narrowly Chomskyian or narrowly focused on sociolinguistics or maybe narrowly focused on NLP.

  • 47 Ronald Waurdhaugh, An Introduction to Sociolinguistics (Maiden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishing, 2002), pp. 353-74.

    Academic text (2011)

  • Milroy J. 1992. Social network and prestige arguments in sociolinguistics. Pages 146-162 in Bolton K, Kwok H, eds. Sociolinguistics Today: International Perspectives. Routledge.

    Academic text (2013)

  • Sociolinguistics examines how sociolinguistics dialects vary among different social groups.

How Social

sociolinguistics
  • Specialized
7.9
linguistics
  • Specialized
21 5.0

Surface Forms

sociolinguistics singular
sociolinguistics plural

Morphology

sociolinguistics = linguistics (transparent) = socio + linguistics

The meaning is directly derived from 'socio' (relating to society) + 'linguistics' (study of language), yielding the study of language in social context.

Etymology

Sociolinguistics joins socio- which means 'social' and linguistics which comes from lingua meaning 'tongue' or 'language'. So, sociolinguistics is the study of how people's language changes with their social groups and culture.