Below you will find fourteen questions, 13 of which correspond to the chapters in An Introduction to Sociolinguistics. Question 14 is associated with a film.
You are required to answer only five of the fourteen questions below. You will actually submit your answers in Canvas, but the questions are duplicated below so that you can decide in advance which ones you would like to answer.
I strongly recommend that among your five you do Questions 1, 3, and 6. You will find them especially interesting.
Write your answers to five questions outside of Canvas, and then paste your answers into the textboxs that corresponds to the question. All responses must be at least 300 words long, nut some will be longer because of the nature of the questions; make sure that you address all questions fully. Also, make sure that you carefully edit your answers before submitting them and that you organize the content into meaningful paragraphs.
The fourteen questions are distributed among the first four modules of the class. You must answer at least one question in each module, meaning that in one module you will answer two questions.
I will grade only five responses, so do not attempt any more.
Question for Chapter 1
As speakers of a language, we vary our speech depending upon whom
we are speaking to. Try this simple experiment. Find a person whom you are
close to--spouse, child, or significant other--and in your next conversation
speak in complete and grammatical sentences. You should observe a
reaction of some sort in a short period of time. Keep up this behavior for a
little while.
After you finish, tell your subject what you were doing and ask him/her to
explain the reaction that he/she had.
Now write the results of your study and send it to me. Include the following:
Identify the person in the conversation.
Describe the scene and topic of conversation.
Describe and discuss the person's reaction.
Why did the person have that reaction?
What did you learn about how you speak to someone you are close to?
Question for Chapter 2
What is a standard dialect? How does the standard dialect differ from non-standard dialects? In other words, do the two types of dialects differ grammatically? How are the dialects evaluated by the society? Who speaks the dialects? And how are they learned? To more effectively answer this question, watch the short movie, American Tongues.
Question for Chapter 3
Reread the section on networks in your textbook. Now list the six people with whom you communicate most frequently. Designate yourself "A" and draw lines from A to the other six people. Now draw lines between those of the six who communicate frequently with each other. You can easily draw this figure in Word.
Are you a member of a dense or loose network?
Are you involved in a simplex or multiplex network?
Defend your answers to the previous two questions.
If you were not able to draw the figure, carefully describe your network, and then answer the questions above.
Question for Chapter 4
Two Japanese speakers can show their relative social positions to each other through the use of honorifics. Even though English does not have grammatical honorifics, can two English speakers still show an awareness of their relative social status through the use of language? Use examples to support your answer.
Question Chapter 5
Studies in quantitative sociolinguistics are correlational. In such studies the dependent variable is always the linguistic variable. What are some of the independent variables used by sociolinguistics? Explain why the same independent variables are not of equal importance in all societies.
or
Although the studies reviewed in this chapter are from different speech communities, certain similarities in the findings are evident. Briefly discuss these similarities. Particularly think about socio-economic class and other social variables.
Question for Chapter 6
Think of a communicative event that you have participated in with another individual and describe it according to the eight factors proposed by Hymes.
Question for Chapter 7
Answer Question 2 on page 198 in An Introduction to Sociolinguistics.
Question for Chapter 8
Some speech communities have three codes that they can use, essentially two languages and codeswitching. Why wouldn't people in a diglossic situation, such as that of German speakers in Switzerland, practice intra-sentential codeswitching?
Question for Chapter 9
Explain how pidgins arise and describe at least five grammatical features that characterize them.
or
Explain how creoles arise from pidgins and describe at least five grammatical differences between the two.
Question for Chapter 10
Some
political organizations such as English First and U.S. English claim that many
immigrants are not learning English or that they do not speak it well.
Does the content in this module support those claims? Explain fully using
the data found in the readings.
Question for Chapter 11
Are there documented
differences between male speech and female speech? Are there examples of
male and female speech differing on grammar, pronunciation, and lexicon?
Do men and women display different styles when participating in conversations?
Question for Chapter 12
Briefly discuss Bernstein's major claims on the relationship between language and social structure (class). How have linguists criticized these claims?
Question for Chapter 13
Are multilingual nations
attempting to protect the linguistic rights of language minorities?
How? Which countries seem to be more successful? Which are least
successful?
Question for Chapter 14
Explain how the topic of
language loss is related to the protection of the rights of language minorities
that you read about in Chapter 13 of your textbook and saw in the movie.
What are the consequences of
language loss?
Which areas of the world are
losing the most languages? Why are some languages in Europe in danger of
becoming extinct?