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
SOCIOLINGUISTICS: SOME THEORETICAL CONSIDERATIONS 145 direct observation. The study of language in its social context tells us a lot about how we organize our social relationships within a particular community. For instance, addressing a person as "Mrs. ", 'Ms.or by a first name is not about simple vocabulary choice, but about the relationship and social position of the speaker and addressee. Similarly, the use of sentence alternatives such as Just shut up and get on with your work ! Will you, please, stop talking and get on with your work ? You'd better get on with your work instead of talking is not a matter of simple sentence structure. But the choice involves cultural values and norms of politeness, deference, and status. In approaching language as a social activity, it is possible to study the specific patterns or social rules for conducting conversation and discourse. One can describe the rules and peculiarities for both opening and closing a conversation, the proper cases of taking conversational turns, or the ways of telling stories, jokes, etc. In modern sociolinguistics it is also very important to examine how people manage their language in relation to both their cultural backgrounds and their purposes of interaction. In this respect such problems as how mixed-gender conversations differ from the single-gender ones, how different power relations manifest themselves in language forms, how the children are taught the ways in which language should be used, or how language change occurs and spreads to communities, and, of course, many other questions are of primary importance. In order to solve these problems related to language as social activity, it is advisable to use ethnographic methods. One can attempt to gain an understanding of the values and viewpoints of a community to explain the behaviours and attitudes of its members. All the above mentioned theoretical issues need further investigations, and they are much more complicated than they at first appear. The possible solutions may differ from culture to culture, interacting with many other social characteristics of speakers such as social class, age, sex, context, etc. to varying extents. All the topics of sociolinguistics are not simply linguistic but social ones. As such, any remedy will require changes in both society and language. References Coupland, N. and A. Jaworski. 1997. Sociolinguistics: A Reader. N.Y.: St. Martin's Press. Fabian, M. 2001. English: Sociolinguistic and Pragmatic Aspects. Uzhhorod: Art Line.
