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When two people speak with one another, there is always more going on than
just conveying a message. The language used by the participants is always
influenced by a number of social factors which define the relationship
between the participants. Consider, for example, a professor making a
simple request of a student to close a classroom door to
shut off the noise from the corridor. There are a number of ways this
request can be made:
- Politely, in a moderate tone "Could you please close the door?"
- In a confused manner while shaking his/her head "Why aren't you shutting the door?"
- Shouting and pointing, "SHUT THE DOOR!"
The most appropriate utterance for the situation would be a. The most
inappropriate would be c. This statement humiliates the student, and
provides no effort by the professor to respect him/her. Utterance b
is awkward because it implies that the teacher automatically assumes that the student should
know better than to leave the door open when there is noise in the hallway. The inappropriateness
is a social decision tied to the social factors which shape the relationship between speaker ( the
professor), and the listener (the student).
When choosing an appropriate utterance for the situation, there are
factors that you must consider in order to effectively convey the message
to the other participant.
- Participants- how well do they know each other?
- Social setting- formal or informal
- Who is talking- status relationship/social roles ( student vs. professor)
- Aim or purpose of conversation
- Topic
Do you notice that there is a difference in the way you speak to your
friends and the way you speak to your relatives, teachers, or others of
professional status?
- When telling your friend that you like his/her shirt, you say:
- "Hey, cool shirt, I like that!"
- When telling the President of the company your parents work for that you like his/her shirt, you say:
- "You look very nice today, I really like that shirt."
This is called choosing your variety or code. This can also be seen on a
larger scale, diglossia, where multilingual nations include a variety of
accents, language styles, dialects and languages. Each of these factors
is a reflection of the region and socio-economics background from which
you come from. In monolingual societies, the region and
socio-economic factors are determined by dialect and language style.
It is not uncommon in our nation to see that languages other than English
are spoken inside the home with friends and family. However when these
bilingual or even trilingual families interact socially outside of their
home, they will communicate in English. Even church services may use a
variation of the language, one that you would only hear in
side the church or in school. An example of the difference in the use of
a language can be seen in the following example from Janet Holmes, "An
Introduction to Sociolinguistics," of the two main languages used in
Paraguay; Spanish and Guarani:
| Domain | Addressee | Setting | Topic | Language |
| Family | Parent | Home | Planning a party | Guarani |
| Friendship | Friend | Cafe | Humorous ancedote | Guarani |
| Religion | Priest | Church | Choosing the Sunday liturgy | Spanish |
| Education | Teacher | Primary | Telling a story | Guarani |
| Education | Lecturer | University | Solving math problem | Spanish |
| Administration | Official | Office | Getting an important license | Spanish |
Diglossia: In a bilingual community, in which two languages or dialects
are used differently according to different social situations.
Janet Holmes defines diglossia as having three crucial features:
- In the same language, used in the same community, there are two
distinct varieties. One is regarded as high (H) and the
other low (L).
- Each is used for distinct functions.
- No one uses the high (H) in everyday conversation.
In the following example it is easy to tell which variety you will use
given the social situations:
- Telling a joke
- Interviewing for a job
- Giving a speech for a charity event
- Giving a speech for a friend for his/her birthday
- Church
- Cafeteria
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