Sociolinguistics, social factors and dimensions

Sociolinguistics studies the relationship between language and society. It is interested in "variation", that is why people speak different in different situations. It involves different elements. For example, if you speak to an older people or your boss, you use a different intonation, vocabulary and structure than when you speak with friends or family.

Also, emotions can be demostrated or not when talking with different people according to the context. All those situations are developed in Social Factors and Social Dimensions; Social Factors includes the participants (who is speaking and to whom is speaking), setting of social context (where are they speaking), the topic and the function (why are they speaking)

Social Dimensions are divided in a sociial scale (participants relationships), a status scale (subordination), a formality scale (formal or informal) and two functional scales (affective and referential scales).

All of these factors determina the way people speak, according to the context and relationships among people. Communication and language can be different according to the elements. The same message can be delivered in different ways depending of the public, extension, topic, relationships, subordination, among other elements.

Bibliography

Bright W., The Handbook of Sociolinguistics,Ed. Florian Coulmas, 1998.