Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 2002. Vol. 3. Eger Journal of English Studies.(Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 29)
Myroslava Fabian: Sociolinguistics: Some Theoretical Considerations
144 MYROSLAVA FABIAN • How do individuals and social groups define themselves in and through language? • How are forms of speech and patterns of communication distributed across time and space? • How do communities differ in their "ways of speaking"? • What are typical patterns in multilingual people's use of language? • How is language involved in social conflicts and tensions? • Why do men and women talk differendy? • Is there a sociolinguistic theory of language use? • What are the most efficient, and defensible, ways of collecting language data? • What are the implications of both qualitative and quantitative methods of sociolinguistic research (see, e.g. Coupland and Jaworski 1997)? Two trends have characterized the development of sociolinguistics over the past several decades. First, the rise of particular specializations within this field has coincided with the emergence of more broadly based social and political issues. Thus, the focus on themes such as language and ethnicity, and language and gender has corresponded with the rise of related issues in society at large. Second, scholars who study the role of language and society have become more and more interested in applying the results of their investigations to the broadly based social, educational, cultural, and probably gave rise to their emergence as sociolinguistic topics to begin with. As a result, sociolinguistics offers a unique opportunity to bring together theory, description, and application in the study of language. The basic notion underlying sociolinguistics is quite simple: language use symbolically represents fundamental dimensions of social behaviour and human interaction. The notion itself is simple, but the ways in which language reflects behaviour can often be complex and subtle. Furthermore, the relationship between language and society affects a wide range of encounters —from broadly based international relations to narrowly defined interpersonal relationships. In considering language as a social institution, sociolinguists use sociological techniques involving data from questionnaires and summary statistical data, along with information from
