sociolingvistik

Sociolingvistik, often called sociolinguistics in English, is the study of the relationship between language and society. It seeks to understand how language varies and changes across social groups and situations, and how speakers use linguistic resources to express identity, social distance, solidarity, and power. The field analyzes variation in pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, and discourse, and links these patterns to factors such as region, social class, ethnicity, gender, age, occupation, education, and urban versus rural context. It also considers language contact, multilingualism, code-switching, language shift, and language policy.

A central concern is distinguishing language variation that is systematic and meaningful from casual idiolectal differences. Variationist sociolinguistik uses empirical methods to test how social factors condition linguistic form, often through large-scale interviews, phonetic analysis, and statistical modeling. Ethnographic and interactional approaches complement this by focusing on talk-in-interaction, discourse, and identity construction in real settings.

Key concepts include sociolinguistic variables, style-shifting, prestige and stigma, audience design, and language ideologies. The field spans subareas such as urban sociolinguistik, dialectology, sociolinguistik of gender and sexuality, language and education, and the sociolinguistik of multilingualism and language planning. Applications include informing language teaching, informing policy on multilingual education, and contributing to understanding social inequality and communication in public life. The discipline emerged prominently in the mid-20th century with William Labov and colleagues, who demonstrated systematic links between social factors and linguistic variation. Today, sociolingvistik encompasses theoretical, descriptive, and applied work across many languages and communities worldwide.