This unit introduces students to sociolinguistic factors which influence the planning, implementation, and evaluation of a language development program.
Students are enabled to identify and describe the language attitudes of a given language community and the vitality of a language, and to work with members of ethnolinguistic communities in strategic planning and implementation of language development activities, including Bible translation and literacy.
Topics:
• What is Sociolinguistics?
• Language and worldview
• Language variation: defining languages, dialects and varieties; standardisation
• Language and identity and social interaction: register and style, social position and politeness, role of gender
• Cultural differences and values in communication
• Multilingual speech communities: multilingualism and diglossia, language attitudes and language use, code switching and code choice
• Function and status of languages, pidgins and creoles
• Language viability: EGIDS (Expanded Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale); factors in language maintenance, spread, shift, and death
• Language planning and policies: reversing language shift, SUM (sustainable use model), and participatory methods.
• Overview of sociolinguistic survey purposes, tools, and procedures
• Introduction to participatory methods
At each point, emphasis is given to the application of the principles to the type of cross-cultural ministry situations in which graduates will typically be working.