**** Hymes -- the scope of sociolinguistics

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Hymes sets out three types of sociolinguistic research. The first form, which he spends the least time describing, he calls "the social as well as the linguistic." This catch- phrase covers roughly the same ground as what is known as "applied linguistics." Specifically, he is concerned with linguistic theory applied to social situations in a way that does not challenge existing theory. Language planning, the Army method of teaching foreign languages, and applications to the teaching of reading are among the activities he includes in this category. The assumption that influence flows unidirectionally from theory to application is questionable, especially in pidgin and creole studies, which are rooted in critiques "from the field."

Hymes's second form of sociolinguistics is what he labels "socially realistic linguistics." This type of research "extends and challenges existing linguistics with data from the speech community." Labov is described as the leading figure, and the key concept is "variation." The agenda of theoretical linguistics is not challenged. This type of sociolinguistics is still concerned with arriving at formulations of phonological,

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morphological, semantic and syntactical structures and rules, or what Hymes categorizes as the "referential" (as opposed to social) aspects of language.

The third form, which Hymes justifiably champions, is "socially constituted linguistics," concerned with "social as well as referential meaning and with language as part of communicative conduct and social action." He explicitly privileges this sociolinguistics, reversing what he asserts to be the structuralist tendencies of the twentieth century toward deriving explanations of socially-situated language use from theory alone. The key for Hymes is that an adequate linguistic description must always be in terms of the speech community.

-- Socially motivated rather than referential linguistics

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• - Labov on variation .......................... <[LINK]>
• - Labov's challenge to linguistic theory ....... <[LINK]>

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Dell Hymes, "The Scope of Sociolinguistics," in _Foundations in

Sociolinguistics_ , Philadelphia: University of PA press, 1977; 195-200.