Sociolinguistics

Dialectology definition history areas of Study

Dialectology

Dialectology is called the analysis of dialects . A dialect, meanwhile, is a linguistic variety that does not reach the category of language. Dialectology is the study of the geographic and sociolinguistic variation of the language.  Due to the ambiguity and inconsistency of the terms language and dialect, in dialectology, the term linguistic variety is frequently used to designate the form of human verbal communication with reasonably homogeneous features used by a linguistic community. Dialectology would be the study of these varieties, mainly geolects, and the systematic way in which they differ from each other. Dialectology definition

It is important to mention that dialect and language (or language ), however, are somewhat fuzzy concepts of limits. A language is a verbal communication system that usually has writing and that is typical of a human group. Generally, a dialect is considered to arise from some kind of variation of a language . Dialectology, in this framework, studies the varieties of linguistic modalities that are detected in a community, comparing them. Thanks to the research work of linguistic geography and sociolinguistics, since the 19th and 20th centuries respectively, today we know that all variations can be classified into four large groups: social, geographical, stylistic, and historical.

Dialectology also focuses on the study of certain phonetic features, lexical forms, or turns that predominate in each group and that attract its members to include them in their way of speaking. For this to take place it is necessary that they feel identified with those who use them, so it does not matter that they are exposed to the traits of another group. Adolescents, for example, tend to resist the ways of speaking of their elders and, instead, tend to copy those of their peers. Dialectology definition

In a broad sense, it can be said that a dialect is a subdivision of a language. Dialectology is in charge of considering these structures, detecting commonalities and differences.

Descriptive dialectology examines modern dialects and individual dialectal differences based on the material of field recordings of live speech (made by ear in phonetic transcription or on a tape recorder). All descriptions of dialects of modern times (Russian dialects – from the middle of the 19th century to the present day) belong to the field of descriptive dialectology. Some descriptions are more or less complete grammars of dialects, others are devoted to individual subsystems of dialects (phonetics, morphology); many older works are collections of local linguistic features. Most of the works of this kind in the field of dialectology of Romance languages ​​and descriptions of East Slavic dialects of the second half of the 20th century. executed in a purely synchronous plan;

History of dialectology

Dialectic as a science arose in connection with the emergence of a serious interest in living folk speech. In Germany at the end of the 17th century. the collection of materials of dialects of the German language began (local words were recorded, dictionaries of dialectisms were compiled ). In the second half of the 19th century. along with the emergence of young grammatism , the scientific study of territorial dialects developed. They began to be viewed as a product of the natural development of the language, as a natural variation of the system in different territories of the language spread. Dialectology definition

Uses and applications of dialectology

It is used in specialized contexts of the linguistic branches that deal with analyzing the phonetic variations of a language in a region for a certain period of time or for several periods in a comparative way.

Areas of Study of dialectology

The language corresponds to a communication system based on grammar rules and different conventions whose main function is the exchange of ideas between human communities is based on both graphic and phonetic and is the objective of studying disciplines such as linguistics.

On the other hand, language corresponds to the innate ability of any individual to communicate, it can be structured by different linguistic cues that can range from the appearance to the complexity of a language.

Dialectology corresponds to a branch of linguistics that is responsible for, as the name implies, studying the human dialect. Consequently, it seeks to describe those phonetic and morphological variations that a language undergoes in a given region or time.

Therefore, dialectology bases its studies on finding and investigating the factors that give rise to these changes, among the main ones are:

1-Social factors 

Corresponds to those alterations that are due to the division and stratification of social classes, systematically safeguarding language features of the social group to which the individual will be part.

2-Historical factors

Languages ​​are prone to change, linguistic elements constantly arise and are incorporated into a specific language, or on the contrary, they become obsolete, being properly discarded in modern language.

3-Aesthetic factors 

Characteristic of an informal mode of communication, there are aesthetic factors that directly influence the expression of certain communities, this being one of the most notable factors in modern times.

4-Geographical factors

Corresponds to the group of most common alterations in dialectology, it is based on all those changes that are only notable in a certain locality or region, so that its origin is related to the social and geographical interactions of certain communities, receiving also the name of geolect. Dialectology definition

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