The concept of Sociolinguistic competence has various theories that date back to the 1960s. But little could I find about the origin and evolution of the idea of sociolinguistic competence. I shall be happy if someone could throw some light on the origin and evolution of the concept of sociolinguistic competence.
Thanks in anticipation.
Basically, sociolinguistic competence comprise many elements and abilities from within the linguistic dimension. Researchers like Thomas (1983) uses the term "socio-pragmatic competence" to refer to qualities and criteria that are similar to sociolinguistic competence. Likewise, Bell (1976) simply use the term "social competence". For Weidemann (1988) sociolinguistic competence seems to fall under transactional competence. Scholars like Canale (1983), Brown (1987), Bachman (1990) and many others have long use the term "sociolinguistic competence" to refer to abilities to use language in social context with sound understanding of the parameters and circumstances. The differences in terms used could be determined by the dynamic changing views on languages and their contextualizations.
Norkhairi Bin Ahmad
Thanks for the enlightenment. But irrespective of the term in use, as you mentioned, the question that comes to my mind, again and again, is, "When did it all start?" When did people or, to be precise, linguists, start to feel the need for something called '........ competence'? There has to be a time or era when it all started.
Sociolinguistic competence refers to how a speaker uses language in a particular context in the society to pass information. The notion was first talk about in about 1965 when William Labov and his contemporaries in the west started writing on Sociolinguistics in the early 1960s
Sociolinguistic competence refers to the ability to tweak one's speech to be appropriate to the social context. Its roots go back to the 1960s. To be more specific, its underlying principles emanate from the verbal repertoire dissected by Gumperz (1964) and from the linguistic routines and language behavior expatiated by Fishman (1966). I would recommend perusing the following recent chapter for more tracing on the concept and its positioning within different models of communicative competence.
Xamidullaevna, X. N. (2020). Status of sociolinguistic competence within models of communicative competence. PalArch's Journal of Archaeology of Egypt/Egyptology, 17(6), 7319-7326. http://www.palarch.nl/index.php/jae/article/download/2110/2082
Best,
Mohialdeen Alotumi Thank You very much for the inputs. The link, however, fails to open. Shall be grateful if you share a pdf of the paper.
You could also refer to Hymes' theory of communicative competence (1966) where he posits five linguistic competences, including pragmatic competence.
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