Disentangling Language Acquisition from Language Variation

Author(s):  
Robert Berdan
Language ◽  
1998 ◽  
Vol 74 (3) ◽  
pp. 663
Author(s):  
Trey Jones ◽  
James E. Alatis ◽  
Carolyn A. Straehle ◽  
Maggie Ronkin ◽  
Brent Gallenberger

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (5) ◽  
pp. 147-153
Author(s):  
Adhip Jain

This paper comprises the sociolinguistic concepts which are hidden in the Aravind Adiga’s novel White Tiger. And it will let us know how Aravind Adiga managed to reach his audience effortlessly. Aravind Adiga is a Man Booker Prize Winner of 2008, for his debut novel ‘White Tiger’. White Tiger is the story of a common man, who manages to attain tremendous success, later starts working as an Entrepreneur. The protagonist, Balram Halwai, narrates this novel, he sends letters to Premier of China, who will soon be visiting India. Moreover, this novel comprises of sociolinguistic elements such as the names are mostly of Indian origin, prestige feature. Aravind Adiga is being chosen as a writer to be tested on sociolinguistic grounds because there is an apt amount of sociolinguistic elements (code switching, high prestige, low prestige, etc.) in his novels. Aravind Adiga reaches the reader's heart, by using appropriate language in the manner his target audience can understand. This paper also verifies the sociolinguistic impact on Aravind Adiga, in the midst of this we realise the importance of sociolinguistic theories. Society and culture play a vital role in our language acquisition, and it shapes our respective roles in society. Ultimately, this can let us know how language variation occurs and impacts the users. Language is like a river, it changes its directions with time, place, communities, etc, and certain meanings avert or change slightly from the original meanings.


1999 ◽  
Vol 62 ◽  
pp. 9-24
Author(s):  
Erica Huls ◽  
Guust Meijers ◽  
Hans van de Velde

This article provides an overview of the Third Sociolinguistics Conference, which was held in Lunteren (The Netherlands) on 8 and 9 March 1999. In particular, attention is focussed on the topics and theories that turned out to play ah important role at this conference. The article begins with a comparison between the contents of the First and Second Sociolinguistics Conferences (1991; 1995) and those of the third conference (1999). The papers presented are classified according to the topics they dealt with. The categories adopted in this overview are those used on earlier occasions by Muysken (1984) to assess developments in sociolinguistic research and by Van Hout, Huls & Verhallen (1992) and Cucchiarini & Huls (1995) in their presentation of the First and Second Sociolinguistics Conferences. Since any classification scheme is likely to be somewhat arbitrary, the same categorisation as in the above-mentioned three papers was used for the sake of comparability. When analysing the content of all the papers presented at the third conference, it appears that four main topics can be distinguished. Two of them are the same as four years ago: 'multilingualism and language contact' and 'pragmatics, interaction and conversation analysis'. Two of them are new: language acquisition and socialisation' and language variation and language change'. The growing interest in the process of language acquisition by members of language minorities in the Netherlands and Flanders, appears to be structural. In 1999, almost half of the contributions are related to this subject. More so than four years ago, the research presented at the conference is embedded in theories or conceptual frameworks. However, they are so diverse that they do not lead to thematic unity. We may perhaps conclude that it is this diversification that gives sociolinguistics its force and vitality


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