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Parameter setting within a socially realistic linguistics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 July 2012

John Wilson  and
Alison Henry
John Wilson
Affiliation:
School of Behavioural and Communication Sciences, University of Ulster at Jordanstown, Newtonabbey, County Antrim BT37 OQB, Northern Ireland, U.K.j.wilson@ulst.ac.uk
Alison Henry
Affiliation:
School of Behavioural and Communication Sciences, University of Ulster at Jordanstown, Newtonabbey, County Antrim BT37 OQB, Northern Ireland, U.K.j.wilson@ulst.ac.uk
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Abstract

This article considers the theoretical and practical relationship between core linguistics and sociolinguistics in relation to the emergence of Principles and Parameters Theory. Parameters were introduced into core Chomskyan linguistics in an effort to account for variation between languages. However, as we argue – and as has long been known in sociolinguistics – languages (French, Italian etc.) are social rather than abstract products. In this sense, core linguistics may need to pay more attention than it has in the past to aspects of actual variation in order to understand the limits and range of parameters. Thus we argue that dialects of languages in themselves have parameters, and as such may be defined within parametric limits. Here we believe there is something of interest to sociolinguists, in terms both of structural definitions and of overall historical development. In general, then, while variation has always been central to sociolinguistics, it is now central, in one sense, to core linguistics; and here we have the opportunity to explore ways in which sociolinguistics and core linguistics may relate to each other in their interest in variation. (Parameters; variation; dialect; Belfast; Ireland)

Type
Research Article
Information
Language in Society , Volume 27 , Issue 1 , March 1998 , pp. 1 - 21
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1998

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