Language in Society / Society in LanguageGary Torres

Language has been considered as a tool which has helped us to make sense of

the world, that is to say, we impose a certain structure on the social world by classifying

things, and that helps us to build an understandable pattern of it. I have discerned that,

in any society, language can be a strong element, which significantly influences groups

of people and make them get a specific status within society.

Every country has a large amount of language varieties or dialects, which are

generally related to place and social class groups. Even Chile, which has those kind of

varieties that sometimes are quite difficult to notice and which depend on the zone

where the language is spoken.

Covering these concepts has been a good way of comprehending that people are

the main element which denotes what a language is, or what a dialect is. Without

people, language boundaries wouldn’t exist, and so would happen with cultural

diversity. Apart from dialect, this text goes through the issues of accent, which I think

stands out from other concepts in a way that it is a big variety that anyone can find in

any language. Besides, this concept cleared my thoughts about the way the accent

predominates over a specific part of a country and also the importance of it for the

people all over the world.

One of the relevant things that we can distinguish is that it make us get the

importance of age, gender, social class, educational background, social context and

relationship between speakers as elements which can describe and give information

about people and ourselves. A good proof of this idea is when a student talks to the

teacher, he contextualize his language in order to be understood and use a formal style

of talking, but he doesn’t when he is talking to friends, even when he is talking to

parents he uses another kind of style, register of language and obviously the proper

rules of grammar for those specific types of circumstances(Communicative

Competence).I strongly believe this kind of situations are common and happen to all of

us everytime.

The text gives us important material for our preparation as English teachers, and

I see it as an extension of what we have been talking about in last classes. I personally

think this kind of assignment is going to result in an important background knowledge

and a step forward on what we are going to be talking in future classes.