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    • Kansas Journal of Sociology, Volume 09, Number 2 (FALL, 1973)
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    •   KU ScholarWorks
    • Sociology
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    • Kansas Journal of Sociology, Volume 09, Number 2 (FALL, 1973)
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    ON LANGUAGE USE AND SOCIAL STRUCTURE

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    Issue Date
    1973-10-01
    Author
    Luhman, Reid A.
    Publisher
    Department of Sociology, University of Kansas
    Type
    Article
    Rights
    Copyright (c) Social Thought and Research. For rights questions please contact Editor, Department of Sociology, Social Thought and Research, Fraser Hall, 1415 Jayhawk Blvd, Lawrence, KS 66045.
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    Abstract
    The emerging field of sociolinguistics is a response to numerous roadblocks encountered in the more specific area of linguistics. One of the more important of these roadblocks occurred in attempts to provide a linguistic explanation of bilingualism through interpreting languages in contact in terms of an interference perspective. Such a perspective emphasizes structural aspects of languages as explanations of changes in either (or any) language within the contact situation. The language contact situation, however, made extremely evident that explanations of language use must include social factors. In the case of bilingualism, the more general sociolinguistic perspective emphasizes inter-relations between language use and socially constructed situations at the micro level. At the micro level, language forms can be viewed as tools with which social meanings are constructed and communicated, each utterance thereby containing an information aspect (which is obvious) and a more general social aspect. At the macro level, language forms become markers of the relations between and among complex social groups and, in this sense, reflect the more purely sociological concerns of class and stratification. The upshot of this new perspective is that all utterances come to be viewed as tools and containers of social meaning regardless of whether those utterances come from one recognized language or from six recognized languages; people use their sounds to discriminate meaning and will accomplish that discrimination with whatever system they have at hand. Hence, through a sociolinguistic perspective, bilingualism becomes but a special case of this process.
    URI
    http://hdl.handle.net/1808/4777
    DOI
    https://doi.org/10.17161/STR.1808.4777
    Collections
    • Kansas Journal of Sociology, Volume 09, Number 2 (FALL, 1973) [11]
    Citation
    Kansas Journal of Sociology, Volume 9, Number 2 (FALL, 1973), pp. 97-125 http://dx.doi.org/10.17161/STR.1808.4777

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    Contact KU ScholarWorks
    785-864-8983
    KU Libraries
    1425 Jayhawk Blvd
    Lawrence, KS 66045
    785-864-8983

    KU Libraries
    1425 Jayhawk Blvd
    Lawrence, KS 66045
    Image Credits
     

     

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