LIN251H1 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Heteroglossia, Sociolinguistics, Noam Chomsky
Document Summary
Dell hymes was the founding theorist of socioling. Chomsky coined the term communicative competence" (capacity of understanding that enables community members to conduct/interpret speech). Speaking a lang grammatically doesn"t guarantee that you"ll sound like a native. Cc requires ling+cultural knowledge and interaction skills. 4 characteristics of what language is to a sociolinguist: Lang is social: the matter of lang is found in utterance (minimal unit in which speakers say things) as well as discourses + conversations where they occur. Lang is dialogue: involves listeners and speakers engaging in verbal interaction. Lang is profusion: heteroglossia linguistic variety. There"s no way everyone will speak the standard dialogue. Lang is ideology: it"s about social meaning, not content. Indexes of social meaning evoke places, periods, groups, classes, genders. Identifying a nation by lang is an 18th century european construct that was imposed onto the rest of the world through european colonization. Sociolinguists use terms like code", variety" and dialect" to make clear distinction.
