The Definition of Sociolinguistics

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CHAPTER II LITERATURE REVIEW

In conducting research, I use some literature to support the research. Literature review contains some related study to the research and will be described in this chapter. In conducting the research, I apply sociolinguistics approach as an instrument to carry out the research.

A. Sociolinguistics

1. The Definition of Sociolinguistics

Some definition of sociolinguistics can be seen bellow: Trudgill 1974: 32 defines sociolinguistics as a branch of linguistics concerned with language. Language is considered as a social and cultural phenomenon. Sociolinguistics investigates the correlation between fields of language with society. It also has close relation with the social sciences, especially social psychology, anthropology, human geography and sociology. Meanwhile, Chaika 1994: 2 defines sociolinguistics as the discipline studying how people use language in their interaction. Sociolinguistics is also related to something which is apparently unimportant thing. The examples are how people talk differently in the street corner or in the classroom; also what people do when they talk or how they signal when they are listening. commit to user 8 Finnegan 1994: 4 defines sociolinguistics as “the study of language in use. It specially focuses on the relationship between language and society, and its principal concerns address linguistic variation across social groups and across the range of communicative situations in which women and men deploy their verbal repertories. Further discussion by Fishman in Suwito 1994: 3 defines two factors that should be studied in sociolinguistics. Those are linguistics and non linguistics factors. Non-linguistic factor influences language through the social factor such as the social status, age, level of education, sex and, etc. Meanwhile, Holmes 2001: 12 adds the non-linguistics related to all kind of situation such as the participants consists of who is speaking and who are speaking to, the setting or social context of the interaction consists of where are they speaking, the topic consists of what is being discussed, and the function consists of the reason why they are speaking. Based on definition above, sociolinguistics is a large field of knowledge studying the relation between language and its society. Sociolinguistics focuses on how people use languages differently by its region, how individual speaker use language, and how language is used differently between at school and at home.

2. The Scope and Sub-Division of Sociolinguistics