Sociolinguistic
In what way BBI 3204 Introduction to Sociolinguistics has help me to understand society and its relationship with language The question that you pose to me was what has this course made me aware of society and its relationship with language. I feel that this question is a more of general, application and personal tone. Therefore I am going to write about my experience and my understanding in relation to this course. First of all, I understand that sociolinguistic is the study about language in connection to society. How do I define language? I see language as a tool. It serves a range of functions. Language is also like a vehicle or a medium in human interaction. Society means a community of people living in a particular country or region and having shared customs, laws, organizations and etc. Then what is the relationship between society and language? In my opinion, when people use language to communicate, the language itself has become part of society. There are many possibilities about the relationship between language and society. The possibilities are society influences language, or language influences society, or society and language influence each other or no influence
However the language now is slowly facing 'death' as the very young generation are not expose to the language in terms of usage. Instead, I speak fluent Bahasa Melayu and English. For example, the word 'cup' and 'toilet' in standard Malay we call "cawan" and "tandas" but in Peranakan we call "changkir" and "chi-wan". But I do not speak a single word of Chinese nor can I even write a single Chinese character. I myself had not been using the language Peranakan for quite sometime as I do not have anyone to talk to in Peranakan. For example, the typical Chinese, unable to roll their tongues will pronounce "lari" as "lali". At times I get stared at by others when they see me conversed in malay with another chinese in public. When I ask them why they can't speak Chinese, they say that their parents never taught them although I knew my grandparents do speak in one of the chinese dialect. The pupils took the initiative to speak English with me as I refuse to speak to them in chinese. Initially, I had a tough time adjusting to their culture and comprehending them. Moreover, ways of speaking, choices of words and rules for conversing are highly determined by certain social requirements. I am experiencing language loss here so do most of the younger generation of my culture. Sometimes I find it difficult to use the correct terms or words. It really shows of how much knowledge they have and their thinking.
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