Sociolinguistic : Sociolinguistic and Related Disciplines

Linguists and Sociologist are not only researchers involved in studies of language in society. Scholars from a variety of other disciplines have an interest too, e.g, anthropologist, psychologists, educators and planners. We will see, for example, that a number of anthropologist have done work which we can  describes as sociolinguistic in nature , for example in the exploration of kinship systems. The same may be said of certain psychologists, particularly those concerned with the possible effect of linguistic structure on social and psychological behavior. Many educators too must  make decision about mattes involving language such as the teaching of standard languages and the skill of the literacy. As we will discover in the latter case, some sociolinguistic have been quite active in trying to influence educators in their attitudes toward certain kinds of linguistic behavior or varieties of language spoken by specific groups of children, such as the English spoken by certain black inhabitants of many cities in the northern United States, a variety sometime referred to as Black English. Language planners obviously need a considerable amount linguistic knowledge in making sound decision about, for example, which language or language variety to encourage in certain circumstance, or in any attempts to standardize a particular language or variety,  or to change existing relationships between languages or varieties. We will observe that there are many interconnections between sociolinguistic and other disciplines and also between concern which are sometimes labeled theoretical and others which are said to be practical. At the very least sociolinguistic is a socially relevant variety linguistic, but it is probably much more.