Sociolinguistic concepts through popular culture, Part 3: Bernie Sanders and factors that drive language variation
Part three of my examples linking sociolinguistics to popular culture kinda follows up on Part 1 which showed (via drag queens) how no two speakers are identical . (Part 2 skipped over to communities of practice in Mean Girls ). I have to confess, this episode is less about my own creativity and more about finding a pretty perfect video on YouTube that did the job of linking sociolinguistics to the real world for me. Worth sharing all the same... Key concept : Variability in language (which exists everywhere) is caused by geographic and social factors. Concept in more detail: The subfield of sociolinguistics makes no bones about the fact that language varies everywhere, all the time. No two individuals speak exactly the same way and no individual speaks the same way all the time either. Many sociolinguists are concerned with not just describing this ubiquitous variability but figuring out the causes of variation. For a long time, where someone is from (i.e. geography) was in...