Computational Sociolinguistics: A Survey

Language is a social phenomenon and variation is inherent to its social nature. Recently, there has been a surge of interest within the computational linguistics (CL) community in the social dimension of language. In this article we present a survey of the emerging field of "Computational Sociolinguistics" that reflects this increased interest. We aim to provide a comprehensive overview of CL research on sociolinguistic themes, featuring topics such as the relation between language and social identity, language use in social interaction and multilingual communication. Moreover, we demonstrate the potential for synergy between the research communities involved, by showing how the large-scale data-driven methods that are widely used in CL can complement existing sociolinguistic studies, and how sociolinguistics can inform and challenge the methods and assumptions employed in CL studies. We hope to convey the possible benefits of a closer collaboration between the two communities and conclude with a discussion of open challenges.Comment: To appear in Computational Linguistics. Accepted for publication: 18th February, 201

Developing Cross-cultural Understanding through Sociolinguistic Dissemination: A Practice in Multicultural Education

The use of language cannot be separated from the culture of its speakers. Most experts agree that language is the cultural reflection of social community. Therefore, the language learning must involve the learning of related culture with the language being learnt. This paper describes my personal experience in teaching Sociolinguistics II for the students of the English Language and Literature Study Program, Yogyakarta State University through sociolinguistic dissemination to develop their cross-cultural understanding. One of the main issues in the teaching of sociolinguistics is to see how cultural aspects are reflected in the use of language. Realizing the importance of this course toward the understanding of the relationship between language and culture, English Language and Literature Study Program, Yogyakarta State University provides its students with this course in two semesters, sociolinguistics I and II. Unlike the teaching of sociolinguistics I which is more theoretical, sociolinguistics II is more practical. The students are expected to have an overview and experience in conducting a mini research that will be beneficial for them in writing thesis. In my experiences in teaching this subject, the students were assigned to conduct mini research on the issue of cross-cultural understanding. In this case, they were proposed to observe multicultural films from different points of view; namely language and society, bilingualism, language variation, choosing code, language and sex, and politeness and solidarity. In the end, they had to disseminate their observation result. The teaching of this course prioritized the process approach. The students were given a chance to consult their observation, present the research report, and revise it. In fact, the implementation of sociolinguistic dissemination not only shows the students on the significance of cross-cultural understanding in the process of communication but also gives them the experience of doing mini research, group work, writing a paper, consultation, and reporting the result.. Key words: developing, cross cultural understanding, sociolinguistic disseminatio

Sublanguages and Registers -- A Note On Terminology

The term sublanguage from mathematical linguistics confuses interaction researchers and leads them to believe that implementing natural language interfaces is easier than it is. The term register from sociolinguistics is proposed instead

Linguistics Landscape: a Cross Culture Perspective

This paper was to aim in discussing the linguistic landscape. It was the visibility and salience of languages on public and commercial signs in a given territory or region (Landry and Bourhis 1997). The linguistic landscape has been described as being somewhere at the junction of sociolinguistics, sociology, social psychology, geography, and media studies. It is a concept used in sociolinguistics as scholars study how languages are visually used in multilingual societies, from large metropolitan centers to Amazonia. For example, some public signs in Jerusalem are in Hebrew, English, and Arabic (Spolsky and Cooper 1991, Ben-Rafael et al., 2006). Studies of the linguistic landscape have been published from research done around the world. The field of study is relatively recent; the linguistic landscape paradigm has evolved rapidly and while it has some key names associated with it, it currently has no clear orthodoxy or theoretical core

The speech community

The speech community (SpCom), a core concept in empirical linguistics, is at the intersection of many principal problems in sociolinguistic theory and method. This paper traces its history of development and divergence, surveys general problems with contemporary notions, and discusses links to key issues in investigating language variation and change. It neither offers a new and correct definition nor rejects the concept (both are seen as misguided efforts), nor does it exhaustively survey the applications in the field (an impossibly large task)