Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from September, 2017

Sociolinguistic concepts through popular culture, Part 1: drag queens and how 'no two speakers are identical'

I am currently teaching sociolinguistics. Most lectures, I have found ways to illustrate key points and concepts with short online videos - usually stuff from TV shows, YouTube and other things. It's an effort to co-opt things I already enjoy and am familiar with to make sociolinguistics and lectures fun. After all, "when all is said and done, we study sociolinguistics because it is fun" (Meyerhoff 2011: 4) So, in the name of fun, I'd like to share the videos and corresponding sociolinguistic concepts I've been using in my lectures. Others might enjoy and learn from them too. Here's part one. Key concept : Sociolinguistics is about individuals. No two speakers have the same language. Concept in more detail: Societies consist of individuals, none of whom are exactly the same. We shouldn't forget this when we study sociolinguistics. In Hudson's introductory textbook, he says: "The individual speaker is important in sociolinguistics in much