Summary of Sociolinguistic

v  A vernacular is the native language or native dialect of a specific population, as opposed to a language of wider communication that is not native to the population, such as a national language or lingua franca

v  Bahasa kreol adalah keturunan dari bahasa pijin yang menjadi bahasa ibu bagi sekelompok orang yang berasal dari latar belakang berbeda-beda

v  Bahasa kreol berkembang karena sebab berikut :

Berkumpulnya berbagai orang dari latar belakang yang berbeda, maksudnya: di suatu daerah, terjadi kontak antara penduduk asli dan pendatang yang satu sama lain berbeda bahasa. Dari sini kemudian digunakan sarana komunikasi yang terdiri dari bahasa dominan, namun terpengaruh oleh kosakata-kosakata bawaan dari orang-orang tersebut.

Pada mulanya bahasa inilah yang disebut Pidgin, dengan kosakata yang sangat sederhana. Namun, ketika mengalami proses kreolisasi, tata bahasanya mengalami perkembangan sehingga menjadi bahasa yang stabil dan terpisah dari bahasa induknya. Sebagian besar bahasa kreol ini berakar dari bahasa-bahasa Indo-Eropa sebagai bahasa dasarnya.

v  Berikut adalah bahasa-bahasa kreol yang sudah dikenal :

v  Kreol Arab ,Ki Nubi,Arab Juba,Arab Babalia,Kreol Inggris ,Bislama,Tok Pisin,Krio,Pitcairn,Sranang Tongo,Kreol Miskito A creole language, or simply a creole, is a stable natural language developed from the mixing of parent languages; creoles differ from pidgins (which are believed by scholars to be necessary precedents of creoles) in that they have been nativized by children as their primary language, making them have features of natural languages that are normally missing from pidgins.

v  Language died happens when a language in the course of its normal development gradually morphs into something that is then recognized as a separate, different language, leaving the old form with no native speakers. Thus, for example, Old English may be regarded as a "dead language", with no native speakers, although it has never "died" but instead simply changed and developed into Middle English, Early Modern English and Modern English. Or is a process that affects speech communities where the level of linguistic competence that speakers possess of a given language variety is decreased, eventually resulting in no native and/or fluent speakers of the variety. Language death may affect any language idiom, including dialects and languages.

v  Language death may manifest itself in one of the following ways:

gradual language death

bottom-to-top language death: when a language begins to change in a low level place such as the home.

top-to-bottom language death: when a language begins to change in a high level place such as the government.

radical language death

linguicide (a.k.a. sudden language death, language death by genocide, physical language death, biological language death)

v  An ethnic group (or ethnicity) is a group of people whose members identify with each other, through a common heritage, often consisting of a common language, a common culture (often including a shared religion) and/or an ideology that stresses common ancestry or endogamy OR a highly biologically self-perpetuating group sharing an interest in a homeland connected with a specific geographical area, a common language and traditions, including food preferences, and a common religious faith

v  Ethnicity is an aspect of social relationship between agents who consider themselves as being culturally distinctive from members of other groups with whom they have a minimum of regular interaction.

v  Language shift occurs when a community who share similar mother tongue abandon it, and collectively shift to speaking another language

v  discusses language shift which are triggered by demographic, attitude, economic, social, and political factors.

v   Firstly, demographic factor plays the role in the process of language shift. When there is a community of speakers moving to a region or a country whose language is different from theirs, there is a tendency to shift to the new language. Every time an immigrant learns the native language of the new country and passes it down to children in place of the old country language. For example, I was born in Solo so my mother tongue is Javanese which was used as the language in my former neighborhood and the medium of instruction in my elementary school. I moved to Jakarta in 1979. Since then, I only use Javanese at home with my family and my Javanese neighbors. Because there is a high frequency of contact with people coming from different ethnic groups who use Bahasa Indonesia, I gradually shift from Javanese to Bahasa Indonesia. This is a clear evidence that demography is an influencing factor in language shift.

v   Secondly, the negative attitudes towards the language can also accelerate language shift. It occurs where the ethnic language is not highly valued and is not seen as a symbol of identity. As stated by Holmes, young people are the fastest to shift languages (60). Teenagers in some big cities of Central Java Province gradually abandon Javanese in daily communication. Having various levels of formality, Javanese is seen as a difficult medium of instruction. They are required to choose different variety when talking to different people. In addition, they feel more prestigious when using Bahasa Indonesia or English than when using Javanese. (Samadi SP, Suara Karya). Teenagers nowadays want to be a part of a global community. Therefore, they do not have the need to show their identity by using Javanese. If this continues, they will eventually lose their ability to speak Javanese.

v   Thirdly, language shift is caused by economic reason. Holmes says that job seekers see the importance of learning a new language which is widely used in business (60). The high demand from industries for employees with fluent English has successfully encouraged job seekers to equip themselves with English. In fact, being competent in English leads to well-paid jobs.

v   Finally, political factor imposes on language shift. In a multilingual country, the authority usually chooses one language as the lingua franca to unify various kinds of ethnic groups. Consequently, the number of ethnic language speakers decreases. As an example, the political situation in 1947 led to the partition of India. Sindhi Hindus fled from the Sind. They spoke Sindhi at home but had to adopt the local languages. This process has led to language displacement leading to language loss among the Sindhis (Bayer, 2005). Another example, the official languages of many African countries were determined by their former colonialists. Those languages replace African tribal languages. Both examples show how they experience language shift.

v   To sum up, language shift is an interesting and inevitable linguistic phenomenon.The factors which trigger the shift vary from one language community to another. Some of them are demographic, attitude, economic, social, and political factors.

v  Language loss is an overarching term which includes both language shift and language attrition.

v  Language shift is often investigated in several generations and usually refers to an intergenerational and group process.

v  Language attrition usually refers to decreasing competence in the mother tongue of individual speakers (Myers-Scotton 2002).

v  Types of language loss: Loss of L1 in L1 environment (e.g. loss of dialect within dialect community) 

Loss of L1 in L2 environment (e.g. loss of native language by migrant workers)

Loss of L2 in L1 environment (e.g. foreign language loss)

Loss of L2 in L2 environment (second language loss by aging migrants)

v  Reasons for loss: Linguistic reasons--linguistic similarity of two languages (e.g., Portuguese speakers living in Spanish-speaking countries)

v  Cultural reasons—strong cultural similarities between L1 and L2 groups (e.g., Irish Protestants living in England)

v  Demographic reasons

high rate of exogamy

small concentrations of L1 speakers

long length of time in new locale

v  Educational reasons—lack of support for literacy or formal education in L1 (e.g., immigrants in U.S. or France)

young age (productive language skills in L1 tend to decrease considerably with each passing generation)

v  Psychological reasons

negative attitudes towards L1 language and culture on part of larger society or on part of speakers themselves

identification with larger society rather than L1 group

v  Language planning is a deliberate effort to influence the function, structure, or acquisition of languages or language variety within a speech community.[1] It is often associated with government planning, but is also used by a variety of non-governmental organizations, such as grass-roots organizations and even individuals. The goals of language planning differ depending on the nation or organization, but generally include making planning decisions and possibly changes for the benefit of communication.

v  Language status is a concept distinct from, though intertwined with, language prestige and language function. Strictly speaking, language status is the position or standing of a language vis-à-vis other languages.

v  Language planning goals

Eleven Language Planning Goals have been recognized (Nahir 2003):[6]

v  Language Purification – prescription of usage in order to preserve the “linguistic purity” of language, protect language from foreign influences, and guard against language deviation from within

v  Language Revival – the attempt to turn a language with few or no surviving native speakers back into a normal means of communication[7]

v  Language Reform – deliberate change in specific aspects of language, like orthography, spelling, or grammar, in order to facilitate use

v  Language Standardization – the attempt to garner prestige for a regional language or dialect, transforming it into one that is accepted as the major language, or standard language, of a region

v  Language Spread – the attempt to increase the number of speakers of one language at the expense of another

v  Lexical Modernization – word creation or adaptation

v  Terminology Unification – development of unified terminologies, primarily in technical domains

v  Stylistic Simplification – simplification of language usage in lexicon, grammar, and style

v  Interlingual Communication – facilitation of linguistic communication between members of distinct speech communities

v  Language Maintenance – preservation of the use of a group’s native language as a first or second language where pressures threaten or cause a decline in the status of the language

v  Auxiliary-Code Standardization – standardization of marginal, auxiliary aspects of language such as signs for the deaf, place names, or rules of transliteration and transcription

v  Language revitalization, language revival or reversing language shift is the attempt by interested parties, including individuals, cultural or community groups, governments, or political authorities, to reverse the decline of a language[citation needed

v  Language shift, sometimes referred to as language transfer or language replacement or assimilation, is the progressive process whereby a speech community of a language shifts to speaking another language, Example:Alsace

In Alsace, France, a longtime German-speaking region, German and Alsatian, the native Germanic dialect, all but disappeared as useful languages after a period of being banned and persecuted by the French government after the First World War and the Second World War. They were superseded by French

v  Where a language is widely used over a relatively large geographical area as a language of wider communication, it is known as a lingua franca--a common language but one which is native only to some of its speakers

v  Sebagai contoh adalah bahasa Melayu atau bahasa Indonesia di Asia Tenggara. Di kawasan ini bahasa ini dipergunakan tidak hanya oleh para penutur ibunya, namun oleh banyak penutur kedua sebagai bahasa pengantar. Contoh yang lain adalah bahasa Inggris di pentas internasional.

v  Logat adalah cara pengucapan yang dimiliki oleh masing-masing orang sesuai dengan asal daerah ataupun suku bangsa. Logat dapat mengidentifikasi lokasi dimana pembicara berada, status sosial-ekonomi, dan lain lainnya

v  Dialek (bahasa Yunani: διάλεκτος, dialektos), adalah varian dari sebuah bahasa menurut pemakai

v  Berdasarkan pemakaian bahasa, dialek dibedakan menjadi berikut[1]:

v  Dialek regional: varian bahasa yang dipakai di daerah tertentu. Misalnya, bahasa Melayu dialek Ambon, dialek Jakarta, atau dialek Medan.

v  Dialek sosial: dialek yang dipakai oleh kelompok sosial tertentu atau yang menandai strata sosial tertentu. Misalnya, dialek remaja.

v  Dialek temporal, yaitu dialek yang dipakai pada kurun waktu tertentu. Misalnya, dialek Melayu zaman Sriwijaya dan dialek Melayu zaman Abdullah.

v  Idiolek, keseluruhan ciri bahasa seseorang yang khas pribadi dalam lafal, tata bahasa, atau pilihan dan kekayaan kata.

v  Sosiolinguistik menjelaskan bagaimana menggunakan bahasa itu dalam aspek atau segi sosial tertentu, seperti dirumuskah Fishman (1967:15) bahwa yang dipersoalkan dalam sosiolinguistik adalah, “who speak, what language, to whom, when, and to what end”. Dari rumusan Fishman itu dapat kita jabarkan manfaat atau kegunaan sosiolinguistik bagi kehidupan praktis.

v  Pidgin is a very basic language which is used to communicate between cultures. It is never the first language of a speaker, and it usually involves a blend of words and concepts from at least two, and sometimes more, cultures. Pidgin is characterized by being simple and easy to understand, although it can sometimes surprisingly be a challenge to learn to communicate clearly in pidgin, since it is so simple.

v  Examples and Observations:

"At first a pidgin language has no native speakers, and is used just for doing business with others with whom one shares the pidgin language and no other. In time, most pidgin languages disappear, as the pidgin-speaking community develops, and one of its established languages becomes widely known and takes over the role of the pidgin as the lingua franca, or language of choice of those who do not share a native language."

 (Grover Hudson, Essential Introductory Linguistics. Blackwell, 2000)

v  A social network is a social structure made up of individuals (or organizations) called "nodes", which are tied (connected) by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as friendship, kinship, common interest, financial exchange, dislike, sexual relationships, or relationships of beliefs, knowledge or prestige.

v  A standard language (also standard dialect or standardized dialect) is a language variety used by a group of people in their public discourse

v  Standard languages commonly feature:

A recognized dictionary (standardized spelling and vocabulary)

A recognized grammar

A standard pronunciation (educated speech)

A linguistic institution defining usage norms, e.g. Académie française, the Royal Spanish Academy

Constitutional (legal) status (frequently as an official language)

Effective public use (court, legislature, schools)

A literary canon

v  Social Networking is a nice form of entertainment, great for meeting people with similar interests, and can be a very effective business technique for entrepreneurs, writers, actors, musicians or artists.

v  Social networking is the grouping of individuals into specific groups, like small rural communities or a neighborhood subdivision, if you will. Although social networking is possible in person, especially in the workplace, universities, and high schools, it is most popular online.

v  Language change is the phenomenon whereby phonetic, morphological, semantic, syntactic, and other features of language vary over time. The effect on language over time is known as diachronic change.

v  Causes of language change

economy: Speakers tend to make their utterances as efficient and effective as possible to reach communicative goals. Purposeful speaking therefore involves a trade-off of costs and benefits.

the principle of least effort: Speakers especially use economy in their articulation, which tends to result in phonetic reduction of speech forms. See vowel reduction, cluster reduction, lenition, and elision. After some time a change may become widely accepted (it becomes a regular sound change) and may end up treated as a standard. For instance: going to [ˈɡoʊ.ɪntʊ] → gonna [ˈɡʌnə], with examples of both vowel reduction [ʊ] → [ə] and elision [nt] → [n], [oʊ.ɪ] → [ʌ].

analogy - reducing word forms by likening different forms of the word to the root.

language contact - the borrowing of words from foreign languages.

the medium of communication

cultural environment: Groups of speakers will reflect new places, situations, and objects in their language, whether they encounter different people there or not.

Rudi Keller discusses language change in the context of evolutionary process: "the historical evolution of language", proposing his invisible hand explanation.