SOCIOLINGUISTICS: LANGUAGE DIALECT AND VARIETIES

SOCIOLINGUISTICS: LANGUAGE DIALECT AND VARIETIES

The existence of language can’t be separated from human life. It can be seen from the fact that all activities related to interaction among people necessitate a language.

Language is an important means of communication. Language reflects thinking; obviously we can’t say a sentence until we have first thought of it. Often our thinking gets mixed with emotions and our reasons become loaded with desires, wishes, prejudices, and opinions. The kind of thinking we do is our business until we try to persuade someone else to agree to our point of view; then that thinking becomes another’s business (Meade, et.al, 1961: 94).

Language divided into two: dialect and accent.

Edward (2009) define dialect as a variety of a language that differs from others along three dimensions: vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation (accent) Because they are forms of the same language.

Accent is a special element of a dialect that include pronounciation. For example, someone from Leeds, in the north of England, would typically pronounce ‘bath’ with the short ‘a’ of ‘cat’, whereas someone from Oxford, in the south of England, would typically pronounce ‘bath’ with the long ‘a’ of ‘father’.

Then, dialect divided into two:

1.    Regional dialect: Certain differences from geographical area one to another in pronunciation, in the selecting and constructing of words, and in syntax of a language such distinctive varieties of local variety are called regional dialects (Wardhough, 2006).

2.    Social dialect: Social dialect is difference speech associate with various social groups. Social dialects create among social groups and are related to a variety of factors such as social class, religion, and ethnicity.

Question:

1.       Why social background and geographical background important in this materi?

Answer: because language that was we thought from baby-  until now its come from geographical. If we are born in west sumatera. Automatically we can speak minangness. and it can be our social background because if we are not minangness but we lived in minangness, so that a person can have two language from social or geographical background.

2.       How can language changes to be different language?

Answer: as we know there is no two speaker of a language can speak in the same way. So, language may change to region to region, social status to social status, individu to individu and from situation to situation. That is the actual result of variation of language.

3.       What example of regional and social dialect?

Answer:  we can see the example around us, especially in indonesia.

In regional dialect. For example: malay language, minang language, batak language, medan language.

In social dialect. For example: teacher-students, parents-children, manager-staff.