Relationship of language and society
According to Naom Chomsky, sociolinguistic is the study of a diversity of concepts including language that enhance communication. According to him, sociolinguistic is not the study of grammar as many linguists may put it. He further declares that emphasizing grammar as an element of linguistic may result in the decline of research on the essence of language in society.
Dialect and language
There is a great difference between dialects and language. Many people do lack the ability to identify their differences leading to them considering the two to mean the same things. A language is a form of communication used by a diversity of persons that share many things. For instance, people using the same language tend to be originating from the same place or have common ancestry. A language does not have side branches of unification. On the other hand, dialects are a form of communication used by individuals that originate differently. A dialect consists of a subordinate diversity of languages. There is a diversity of dialects in various societies in a given country. For instance, regional dialect originates from the place where it is used boundaries dialects originate from the social natures of individuals in a given area.
English language
English language is diversely used in the countries of Pacific. This is because there many communities in the countries of pacific that have many indigenous languages. Take Papua New Guinea as an example, Papua is made up of many small groups of individuals communicating in different languages. Such diversity in languages creates difficulties for linguists who try to apply pure linguistic to differentiate language from dialect.
Multi-linguistic is also another element that poses challenges to the linguistics. The majority of the people in Britain are conversant with more than four languages. The ability of the people to know more than one language leads to an individual not knowing the original language for the inhabitants of the area.
However, in carrying out research, linguists have found out that some elements may contribute to different languages having similarities. Some of the reasons include proximity of different geographical areas and structural similarity of the language used in communication and not inheritance. Such issues result in confusing of dialects and languages.
Researches carried out has also shown that there is great similarity between language, place, and people using that language in communication. In such situations, the names of people and places contribute immensely to the language of choice in communication. In addition, some communities in a given society may be sharing some synonyms hence resulting in inter-grouping communities. Such inter-grouped communities make up a dialect, known as lingua franca. Lingua franca unites a diversity of individuals who do not have a common origin. Success is coming up with Lingua Franca has been associated with the effort inputted in schools, media, administration centers, and literacy gained. All these organizations use one language in passing information resulting in the development of lingua franca.
Despite the effort input in order to do away with autonomy, linguistic diversity exists. This was as a result of individuals living in different geographical areas, occurrence of diseases such as malaria that curtailed movement and socialization of people, and colonial administration that enclosed people in their areas. However, some colonial administrations contributed immensely to the cropping of lingua franca. For instance, the missionary led to the coming up of Kate and Yabem languages that were used by the people in communication. In working under colonial administration, the slaves managed to come up with common language with which they communicated easily.
Language and dialect in Europe
In Europe, there existed isolation due to shared intelligibility, many individuals had great variation in their mode of socialization. People in Europe rarely contacted each other due to the existence of variation in attitudes to each other. Despite all these, some tribes’ grammar was similar but their vocabulary varied significantly. On the other hand, Danish and Norwegian languages had common vocabulary but their pronunciation differed greatly. The differences in their languages may have been due to political issues. To solve the difference that existed in their languages, some languages such as British English and American English were standardized, they had common pronunciation but with slight variability in writing. Law into existence also enforced some languages, for example, the government of Greece enforced its citizens into using Greek as a national language.
Difference between language and dialect in English
America and Australia believe in autonomy. Both America and Australia consider their language as ancient languages from which other languages originated. For instance, the Americans believe that the Britons must have borrowed some of their vocabularies from American English leading to British English being considered as a dialect. However, a dialect is evident in Jamaican language; individuals from top posts tend to use English as a language whereas those at the bottom use Jamaican Creole in communicating. However, the emerging of a diversity of varieties helped unite individuals at the top with those at the bottom in Jamaica.
Accent versus dialect
The majority of people from rural areas do have some accent while pronouncing English words. Unlike accents, dialects vary from each other in terms of pronunciation, use of grammar, and vocabulary.
Register and style
According to linguists, a register plays a role in finding out the essence of the use of language in a given field; a register is a language of profession, whereas, the style depends on the relationship of individuals involved in communication, their social class, and topic of discussion.