Languages, dialects, and varieties

 

Language is understood in many different ways, but at its core, it is a system that has been accepted by a society. Grammar books often aim to define the accepted language and how it "should" be spoken. They are prescriptive texts. Because it is so difficult to define how individuals understand the languages they speak, linguists find it incredibly difficult to create grammars in practice. Any person who is fluent in a language will know more about it than any grammar book that tries to explain it.

Since speakers understand how to construct and employ phrases, knowing a language also involves understanding how to use it. We shall focus on the social facets of a different type of competency, frequently referred to as communicative competence. More than just understanding language syntax is required for the information we will attempt to express. We require competency whether the interaction is formal or informal. so that we may adapt to our current situation.

The competence-performance difference I just discussed has fascinating potential for linguistics research, but it has also shown to be extremely problematic because speakers' performances may differ widely between contexts and even within the same speaker. For instance, for McDonald's, some Australian speakers could say "macca," whereas Indonesian speakers might say "mekdi." Variants are these many ways of expressing the same notion.

Literary critics concur that the speaker's identity is reflected in their language. because we can tell a speaker's origins, history, and other information via their language. The linguistic creation of membership in one or more social groups or categories is what is meant by the definition of identity. (Kroskrity 2000, 111)

The well-known definition of "society's culture" according to Goodenough (1957, 167) is: "A society's culture consists of whatever it is one has to know or believe in order to operate in a way that is acceptable to its members, and to do so in any capacity that they accept for any one of themselves." The nature of the connection between a particular language and the culture in which it is employed is the main concern raised here.

source: An Introduction to Sociolinguistics(Seventh Edition) by Ronald Wardhaugh and Janet M Fuller