The Social Meaning of Language and Dialect

Authors

  • Ernita Daulay

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.30829/vis.v12i12.169

Abstract

The purpose of human life is to serve, and to show compassion and the will to help others. Language is one of the most important features that separate humanbeings from the animal world. Language is directly connected withthought. Whereas dialect refers to a variation of a language that is characteristic of the users of that language, register refers to a variation of a language that is determined by use a situation or context. Dialects are different ways of saying the same thing; they reflect social structure (e.g., class, gender, and origin). Registers are ways of saying different things; they reflect social processes. Dialects are associated with the linguistic and cultural characteristics of the students who belong to the same broad linguistic group; registers are associated with the characteristics of the language (especially academic language) used in tests. Language as a source of measurement error addresses the fact that bilingual individuals do not typically replicate their capacities across languages

Downloads

Published

2017-11-10

Issue

Vol. 12 No. 12 (2017): VISION

Section

Articles

License

Authors who publish with VISION agree to the following terms:

  1. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY-SA 4.0) that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.

  2. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgment of its initial publication in this journal.

  3. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work.