The relationship between Pragmatics and Sociolinguistics

Sociolinguistics is defined as the study of language in relation to society while pragmatics is concerned with the study of language use in relation to the social context.

Sociolinguistics cuts across many levels of linguistics and due to the many areas of common interests that the two disciplines share, it has been very difficult to draw a clear boundary between them. Some scholars believe that pragmatics is in fact a sub-field of sociolinguistics.

In studying language in its social context, two important functions of language come to the fore: (i) language or speech is used as a means of communication (ii) it is used as a means of identifying social groups. These two functions are performed on definite social contexts, beliefs, cultures and world views. These variables in turn influence linguistic choices and what pragmatic implications these choices may have.

Studies in pragmatics over the years have revealed interesting insights in the interfaces of sociolinguistics and pragmatics, showing how speech acts are performed in conversations and how speakers in socio-cultural contexts adopt pragmatic principles to encode meaning to achieve certain results on the mind of their hearers. Sociolinguistic variables such as age, social class, status, education etc. often influence what kind of speech act or indirect speech acts that are performed.

These complementary roles clearly reveal that sociolinguistics has contributed immensely to certain areas of pragmatics especially the study of speech acts and social deixis. However, pragmatics has much to contribute to sociolinguistics. In trying to understand the social significance of patterns of language use, Levinson (1983) suggests that it is important to understand the underlying structural properties and processes that constrain verbal interaction.