Report of language and society#2– 総合職共働き人事コンサルのブログ

This my second report of language and society.
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In this essay, there is definition of “social network” including an explanation of the “density” and “plexity” of social network at first. After that, it will be analyzed that my example which is about my social network in the using concept of sociolinguistics. The transit example is family and club team, which is vicissitude from vulgar Japanese to polite Japanese.
Definitions
There will define some concepts of sociolinguistic which will be used in this essay. At first, there will define the “social network”. In dictionary, “social” means “a party that is organized by a group or club” (Oxford) and “network” means “a complicated system of roads, lines, tubes, nerves, etc. that cross each other and are connected to each other” (Oxford). Drawing upon this definition, the definition of “social network” can be a web which is that each people belong to and make big influence to language style of each people. For example, there are school, family and work network. In social network, we can break down the each social network by using concept of “density” of social network and “plexity” of social network. There are barometers of social network. At first, there is the definition of density. “Density refers to whether members of a person’s network are in touch with each other” (Holmes p194). In other word, density of social network is an index which indicates characteristic of each social network and the criterion is how interlocutor knows each other. For example, if a family tends to know each other very much, the family is can be called dense social network. Secondly, the definition of plexity is described. The definition of plexity is that “Plexity is a measure of the range of different types of transaction people in with individuals” (Holmes p194). In the concept of plexity, there are two types of degree. The first type is uniplex social network which is one where the link with the other person is only one area. The second type is multiplex social network which is that involve interactions with others along several dimensions. This social network makes a big influence to our spoken language compare to uniplex social network. In this essay, there are analyzing the relationship between my social network and spoken language using example of family and club team.
Analyzing
In my life, family is one of social network. I was born in Finabashi City, Chiba Prefecture, Japan and the economic situation of my family is not goodness or rather bad because my parents married when someone was young. And only father graduated from a university and mother finished technical school. Therefore, my family is in low social class. This is first social network which will be used to analyze influence to spoken language. The second network is baseball club team. In the period of elementary and junior high school, I belonged to the local baseball club team. Relationships of this team between upper and lower classmen are so strict and we have to use honorific language when we talk with upper or trainer.
In the period of kindergarten, I did not belong to baseball team so my family was the most involved social network. In the view of density, my families understand each other. In house, we talked about ourselves. Therefore, my family was dense social network. And we went shopping or playing almost weekend on family. In this point, we were multiplex family. Because of this point, my spoken language was made big influenced by family and my spoken languages was vulgar Japanese. As above, my family had low economic power. In Japan, low social status family tends to speak vulgar Japanese. Our family followed this principle and speaks vulgar Japanese. So this situation made me big influence in the points of spoken language in the period of kindergarten because our family was density and multiplex social network. In consequence, I used vulgar Japanese in the period of kindergarten. But my spoken language changed to polite Japanese because my density and multiplex social network was changed to baseball club team. When I was elementary and junior high school student, I belonged to local baseball club team. In my daily life, the occupation time of this club team became large. I went to practice of this team in every week end and I played baseball after school occasionally. In this process, my family became uniplex social network. The reason is that the place where I was with my family changed to only in house not in shopping or playing. And the club team came to be my density and multiplex social network by the process of that I really know teammates and trainers. Especially teammates, I was with teammate in not only club but school to speak about club and play baseball. In this process, my spoken language was made big influence by the club team rather than family. In the result, my spoken language became polite Japanese as the scene of baseball team forced me to speak in polite Japanese.
In conclusion, my dense and multiplex social network is changed from vulgar Japanese to polite Japanese and following this transformation, my spoken language is converted from vulgar Japanese to polite Japanese. According to this example, the social network surrounding our life makes big influence to our spoken language.
Works Cited
Holmes, Janet. An Introduction to Sociolinguistics Third Edition. Edinburgh: Longman, 2008.
Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. Oxford University Press, 2000.