Such an interesting discipline, as sociolinguistics, began to develop rapidly recently. It is in contact with other branches of philology. For example, linguistics considers society and language in the framework of several subordinate disciplines: psycholinguistics and ethnolinguistics.
Sociolinguistics focuses on the correlations between human speech and society.
What can be and within what aspects are these
relationship? Language and society are inextricably linked. We often talk about speech and society as if they are interdependent, but in reality it is an attitude of influence. Society, obviously, can exist without language, as evidenced, for example, by populations of ants, bees, monkeys. However, the reverse phenomenon is not observed. Language and society are conditional on each other: it is obvious that the former cannot exist without the latter. Moreover, there are various theories about the origin of speech and linguistic diversity, many of which have not stood the test of time or have not found scientific evidence. These are religious theory or interjection theory. Other important aspects in studying the problems of "language and society" are the social stratification of speech, language policy, bilingualism, the functioning of multilingual communities, and language modifications.
Take, for example, functional speech styles. The choice of a certain way of expressing your thoughts and feelings is determined by the social status and communication situation. When addressing officials with a request to an institution, we are obliged to use an official business style in which all constructions are as objective and depersonalized as possible, in which emotionally colored vocabulary or colloquial expressions are not allowed. If we try to contact the boss in the same style in which we write, say, SMS messages to a girlfriend, or at least just “to you, ” it is unlikely that our career will further develop under his leadership.
If we write a statement, petition, certificate, or even a summary in verse, then at best, they will laugh at us and reject the document and will not consider it, because "it is not accepted to write like that." Thus, the situation of communication determines the choice of certain language means. In addition, language and society have certain correlations both in terms of professional characteristics, ethnic and territorial. If sociolects (for example, jargon of prisoners or argo programmers) consider primarily the vocabulary of a certain social or professional group of people, then dialectology studies speech from the point of view of territorial restrictions.
In the Russian language there are northern, southern dialects, Uralic dialects. Other languages also have certain dialects, sometimes significantly different from the "literary language." Ethnolinguistics considers language and society from the point of view of national diversity. It is this area of linguistics that deals with the problems of "globalization" and related issues. For example, the functioning of "pidgin languages" or Creole dialects that arise when large ethnic groups learn the language of another group in a "simplified" and distorted form.
The role of language in society, which is distinguished by national heterogeneity, also belongs to the tasks of ethnolinguistics. In an era of more and more intensive mixing of ethnic groups, more and more active creation of interethnic marriages and families, the problems of bilingualism come to the fore. European countries are trying at the state level to support linguistic diversity, including the promotion of rare and endangered languages. For example, in Poland you can study and pass the Kashubian language as an exam for a certificate of maturity, books and periodicals are published on it. In Germany they support the study of the Upper Luzhitsky language, in Spain - the Catalan language.
Ideally, the language policy of states and their associations (for example, the European Union) should be based on objective data from linguists dealing with the problems of “language and society”, just then it can be unbiased and democratic. History knows many examples of oppression of national identity, cultural identification. This is the forced planting of the Russian language, for example, in Poland during the tsarist era, and German during the Second World War. Any prohibition on the use of native speech causes a strong protest among the population, which ultimately leads to social upheaval, uprisings, and the overthrow of power. At the same time, the free development of national culture, inextricably linked with the language, contributes to the strengthening of democracy and stabilization.
