the structure of a society has some impacts on the language of the speakers of that society in different contexts, where the contexts refer to things like ethnicity,
social class, sex, geography, age, and a number of other factors. Thus, sociolinguistics studies the effect of any and all aspects of society, including
cultural norms, expectations, and context, on the way language is used.
1. Definitions of Sociolinguistics
According to Gumperz 1971:1 sociolinguistics is the study of language in social use. It means that sociolinguistics explains the way of people use
language to communicate in their society. It also depicts how people use language in social interaction and observes any changes that occur from that interaction.
Sociolinguistics focuses on the relationships between language and society and its principal concerns address the form and function of linguistic variation across
social groups and across the range of communicative situation in which women and men deploy their verbal repertoires. In short, sociolinguistics examines the
discourse as constructed and co-constructed, shaped and reshaped in the interactions of everyday life and it reflects and creates the social realities of that
life While, Spolsky also states that sociolinguistics is the field that studies the
relation between language and society, between the uses of language and the social structures in which the users of language live. It attempts to find
correlations between social structure and linguistic structure and to observe any changes that occur. Social structure itself may be measured by reference to such
factors as social class and educational background. We can attempt to relate verbal behavior and performance to these factors.
Based from the statement above, we can conclude that sociolinguistics deals with the study of language as the human interaction in the society. It studies
the relation of language and society. It concerns on analyzing how people use language in their society to interact with the others and the ways of them use
appropriate language in the different social context. Sociolinguistics also studies about social function and social meaning behind language. People consider
meaning in the context of situation and culture.
2. The scope of Sociolinguistics.
