社会语言学练习

Revision Exercises for Sociolinguistics

I. Decide whether each of the following statements is True or False:

1. Sociolinguistics is the sub-discipline of linguistics that studies social contexts。

2. Language as a means of social communication is a homogeneous system with a homogeneous group of speakers。

3. Language use varies from one speech community to another, from one regional group to another, from one social group to another, and even from one individual to another.

4. The goal of sociolinguistics is to explore the nature of language variation and language use among a variety of speech communities and in different social situations.

5. The linguistic markers that characterize individual social groups may serve as social markers of group membership.

6. From the sociolinguistic perspective, the term “speech variety ” can not be used to refer to standard language, vernacular language, dialect or pidgin。

speech varieties are known as regional dialects。

8. The most distinguishable linguistic feature of a regional dialect is its grammar and uses of vocabulary。

barriers are the only source of regional variation of language。

10. A person’s social backgrounds do not exert a shaping influence on his choice of linguistic features。

speakers of the same language or dialect use their language or dialect in the same way。

12. Every speaker of a language is, in a stricter sense, a speaker of a distinct idiolect.

13. The standard language is a better language than nonstandard languages。

14. A lingua franca can only be used within a particular country for communication among groups of people with different linguistic backgrounds。

are linguistically inferior to standard languages。

16. A pidgin usually reflects the influence of the higher, or dominant, language in its lexicon and that of the lower language in their phonology and occasionally syntax. major difference between a pidgin and a Creole is that the former usually has its native speaker s while the latter doesn’t。

and diglossia mean the same thing。

19. The kind of name or term speakers use to call or refer to someone may indicate something of their social relationship to or personal feelings about that individual. use of euphemisms has the effect of removing derogatory overtones and the disassociative effect as such is usually long-lasting。

II. Fill in each of the blanks below with one word which begins with the letter given:

21. The social group isolated for any given study is called the speech

c________.

22. Speech v_________ refers to any distinguishable form of speech used by a

speaker or group of speakers.

23. From the sociolinguistic perspective, a speech variety is no more than a

d__________ variety of a language.

24. Language standardization is also called language p_______.

25. Social variation gives rise to s_________ which are subdivisible into smaller

speech categories that reflect their socioeconomic, educational, occupational background, etc.

26. S_______ variation in a person’s speech or writing usually rang es on a

continuum from casual or colloquial to formal or polite according to the type of communicative situation.

27. A regional dialect may gain status and become standardized as the national

or o________ language of a country.

28. The standard language is a s_________, socially prestigious dialect of

language.

29. Language varieties other than the standard are called nonstandard, or

v_______ languages.