Sociolinguistic

A. adj. Of or pertaining to the study of language in its social context.

1949 E. A. NIDA Morphology (ed. 2) vi. 152 The reactions of language-users to the sociolinguistic environment. 1952 Word VIII. III. 261 Therefore we may expect to come across socio-linguistic situations which we may hesitate to class in one or another of our four categories. 1959 Amer. Speech XXXIV. 118 Enumerating these sounds without giving clear indications of all the pertinent sociolinguistic facts can be dangerous. 1964 L. KAISER in D. Abercombie et al. Daniel Jones 102 Ladefoged has discerned three kinds of information: linguistic, sociolinguistic, and personal. 1971 J. SPENCER Eng. Lang. W. Afr. 7 Before we can understand the processes of stabilisation and change in the English of West Africa, we need a great deal more sociolinguistic evidence. 1978 Verbatim Feb. 10/1 Dillard organizes his work around ‘sociolinguistic domains’ and stresses the importance of discourse over sentence as the primary carrier of meaning.

B. n. pl. (usu. const. as sing.). The study of language in relation to social factors. Also attrib.

1939 T. C. HODSON in Man in India XIX. 94 (title) Socio-linguistics in India. 1951 E. HAUGEN in Language XXVII. 213 If semantics should be an undesirable term, there is always ‘ethno-linguistics’ or perhaps ‘socio~linguistics’. 1951 Directory of American Scholars 1061/2 Currie, Prof. Haver C(ecil)... History of American thought; socio-linguistics. 1952 H. C. CURRIE in Southern Speech Jrnl. XVIII. I. 28 This field is here designated socio-linguistics. Ibid. 36 The present projection of socio~linguistics proposes a fresh start toward researches into the social significance of language in all respects. 1964 9th Internat. Congress Linguistics 1962 1129 Those of us who work in the interdisciplinary area of ‘socio-linguistics’ may feel that we are here at this Congress on sufferance. 1967 Language XLIII. 586, I find that sociolinguistics connotes a branch of linguistics or, at best, a neutralization of the fruitful distinction between sociological linguistics and sociology of language. 1979 London Rev. Bks. 25 Oct. 4/3 (Advt.), Shows how social psychological theories and methods can increase the explanatory power of sociolinguistics. 1980 English World-Wide I. 179 Sociolinguistics intends to produce a linguistic description as its end result, although it uses social facts and methods to arrive at this end.

Hence socio-linguist, a student of or specialist in sociolinguistics; sociolinguistically adv.

1960 Amer. Anthropologist LXVI. 86 Sociolinguists study verbal behavior in terms of the relations between the setting, the participants, the topic, the functions of the interaction, the form, and the values held by the participants about each of these. 1968 W. A. STEWART in J. A. Fishman Readings in Sociol. of Lang. 539 [Pidgins] and [Creoles] usually function sociolinguistically as special kinds of dialects of their lexical-source languages. 1972 J. L. DILLARD Black English v. 193 Men's dialects and languages as well as women's dialects and languages are well known to the sociolinguist. 1973 Archivum Linguisticum IV. 70 The following would seem most likely to be sociolinguistically of significance. 1979 Amer. Speech 1976 LI. 118 Perhaps,..through the combined efforts of dialectologists, sociolinguists, and other observers of language, a more accurate picture will emerge.

1. a. The system of spoken or written communication used by a particular country, people, community, etc., typically consisting of words used within a regular grammatical and syntactic structure. Also fig.
Freq. preceded by an adjective designating a particular language, as ‘English language’, ‘French language’, etc., and widely used as the final element of compounds, which may be variously classified, as: click, tone, whistle language; creolized, pidgin, substrate, superstrate, trade language; daughter, parent, sister language; first, home, mother, second language; dead, foreign, group, minority, modern, national, world language; source, target language; prefix, suffix language; artificial, auxiliary, ideal, interlanguage, natural language; etc.: see at the first element.

c1300 St. Thomas Becket (Laud) 55 in C. Horstmann Early S.-Eng. Legendary (1887) 108 orugodes grace heo was i-lad with men at onder-stoden hire langage. c1325 (c1300) Chron. Robert of Gloucester (Calig. A. 11) l. 1569 In e langage of rome, rane a frogge is. c1330 Short Metrical Chron. (Auch.) 1309 in Publ. Mod. Lang. Assoc. Amer. (1931) 46 133 e king seyd wiglad chere. Welcome be ou maiden here. & sche answerd in hir language. Trauaile sommes par mere sauuage. a1400 (a1325) Cursor Mundi (Gött.) l. 6384 is mete at ai war fedd wid an ai called it in air langag [a1400 Vesp. langage] man [a1400 Vesp. manna]. c1429 Mirour Mans Saluacioune (1986) l. 3672 Wymmen Spak there diuerse langegages. c1449 R. PECOCK Repressor 66 Thei..han vsid the hool Bible..in her modris langage. c1475 (?c1400) Apol. Lollard Doctr. (1842) 32 In a langwag vnknowun ilk man and womman mai rede. a1522 G. DOUGLAS in tr. Virgil Æneid (1957) I. Prol. 382 Latyn That knawyn is maste perfite langage fyne. 1589 G. PUTTENHAM Arte Eng. Poesie III. iv. 120 After a speach is fully fashioned to the common vnderstanding, & accepted by consent of a whole countrey & nation, it is called a language. 1598 SHAKESPEARE Loves Labours Lost V. i. 37 They haue been at a great feast of Languages, and stolne the scraps. 1610 T. BELL Catholique Triumph xvi. 342 The Scriptures were translated into all maner of Languages; and that they were not onely vnderstood of Doctors and Maisters of the Church, but euen of the Lay people and common Artificers also. 1641 J. ETHERINGTON Def. Iohn Etherington 8 In the times of Papistry, it was not held lawfull for the Scriptures to be in the English Language, nor for the lay people to reade the same. 1699 R. BENTLEY Diss. Epist. Phalaris (new ed.) 392 Every living Language..is in perpetual motion and alteration. 1720 J. GAY Prol. Dione in Poems II. 402 Love, devoid of art, Spoke the consenting language of the heart. 1748 Defoe's Tour Great Brit. (ed. 4) IV. 277 It is called in the Irish Language, I-colm-kil; some call it Iona. 1812 W. C. BRYANT Thanatopsis 3 To him who in the love of Nature holds Communion with her visible forms, she speaks A various language. 1823 T. DE QUINCEY in London Mag. Mar. 325/1 On this Babel of an earth..there are said to be about three thousand languages and jargons. 1875 W. STUBBS Constit. Hist. II. 414 The use of the English language in the Courts of law was ordered in 1362. 1910 Encycl. Brit. V. 598/1 The Macassar language, which belongs to the Malayo-Javanese group, is spoken in many parts of the Southern peninsula. 1976 Audubon Sept. 9/2 It is strange that few of the modern Romance languages have used the Greek or Latin as roots for their principal words meaning shark. 1992 G. HANCOCK Sign & Seal I. i. 3 Speaking in Tigrigna, the local language, he then sought clarification through my interpreter about my character and my motives. 2002 A. MARCANTONIO Uralic Lang. Family iii. 56 The Ugric group in turn split further into Hungarian on the one hand and the Ob-Ugric languages..on the other.

b. The vocal sounds by which mammals and birds communicate; (in extended use) any other signals used by animals to communicate.
ape, horse language, etc.: see at the first element.

c1350 (a1333) WILLIAM OF SHOREHAM Poems (1902) 120 e oxe and asse..o at hy seen hare creature..makede ioye in hare manere, And eke in hare langage. c1405 (c1395) CHAUCER Squire's Tale (Hengwrt) l. 141 Ther nys no fowel ^t fleeth vnder the heuene That she ne shal wel vnderstonde his steuene..And answere hym in his langage ageyn. ?c1450 tr. Bk. Knight of La Tour Landry 1 Y reioysed me of the melodie..of the wilde briddes; thei sang there in her langages. a1616 SHAKESPEARE All's Well that ends Well (1623) IV. i. 20 Choughs language, gabble enough, and good enough. 1639 W. LOWER Phaenix in her Flames IV. sig. I3^v, Sir, you have learn'd a pretty art indeed, To understand the languages of birds, And tell their meanings. 1667 MILTON Paradise Lost VIII. 373 Is not the Earth With various living creatures, and the Aire Replenisht,..know'st thou not Thir language and thir wayes. 1708 T. TAYLOR tr. J. Basnage Hist. Jews III. vii. 175/2 Solomon..understood the Language of Birds. 1763 J. SHEBBEARE Select Lett. Eng. Nation xxxviii. 238 An Arabian barb, and an English stallion, speak the same language;..the same is true in the language of dogs, and other quadrupeds. 1797 T. BEWICK Hist. Brit. Birds I. Introd. p. xxv, The notes, or, as it may with more propriety be called, the language, of birds. 1815 J. G. SPURZHEIM Physiognom. Syst. viii. 450 Natural language is common to animals and man; artificial language is a prerogative of mankind. 1832 W. IRVING Alhambra II. 23 Instructed..in the language of birds, by a Jewish Rabbin. 1869 Anthropol. Rev. 25 169 The extensive language of animals consists of simple interjections. 1877 C. W. SHIELDS Final Philos. I. iii. 147 Speech was discovered long before there were any men, in the pairing-call of birds and gesture-language of monkeys. 1921 F. S. MATHEWS Field Bk. Wild Birds & their Music (rev. ed.) 47 There is no music in the Crow's caw..but he is a bird with a distinct language. 1922 H. LOFTING Story Dr. Dolittle 137 Jip kept springing into the air and barking and calling Ben Ali bad names in dog-language. 1975 R. COLLINS Confl. Sociol. iii. 97 All that animal language lacks in comparison to human rituals, is a symbolic significance or naming quality. 1997 S. B. MORROW Names of Things 92 The Greek speeches in the play imitate the sounds that the birds make, their ‘language’, and contained in the play is the idea that the language of birds is the earliest religion, augury. 2000 Watermark Catal. (RNLI) Christmas 18/2 No matter how carefully you tilt his head back to open the [cookie] jar, he'll burst into dolphin language (a sort of eeh! eeh! sound to the untutored ear).

c. A means of communicating other than by the use of words, as gesture, facial expression, etc.; non-verbal communication.
body, code, finger, picture, sign language, etc.: see at the first element.

1605 BP. J. HALL Medit. & Vowes II. §51, I need not be so mopish, as not to beleeue rather the language of the hand, then of the tongue. 1609 SHAKESPEARE Troilus & Cressida IV. vi. 56 Ther's language in her eye, her cheeke her lip. 1646 R. CRASHAW Steps to Temple 32 If at least shee not denyes, The sad language of our eyes, Wee are contented. 1697 J. COLLIER Ess. Moral Subj. II. 120 As the language of the Face is universal so 'tis very comprehensive. 1711 R. STEELE Spectator No. 66 2 She is utterly a Foreigner to the Language of Looks and Glances. 1749 J. WESLEY Direct. conc. Pronunc. & Gesture 9 That this silent Language of your Face and Hands may move the Affections of those that see and hear you, it must be well adjusted to the Subject, as well as to the Passion which you desire either to express or excite. 1837 Penny Cycl. VIII. 282/2 Dactylology must not be confounded with the natural language of the deaf and dumb, which is purely a language of mimic signs. 1876 J. B. MOZLEY Univ. Serm. vi. 134 All action is..besides being action, language. 1989 M. KUMIN Nurture I. 21 A wordless yet perfect language of touch and tremor.

    d. Computing. Any of numerous systems of precisely defined symbols and rules devised for writing programs or representing instructions and data that can be processed and executed by a computer.
  Earliest in machine language n. at MACHINE n. Compounds 2.
  assembly, command, mark-up, programming, query language, etc.: see at the first element.

1947 Amer. Math. Monthly Jan. 59 The present methods of coding or translating from mathematical symbols to machine language are given in some detail. 1959 E. M. GRABBE et al. Handbk. Automation, Computation, & Control II. ii. 186 The purpose of these activities has been to..set up a class of languages that will be easily translatable by machine from one to another, and also easily recognizable to the ordinary human user... Such languages form the input to a class of automatic computer programs called translators, which perform a translation..into a second or target language. The latter may be either (1) an assembly language such as SOAP, SAP, or MAGIC.., or (2) a straight machine language, in pure decimal, binary (or in some cases such as the Univac I and II), alphanumeric. 1961 H. D. LEEDS & G. M. WEINBERG Computer Programming Fund. ii. 46 The best way of writing down operations is to write them in alphabetical format. A format used for writing down these alphabetical instructions is called the programming language or paper language, to distinguish it from the machine language..acceptable to the machine circuitry. 1977 M. A. BODEN Artific. Intelligence & Nat. Man i. 12 The higher languages used in artificial intelligence include the general purpose ‘programming languages’ (such as LISP, SAIL, FORTRAN, PLANNER, CONNIVER QA4, POP-2, and POPLER), and special purpose languages embodying specialized knowledge relevant only to certain domains. 1985 D. R. HOFSTADTER Metamagical Themas x. 205 The software could exist in a number of different ‘instantiations’that is, realizations in different computer languages. 2005 N. GERSHENFELD FAB 40 The answer was the development of a new kind of programming language for doing what became known as computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) with numerically controlled (NC) machines.

2. a. The form of words in which something is communicated; manner or style of expression.
Freq. in bad language: coarse or offensive expressions; strong language: forceful or offensive language, esp. used as an expression of anger or strong feeling. Cf. also plain language n. at PLAIN adj.¹ Special uses 3 and slanguage n. at SLANGISM n. Derivatives.

c1350 Apocalypse St. John: A Version (Harl. 874) 171 e loseniours..hane taken vnder honde to speken e deuels langage forto disceyuen goddes childer & bynymen god his eritage. a1400 (c1303) R. MANNYNG Handlyng Synne (Harl.) l. 10082 Y rede e here how e propertes are shewed, ogh e langage be but lewed. c1450 (c1380) CHAUCER House of Fame (Fairf. 16) (1878) l. 861 With-outen any subtilite Of speche..For harde langage and hard matere ys encombrouse for to here Attones. c1489 CAXTON tr. Blanchardin & Eglantine i. 14 For it is sayde in comyn langage, that the good byrde affeyteth hirself. c1500 (?a1475) Assembly of Gods (1896) 368 In eloquence of langage he passyd all the pak. a1533 LD. BERNERS tr. Bk. Duke Huon of Burdeux (1882-7) lxix. 236 Come to y^e poynt, and vse no more such langage nor suche serymonyes. a1586 SIR P. SIDNEY Arcadia (1590) II. xxvii. sig. Ff4, In Tragedies..he had learned, besides a slidingnesse of language, acquaintance with many passions. 1603 P. HOLLAND tr. Plutarch Morals 124 When the Greekes abused him with verie bad language, his familiar friends about him said they deserved to be sharply chastised and punished, for so miscalling and reviling him. 1611 Bible (A.V.) Ecclus. vi. 5 Sweet language will multiply friends. a1616 SHAKESPEARE Henry VI, Pt. 2 (1623) IV. viii. 45 Be not to rough in termes, For he is fierce, and cannot brooke hard Language. 1643 SIR T. BROWNE Relig. Medici I. §5 By his sentence I stand excommunicated: Heretick is the best language he affords me. 1654 T. GATAKER Disc. Apol. 3, I list not to contend with him in scurrilitie and bad language. 1694 W. PENN Brief Acct. Rise Quakers ii. 44 They also used the Plain Language of Thou and Thee. 1714 J. COLLIER Eccl. Hist. Great Brit. II. III. 166/1 John Bale..remonstrates against the Barbarity in pretty strong language. 1749 LD. CHESTERFIELD Let. 27 Sept. (1932) (modernized text) IV. 1407 Vulgarism in language is the..distinguishing characteristic of bad company and a bad education. 1770 Junius Lett. 187 They suggest to him a language full of severity and reproach. 1798 G. COLMAN Heir at Law I. i. 12, I never give my Lady no bad language. 1809-10 S. T. COLERIDGE Friend (1865) 135 These pretended constitutionalists recurred to the language of insult. 1849 MACAULAY Hist. Eng. II. vi. 118 He lived and died, in the significant language of one of his countrymen, a bad Christian, but a good Protestant. c1863 T. TAYLOR in M. R. Booth Eng. Plays of 19th Cent. (1969) II. 109 Come, cheeky! Don't you use bad language. 1875 B. JOWETT tr. Plato Dialogues (ed. 2) V. 348 The language used to a servant ought always to be that of a command. a1910 ‘M. TWAIN’ Autobiogr. (1924) II. 88 She made a guarded remark which censured strong language. 1934 R. MACAULAY Milton vi. 100 Milton's familiarity with the tradition [of scurrility] may account for much of his strong language, even when reviling in English. 1989 L. CLARKE Chymical Wedding 316 There have been raised voices thereabouts and the parson driven to bad language by the woman's mobbin' him so. 2002 Independent on Sunday 5 May (LifeEtc. section) 14/3 The stern granite tenets of Presbyterianism..did not stand easily alongside..the crudeness of her language.

b. The vocabulary or phraseology of a particular sphere, discipline, profession, social group, etc.; jargon.
See also hawking, hunting, law, water language, etc., at the first element.

1502 tr. Ordynarye of Crysten Men Prol. sig. a.ii^v, Y^e swete & fayre langage of theyr phylosophy. 1598 SHAKESPEARE Henry IV, Pt. 1 II. v. 19, I can drinke with any Tinker in his owne language. a1616 SHAKESPEARE Cymbeline (1623) III. iii. 74 This is not Hunters Language. 1651 T. HOBBES Leviathan III. xxxiv. 207 The words Body, and Spirit, which in the language of the Schools are termed Substances, Corporeall and Incorporeall. 1710 J. HARRIS Lexicon Technicum II, Weed, in the Miners Language is the Degeneracy of a Load or Vein of fine Metal, into an useless Marchasite. 1747 J. SPENCE Polymetis VIII. xv. 243 Those attributes of the Sword, Victory, and Globe, say very plainly (in the language of the statuaries) that [etc.]. 1786 J. H. TOOKE Epea Pteroenta ix. 325 The cypher..only serves (if I may use the language of Grammarians) to connote and consignify. 1841 J. R. YOUNG Math Diss. i. 10 Thus can be expressed in the language of algebra, not only distance but position. 1891 Speaker 2 May 532/1 In it metaphysics have again condescended to speak the language of polite letters. 1903 J. W. BRODIE-INNES Compar. Princ. Laws Eng. & Scotl. 186 Adopting the theory and the language of Roman Law, the convention and the reconvention are considered to be correlative and may be tried together. 1938 Encycl. Brit. Bk. of Yr. 185/1 These young felons are what prison language describes as ‘repeaters’. 1959 K. R. ATKINS Liquid Helium vii. 246 Each particle..is transformed into a ‘quasi-particle’, which, in the language of field theory, is a ‘bare’ particle surrounded by a cloud of virtual excitations. 1977 C. MILLER & K. SWIFT Words & Women v. 71 Nowhere are the semantic roadblocks to sexual equality more apparentor significantthan in the language of the dominant organized religions. 2001 R. W. CAHN Coming of Materials Sci. viii. 324 All these variegated rubbers‘elastomers’ in polymer languagewere chemically distinct from natural rubber, polyisoprene.

(Information extracted from the OED)