SOC 207 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Hispanic And Latino Americans, Sociological Perspectives
Document Summary
Language is related to social inequalities in at least two major ways: language as a tool to create power imbalance, language as standard to attribute social identities to groups of people. How social structure works to keep the society performing it functions. Most useful perspective here when studying lang & society (class will spend more time on conflict perspective, as we are always in a power perspective) How social roles and norms are learned. How society is constructed through interactions between individuals and groups of individual. Language is a set of symbols whose meanings are shared by its users. Language changes constantly and meanings shift with those changes. Language is a product of a society but it also has the power to change society! Language is dependent on the society and social contexts it is spoken in. People speak, and interpret language in it social, political and historical context.
