Summary of structure
In sociolinguistic studies
Leila Messaoudi (2003)
Publication of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities University Ibn
Toufail (Morocco) By
Ahmed Hariri
In a society such as ours (Morocco), where the debate on the status and fate of languages in full swing, attracting interest at all levels: political, scientific, official , popular science of languages are current, and among them the sociolinguistic certainly a lot to say.
Sociolinguistics is the discipline par excellence, which in tandem with other course-all it takes to provide answers to many questions that arise in society and, to the great Malay language she saw (with the Like most countries in the world for that matter).
Making study of the relationship between language and society of his horse battalion, the contribution of sociolinguistics can only be positive. But its object of study, which is sensitive and problematic (it affects human beings in this his most human: language) does not facilitate the task for researchers concerned with objectivity and scientific character; hence the need for sociolinguistics to identify its object of study, to clarify its theoretical foundations, its working methods and action limits, and especially to adapt and constantly readjust his concepts to reality linguistic and social processing.
Few studies have addressed the Moroccan sociolinguistic field in a spirit pedagogical and methodological, as did Leila Messaoudi in his book "sociolinguistic studies. Linking theory and field work, the volume consists of four parts, an introduction and a conclusion. In his introduction
interesting, Leila Messaoudi attempts to identify the object of sociolinguistics, by comparing it with other disciplines: linguistics and sociology of language.
Positioned over two great veterans of sociolinguistics, she announced: "we can not reduce sociolinguistics to the language as advocated by Labov and opposition between the two is far from obsolete as suggested by L. Calvet J, "for her, the language is defined as the study of linguistic facts (intrasystem), sociolinguistics as the study of linguistic practices (correlated to parameters sociological), and finally the sociology of language as the study of representations vis-à-vis linguistic practices.
It traces the history of sociolinguistics drawing its resources in modern linguistics that began with the CLG (Course in General Linguistics) of Firdinande de Saussure which held that the language is "language unless the floor", that is to say, to identify the subject of language "as a collective system used by a body of speakers" (p.5), it should omit all that was within the individual, the variable, and instead seek what is homogeneous and steady. A lesson that will follow the major linguistic theories of the twentieth century: the generative and functionalism, the first with Chomsky in search of a universal grammar, the second Swift whose "goal was to extract the body system language while the variants were sidelined. For
L. Messaoudi, it took the work of W. Labov and investigations on the island of Martha's Vineyard, the New York stores, but especially his work on the speech of young blacks in Harlem, to lay the foundations of linguistics variationist sociolinguistics and give its full dimension of science student language in its social context, that is to say from the linguistic reality, leading to the theory of that reality, by freeing the systematization. At this level, critics note that the author is a sociolinguistic she describes as "sociolinguistics of Staff," and that-for one reason or another-is detached from its object studies and ventures into political ideological drift "which is a disservice not only to his supporters but also to language varieties and their speakers" (p.32), and the approach reducible to the theory of "linguistic market "advocated by Bourdieu, and applied by A. Boukous Moroccan sociolinguistic landscape in his book "society, language and culture in Morocco, is strongly criticized by L. Messaoudi" it seems unlikely that the conceptual paradigm, built by Bourdieu around the "linguistic market" had been intended that freeze the real language and reduce it to the only relationship of dominant language / language dominated. The same laws of the market can not be of a stagnant and they are by definition changing the image of the quotations purse. "(P.31), it calls for a reinterpretation of the concept of dynamically. The actual language Morocco can not be grasped in its complexity and plurality, freezing it in a confrontational relationship exclusively between its components, is mortgaging its wealth and its future.
Passing through the pages of key concepts developed by various researchers in sociolinguistics (language community, change, hyper-correction, linguistic insecurity, language market, field ...), the author introduces the foundations of his thinking sociolinguistics, based primarily on the importance of the speaker in any research. Indeed, language exists only through its speakers, yet they never speak the same way, and to understand the language of a scientific and rational, we must go to the speaker and see how he speaks in different situations he meets in his daily life and how he manages to manage its interactions with other speakers by using different strategies to avoid conflict with them, and achieve its objectives.
When the author speaks of going to the speaker to analyze its language practices, is to say how the concept of land is predominant in his thinking. In fact, the field is the only guarantee of objectivity and rationality, it is him and him alone responsible for determining whether a situation is conflictual or harmonious, obviously taking into account the "ethical framework" of the involvement of the researcher who must be constantly in view "(p.18).
The speaker is the core of sociolinguistic research, and the "theory of the speaker" to which the author calls its legitimacy lies in the fact that a language is the result of interactions between different speakers, which "Develop a series of pipes according to language specific purposes and" intelligible "for them. These lines are differentiated and socio they obey rationality" (p.33/34).
The assumption of rationality, a concept steeped in Max Weber (1913), and already mentioned in a previous work of L. Messaoudi (1998), based on the following observations:
1 - the linguistic behavior of speakers is considered "rational" he chose his language according to the communication situation and depending on the purpose intended.
2 - Two types of strategies are deployed by speakers:
· on strategies fitness when he mastered a code and they are in compliance with the standards of his job.
· on compensatory strategies when the users control one or several codes and they choose, depending on the situation of communication to use this code or another, or a mixture of both
The assumption of rationality is still under construction, makes the speaker-hitherto neglected by mainstream language-its value as a key player in the act of communication, and it is from its interactions with other speakers that we can detect the nature of their relationship, conflicting or not. Another concept drawn from sociology Weberian and adapted to the fields of sociolinguistics: the "ideal type" for Messaoudi "speakers can be as many series as standard units, which could build the profile language to" ideal type "(or" ideal types ") his approach is to detect "macro discriminating" from the observation of specific accomplishments language speakers, to account for the systematic features that can differentiate socially as speaker of another, or another such as community .
