Foundations in sociolinguistics: an ethnographic approach.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hymes, Dell H.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Sociolinguistics.

Physical Description:

x, 245 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, [1974]

Summary:

Sociolinguistics is conceived here as a fundamental critical perspective on the whole of the study of language. The scientific problems within present linguistics, the book contends, combine with social problems of the society in which linguists participate to press linguistics to discover ethnographic foundations. The work of providing such foundations largely remains to be done.

Working out the implications of these three principles requires a new mode of description of linguistic features and relationships, a mode which can treat the verbal means of a community as a part of its organization of communicative means.

In Part One, Dr. Hymes indicates the place of linguistic inquiry as part of an inquiry into communicable conduct in general. Part Two demonstrates the mutual relation between linguistics and other disciplines that contribute to the common larger field -- sociology, social anthropology, education, folklore, and poetics are discussed. In Part Three the author argues that problems within linguistic inquiry suggest social foundations of linguistics deeper than presently assumed, such that social meaning and stylistic function must be taken into account systematically, and social life seen as a source of the organization of linguistic means.

Contents:

Toward Ethnographies of Communication 1

1. Toward ethnographies of communication 3

2. Studying the interaction of language and social life 29

The Status of Linguistics as a Science 67

3. Why linguistics needs the sociologist 69

4. Social anthropology, sociolinguistics, and the ethnography of speaking 83

5. Bilingual education: linguistic vs. sociolinguistic bases 119

6. The contribution of folklore to sociolinguistic research 125

7. The contribution of poetics to sociolinguistic research 135

Linguistics as Sociolinguistics 143

8. Linguistic theory and functions in speech 145

9. Syntactic arguments and social roles: Quantifiers, Keys, and Reciprocal vs. Reflexive Relationships 179

10. The scope of sociolinguistics 193.

Notes:

Bibliography: pages 211-232.

ISBN:

0812276752

OCLC:

1002947