LING20010 Language, Society and Culture

How LING20010 is assessed

The four graded weights total 100% and match on the 2026 handbook page and the subject's assessment summary. The two hurdle rows carry no marks but must be met to pass: tutorial attendance of at least 80%, and submission of every assessment task. Completion of the in-class test was also announced as a hurdle requirement. Confirm attendance records and submission settings on the subject Canvas page.

Current LING20010 dates

Dates are as published in the Semester 2 2026 assessment summary on the subject LMS. Confirm exact deadlines and submission settings in the live LMS.

What LING20010 covers

The chapters follow the lecture sequence: the variationist toolkit first, then the social factors that shape variation, then grammatical variation, change, contact, landscapes and the fieldwork methods behind the major project.

It asks how social and cultural factors shape the details of the way people speak, and how language in turn represents and enables social life: the categories we sort people into, the relationships we build and the communities we belong to. No linguistics background is assumed.

The subject is taught on campus, with two lectures a week and a tutorial in each of Weeks 2 to 11, and its core textbook is Meyerhoff’s Introducing Sociolinguistics.

The lectures begin with the toolkit of variationist sociolinguistics: the variable, its variants and the principle of accountability, which says a count only means something against every chance a speaker had to use a form.

They then apply it to style, social class, age, social networks and communities of practice, gender and sexuality, ethnicity and race, and identity, before turning to grammatical variation, language change, language contact and linguistic landscapes. A fieldwork lecture prepares students to collect and analyse their own data.

Assessment has no final examination.

The handbook lists a 1,000-word review of a research article (20%), an in-class written test (25%), a 2,200-word major project due in the examination period (45%) and participation and engagement (10%). To pass, you must also meet two hurdle requirements published on the subject Canvas page: attendance at no fewer than 80% of tutorials, and submission of every piece of assessment as a genuine, complete attempt.

The in-class test, held on 5 October 2026, was 30 multiple-choice questions on topics to the end of Week 9, so the remaining task for most students is the research project, due at 5pm on Monday 2 November 2026.

What makes the subject demanding is not memorising study names.

The test study guide says students do not need the details of particular studies but do need the general phenomena in each area and the methods researchers use. The project then asks you to apply those methods yourself: define a variable, justify its variable context, sample speakers, count accountably and interpret the result.

Worked example · free

Counting youse against every chance to use it

Key terms

Sociolinguistic variable

A sociolinguistic variable is an abstract linguistic function, written in round brackets such as (ing), that speakers can realise in more than one way.

Variant

A variant is one concrete form that realises a variable, such as the alveolar or velar ending of (ing).

Principle of accountability

The principle of accountability requires counting every occasion on which a form could have occurred, not only the occasions on which it did.

Variable context

The variable context, or envelope of variation, is the set of places where speakers genuinely choose between competing variants.

Covert prestige

Covert prestige is the local value attached to forms the wider community looks down on, such as toughness or loyalty.

Audience design

Audience design is Bell's account of style, in which speakers shift their speech according to who is listening and how far those listeners are ratified.

Apparent time

Apparent time is a method that infers change by comparing speakers of different ages recorded in one community at one time.

Age grading

Age grading is a pattern in which a variant belongs to a stage of life and fades as speakers grow older, without any change in the community.

Multiplex tie

A multiplex tie links two people through more than one role, such as being both relatives and workmates.

Community of practice

A community of practice is a group of people brought together by mutual engagement in a shared enterprise, with a shared repertoire.

Indexicality

Indexicality is the capacity of a linguistic form to point to social meanings about the speaker or the situation beyond its referential meaning.

Ethnolect

An ethnolect is a variety of a language spoken by members of an ethnic group and used to express identity and solidarity.

Linguistic landscape

A linguistic landscape is the visibility and salience of languages on the public and commercial signs of an area.

LING20010 FAQ

Questions students ask in each LING20010 chapter

Why is free variation the wrong description of most variables?

Older grammatical descriptions treated alternating forms as random, but sociolinguistic research shows the choice is shaped by linguistic and social factors. The effects are probabilistic, so a factor raises or lowers the chance of a variant without fixing it. Chapter 01 · Sociolinguistic Variation, Variables and Variants

What did Labov's sociolinguistic interview contain?

It moved a speaker through tasks needing different attention: reading minimal pairs, reading a word list, reading a passage and talking with the interviewer about life and experiences. That let him compare the same speaker across styles within one session. Chapter 02 · Style, Attention to Speech and Audience Design

How did Labov decide which class a clerk belonged to?

He did not measure the clerks individually. He ranked three stores by prestige, using their address, the newspapers they advertised in and their prices, and treated each store's staff as representing that social level. Chapter 03 · Language and Social Class

Why can apparent time underestimate the rate of change?

If individuals keep changing in the same direction as the community during their lives, older speakers no longer sound like they did when young. The age gap then shrinks, so apparent time can understate how fast the change really moved. Chapter 04 · Age, Apparent Time and Generational Change

How is a community of practice different from a social network?

A network describes ties between individuals. A community of practice is a group that comes together around a shared enterprise, with mutual engagement and a shared repertoire, so it adds what people do together to who they know. Chapter 05 · Social Networks and Communities of Practice

Is the gender paradox a real contradiction?

Meyerhoff argues it is only a true paradox if the same women who lead non-standard change are also the ones using more standard forms. Grouping speakers into a binary can create the appearance of contradiction from two different sets of women. Chapter 06 · Language, Gender and Sexuality

What makes ethnicity a constructed category?

It is not biological. It is defined in contrast with other groups, shaped by both self-ascription and others' ascription, and expressed through language alongside descent, values and outward signs such as food and dress, so it shifts with situation and perspective. Chapter 07 · Language, Ethnicity and Race

What is the difference between a focused and a diffuse system?

When people first accommodate to one another, their linguistic behaviour is variable, or diffuse. Over time, patterns with particular people and contexts become regular and predictable, or focused, as English in Australia did between 1830 and today. Chapter 08 · Language, Identity and Social Meaning

Why can't you just count every verb with -s?

Many verbs offer no choice: modals and most past tense forms never take -s, third person singular subjects always do, and others never do. Including them would mix choice with obligation and hide the real rate in the contexts where Kelly decided. Chapter 09 · Grammatical Variation and the Variable Context

What is the evidence that going to became a future marker?

It now combines with subjects that cannot travel anywhere, such as a building that is going to collapse, and with events that involve no journey at all, such as weather that is going to change. Those uses make no sense as travel, so the construction must encode futurity. Chapter 10 · Language Change

What is the difference between a pidgin and a creole?

Traditionally, a pidgin has reduced structure and limited domains, and a creole develops when a pidgin stabilises, expands its functions and becomes children's first language. Scholars such as Mufwene now argue that creoles arose more gradually and in different settings. Chapter 11 · Language Contact, Pidgins and Creoles

Why do linguistic landscapes matter to sociolinguists?

Blommaert argues that signs lead to practices and practices lead to people. Studying which languages appear, who produced them and for whom reveals language policy, attitudes, vitality and the status of communities in an area. Chapter 12 · Linguistic Landscapes

What makes a good variable for the project?

It must be frequent enough in your data, or suited to a survey, and you must be able to code it reliably by ear. The project advice warns that many diphthong variables are gradient and need acoustic analysis, so they suit an honours thesis better. Chapter 13 · Sociolinguistic Fieldwork and Research Design

How to prepare for the assessments

Revise in the order the subject builds. Start with the variationist toolkit, because every later topic reuses it: be able to write any variable in round brackets, list its variants and explain why a raw count misleads. For each social factor, from style and class to networks, gender, ethnicity and identity, learn three things: the phenomenon, the method researchers used to study it, and one study that illustrates it.

The subject's own test guide stressed phenomena and methods over study details. For the major project, work backwards from the write-up: draft the methods section first, with the variable, variants, variable context, speakers and consent, because a clear methods section makes the results and discussion easier to write.

Calculate every rate from raw numbers you can show, keep your recordings and consent statements, and read your discussion against the literature that produced your hypothesis. Finish with a reread that checks the question in the introduction is the one your conclusion answers.

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