Name : Basma Mohamed Ali

Subject : Sociolinguistics
Professor : Dr. Nahwet Al-Arousy
Assignment : Article review

Singh,R.(1996) . Towards a critical socio linguistics. In E.F.K Koerner

( Series ed.), Current Issues In linguistics Theory : Vol 125.The Status of
Sociological Models and Categories in Explaining Language Variation (pp.99-114)

These papers by Rajendra Singh form a critical view of the

traditional ways in doing sociolinguistics. It focuses on the debates,
critiques of the conceptual and structural foundations regarding
these conventional ways along with presenting insights about the
should - be " knowledgeable view in doing which are concerned
with ' correlationism ' in relation to hidden culturalist, scientific
presuppositions" to give a new birth to a more responsible, critical
reflexive soiolinguistics." ( see Preface )

The article chosen is " The Status of Sociological Models and

Categories in Explaining Language Variation " originally written
by Suzanne Romaine in 1984; that is a different perspective in
which this issue is examined at an abstract level by sociologists
and socio-linguists.
The chapter starts with throwing the light on its scope;
investigating the 'correlations' between social factors or categories
( social class, age , sex, style, ethnicity, network,etc.) and linguistic
variations. Romaine clarifies that socio-lingusits have often shaped
these correlations as ' explanatory '. However, since the 1980s, the
status of these explanations begun to be evaluated and debated
by linguists such as Romaine herself 1981b,1982a and Dittmar
1983.
She began her investigation journey by looking into the social
explanations of the agents or the mechanisms that cause linguistic
variations and whether these social explanations are counted as
'casual entities' or 'mechanisms'.

The author makes distinction between two abstract levels of

social explanations of linguistic variations (p.100) :

1- Pattern of social life, institutions, supra-individual ,social and linguistic

structure;
2- Individual agents.

She refers to the first level as " collectivism or social holism "
and to the second as " individualism ". Romaine defines
collectivism as " a supra-structure, which is non-reducible to
individual speakers.." (p.101), she names Saussure, Meillet and
Labov as advocates of collectivism noting that Lass (1980:47 )
calls it ' speaker-free ' linguistics.
Consequently, the writer moves to discuss the concept of
collectivism with respect to language system theory that addresses
how language is autonomous in terms of the existence of individual
speaker and how the system is used. Speaking of the most two
regarded attitudes : Chomsky's and labov's. It has turned that both
linguists assume the existence of individual speakers, yet
Chomsky thinks of language as
explicitly autonomous primarily with respect to the use of
language while for labov, it is implicitly autonomous with respect to
speakers..Chomsky does not recognize a supra individual or
external existence of language as being of relevance to linguistic
theory… an individual has an internalized grammar, it doesnot
follow that there exists a shared knowledge.
( p.101)
On the Other hand, labov centralizes speaker's linguistic
variables in an utterance or tokens as a sample to be analyzed to
prove their " transcendent existence and locus in the society or
group grammars apart from the individuals" (p.101 ) .
Nevertheless, Romaine confirms the presence of a problem when
trying to ' reconcile ' these two abstract levels (i.e. collectivism
versus individualism ).

Talking about social explanations for linguistic variations or

change among group structure, She lists briefly four case studies :
1- labov ( 1963)
2- Gal (1978 )
3- Milory (1978 )
4- Russell (1982 )

1- Labov stresses on what he called " the social motivation of

the variable", via examining ' centralization of ( aw ) and ( ay )
in the speech of a group of local fishermen on Martha's
Vineyard; whose younger members, having positives
attitudes, showed more of this centralization in their speech.

2- Gal concludes that " the social network in which a person

interacts is one factor which predicts the language to be
used " ( p.103 ). She reached this conclusion after she had
carried out a study on German-Hungarian bilingualism in
Oberwart ; where for example the more peasant friends the
person has in his immediate network,the more likely he uses
Hungarian. Gal adds age is an important factor since young
women tend to use more Hungarian than anybody else in the
community.
3- Milory ( 1980 ) directed her study to explore the effect of
using some linguistic features as a result of the pressure of
network or group structure to follow the group language
norms and values. She figured out that when she had
conducted her study on three working class communities in
Belfast. Important to mention that the findings of this study
have important implications for language change.
4- Rusell has done her study on two varities ' standard
outsider Swahili and ' local Mombasan ', spoken along the
east coast of Africa. She discovered positive correlations
between insiders' shift to use standard variety and between
their intuition to make a change in their society. For outsiders,
using standard variety reflects their positive stance and
acceptance to other community's speech norms.

To sum up, the implications of these four studies can be

summarized in the following points :
a- The four studies managed to find strong positive relations
between group membership ( e.g. men vs. women, insider vs.
outsider ) , type of group structure (e.g. Milroy's factors of
density and multiplexity of network).
b- All of them are evident of ' socio linguistic universal of
language use which refers to same kind of processes on
speakers from different cultures to produce conformity and
change to their linguistic repertoires.
c- The four studies are indicators of when certain codes and
variables in language no longer function as identity marker and
accordingly language starts to change.

One of the criticisms forwarded to these findings is by lass

(1980) in which he considers these correlations to be ' non-causal
' and ' 'probabilistic'; cannot be universally applied in all times and
in all communities.
Yet, Romaine defends against lass's claim by acknowledging that
in social sciences in general, " some events have no causes and
that only statistical knowledge of some phenomena is possible,
i.e. it is ultimate and irreducible " (p.105).
Furthermore, she states the problem of irreducibility (applying
the explanation of collective linguistic behavior to individual
speakers) and its relevance with the role of the speaker as a
loctionary agent have been debatable issues posed by positivist
philosophers.
Therefore a question arises : How do action explanations cause
linguistic variations, i.e. " the notion of causation" ?
Scanning some positivists point's of view: Orthodax sees action
explanations as " non-casual " and " non – nomic", Whereas
Winch (1958) interprets causation in terms of rules-governed
behaviours.
Romaine mentions two possible theoretical frameworks for
understanding the mechanism of causality to action explanations.
The first framework is hierarchical and briefly represented in the
following figure (p.110 ):
(1)

Causality

deterministic, decisions, actions

mechanical (i.e. Popper's World 1)

physical objects events/ states

(i.e. Popper's World 2 )

The second framework is more of a continuum with viewing

speakers as objects or things characterized by degrees of agentivity
that feature their power, represented in the following figure :

(2)

Speakers Language Nomicity

agent pragmatics constraints

constraints semantics which
which
speaker syntax language
brings to phonology brings to
language to phonetics speakers
patient -power -power
Romaine adds the comment that she has used lass's (1978 ) and
Vincent 's ( 1978) ideas of the language being thought of as
" a hierarchy of controls increasing in power as they decrease in
lawfulness " (p.11).
However, she outlines the main shortcoming of Vincent's principle
of Speaker Control ( upon which the diagram is based); placing
arrangement of language aspects with the speaker's conscious control,
for example phonetics is at the bottom and semantics at the top while
semantic has more problematic, difficult areas.
At last, the author ends her article by formulating her depiction, on
the one hand, sociology and linguistics should interact in order to truly
offer solutions to the society's problems and on the other hand,
sociolinguists can use the sociology theories to develop what she
terms as " interpretive strategies in order to understand language
variation. Moreover, she concludes that the philosophy of science has
no solution to the problem of explanation so these explanations must
be evaluated " within particular social context or the role it plays in a
particular epistemology" (p.114).