I am doing research on knowledge sharing and recently I got interested in sociolinguistics. I am struggling with differentiating between two possible perspectives (in my view) on language. One perspective on language can be perceiving it as a social factor, which can influence society in number of ways. This is more like a general way to conceptualize language where we do not focus on anything specific. Another perspective is to focus on language in action that is language use for example code switching, accommodation etc. First one seems to be more static view of language and second one is more dynamic. .
I would be very thankful if someone sheds light on this. Is there any way to explain this difference in proper words? Moreover what would be useful terms representing these so called perspectives. It would be also helpful if someone can refer me to relevant paper(s), which have in any way talked about this.
I would say that the first topic that you call "language as a social factor" is the perspective taken in Linguistic Anthropology and Sociology of Language. The other is more the perspective taken in Sociolinguistics.
I don't know any papers that discuss your specific distinction, but you would probably find Duranti's 2003 article in Current Anthropology useful, sinc eit distinguishes betwen the different approaches to language and society. Also I would recommend the Cambridge Handbook of Linguistic Anthropology (and the handbpook on Sociolinguistics as well) which has articles that discuss in detail the different aspects of language in society and in communication.
Duranti, A., Ahearn, L., CookGumperz, J., Gumperz, J., Darnell, R., Hymes, D., ... & Duranti, A. (2003). Language as Culture in US Anthropology: Three Paradigms 1. Current Anthropology, 44(3), 323-347.
I think what you are trying to distinguish is language and social context on one hand, and use of particular languages on the other. There are several appraches in what you are asking.
First I do recommend the reads that Magnus proposed. Every vision of laguage considers, at least for a second, its social relevance. Although you can focus on biological aspects they are all related to what happens socially. I mean even Chomsky considers the relevance of performace, though he does not develop the concept.
Perhaps Labov can help you. He works in the edge between those perspectives you mention, and there's a lot of papers in his website:
http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~wlabov/home.html
This is an interesting question. It reminds me of the old "sapir-whorf hypothesis" :)
Coming back to more recent theories, your second perspective immediately reminds me of Labov's classical sociolinguistic works. You probably have already known a lot of it.
Your first perspective (language as a general social factor that influences the society) reminds me (beside Magnus's advice) of de Swaan's (2001) Words of the World: The Global Language System, which look at the factors which influence why a group of people would choose one language instead of another when both are available As a linguist, I personally find it an interesting book to read. I provides a very different perspective other than our usual approach.
Moreover, if we focus on how different languages make people different, you may also find some cognitive works interesting. These studies mainly focus on object categorization, such as the following popular article: Winawer, J., Witthoft, N., Frank, M. C., Wu, L., Wade, A. R. & Boroditsky, L. (2007). Russian blues reveal effects of language on color discrimination. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104 (19), 7780. It seems that language sysem affects how people categorize the world.
Good luck~
Dear Farhan
My answer is off the track: Please read the drama 'Pygmalion' by Bernard Shaw and see the film May Fair Lady based on that. Both are enjoyable and will tell you how important Language is in the Society, and how the change in your mode of its use can change Social status.
Narayanan Bhattathiri
In my opinion, you are absolutely right. For example, this opposition is to be very important at least in two cases. 1) When the multi-language situation in a multi-ethnic state is not balanced well. One of its idioms (usually the titular dialect) has the status of a state language, other idioms (dialects or languages), common in the area, find themselves in a marginal status. 2) When we have the multi-language situation in a mono-ethnic regions (one ethnic group has more than two languages). The problem is important in the spheres of education, legislation, employment, mass media, etc. and provokes language conflicts. I think you will find some interesting notes if use keywords “language conflict”, “legal (or de jure) status of idiom”, “idiom de facto”, etc.
Dear Farhan
Olga is right. Linguistics can influence social status both in the single language and multi-language background. In the case of single language, this will be due to differences in dialect, accent and use of slang. The novel I mentioned earlier (Pygmalion of GBS) is about the accent and slang in English. Multi-language effect seen most importantly in the case of English where its learning is sought for by many people in many nations all over the world as aMUST for moving up the social ladder, as much as professionally. This effect starts when two languages come into contact and one is dominant over the other; hence works language contact is use ful to learn about this too. Here are some references on this:
Moravcsik, E. 1978). Universals of language contact. In Universals of Human Language, Joseph H. Greenberg (ed.), 94‑122. Stanford. Stanford University Press
Thomason, SG. and Kaufman, T. 1988. Language Contact, Creolization and Genetic Linguistics. Berkeley: University of California Press
van Coetsem, Frans. 1988. Loan phonology and the two transfer types in language contact. Dordrecht: Foris
van Coetsem, Frans. 2000. A general and unified theory of the transmission process in language contact. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag, C. Winter
Winford, D: 2008. Processes of creole formation and related contact‑induced language change. Journal of Language Contact – THEMA 2
NARAYANAN
Dear Fabian,
Conversation Analysis...
Schegloff, Emanuel. 2006. “Interaction: The Infrastructure for Social Institutions, the Natural Ecological Niche for Language, and the Arena in Which Culture Is Enacted.” In Roots of Human Sociality: Culture, Cognition and Interaction, eds. Nicholas J. Enfield and Stephen C. Levinson. London: Berg, 70–96.
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