Sociolinguistics Brief Essay

In the conversation, the teacher is a native English speaker who can also speak Spanish as a second language, and the students are ESL learners whose native language is Spanish. The speakers take different roles in this conversation. Their main roles correspond to the teacher-student relationship and to the classroom setting: the teacher asks questions and suggests the students to complete sentences in English, and the students attempt to answer in complete sentences. At the same time, students partly violate the expected classroom norms and engage in commonsense conversations or use short remarks unrelated to the questions (or partly related to the discussion). While engaging in informal conversations, students tended to use Spanish sentences or short incomplete responses in English. The teacher used more authoritative tone and word choice to remind the students about the main focus of classroom interactions.

The language choice also demonstrates the process of switching between roles. The students identify themselves as Spanish native speakers, and they switched to Spanish while having difficulties formulating the response or engaging in informal conversations. Their informal interactions in English were short and the sentences were incomplete. The students used somewhat longer English sentences while switching to the main (learner) role, but quickly returned to Spanish when it was difficult for them to answer, or when they wanted to contact each other. Switching between languages was distinct, i.e. they did not use a mix of English and Spanish words; instead, they switched between languages. According to Wardhaugh and Fuller (2014), the process of such language switching in the classroom is referred to as flagged code-switching (p.242). The students actively demonstrated that they are part of the same cultural group (native Spanish speakers), and it is notable that the teacher also started incorporating Spanish words. Probably, she attempted to show that she also spoke Spanish. However, she did not switch fully into Spanish, and instead used Spanish word in an English sentence. This did not help to switch the focus of the conversation fully to the classroom environment, but the students reduced their switching to Spanish after that.

References

Wardhaugh, R. & Fuller, J.M. (2014). An Introduction to Sociolinguistics. John Wiley & Sons.

The terms offer and acceptance. (2016, May 17). Retrieved from

[Accessed: March 19, 2024]

"The terms offer and acceptance." freeessays.club, 17 May 2016.

[Accessed: March 19, 2024]

freeessays.club (2016) The terms offer and acceptance [Online].
Available at:

[Accessed: March 19, 2024]

"The terms offer and acceptance." freeessays.club, 17 May 2016

[Accessed: March 19, 2024]

"The terms offer and acceptance." freeessays.club, 17 May 2016

[Accessed: March 19, 2024]

"The terms offer and acceptance." freeessays.club, 17 May 2016

[Accessed: March 19, 2024]

"The terms offer and acceptance." freeessays.club, 17 May 2016

[Accessed: March 19, 2024]
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