The Types of Signs: Linguistics - Essay Example

Introduction
There are many sign languages in use in different parts of the world. The sign languages have elements such as movement, handshake, location facial expression, and palm orientation. The third type is manually coded language, which acts as a bridge between oral and sign language. A good example is the coding popularly used by the blind.
Language affects how we think but does not determine our thinking. We express our thoughts through language. The amount of words we know in a language gives ideas to our thinking. We will definitely think of those things that are in our vocabulary. We think using language, but language does not determine our thinking. Our lifestyle, tradition, and habits shape how we think. Our thoughts are independent of the language we use, for example, similar thoughts can be explained using different languages and still mean the same thing.

A speech community is a sociolinguistic expression that defines people with a common interest and speaks or uses the same variety of language and has a specific set of rules for speaking and interpreting that language. People may be live in the same community or village but belong to different speech communities (MOUTON). This lays the foundation for the difference between a speech community and a society. People who form a speech community, usually, have something in common and thus formulate ways that will make it easy for them to communicate and understand each other.

Context can be explained as the situations or conditions that form the basis for a given event or undertaking. Context is vital when it comes to the interpretation of sign language. For communication to be effective, many processes are involved. The only sure way to get the intended meaning of any given communication is by understanding and analyzing the context. Generally, a speaker sends out information with a certain meaning. The receiver is expected to infer the meaning from the current context. Many words in several languages have different meanings.

Sociolinguistic competence is the ability to convey the intended message to those that one is communicating within a manner that they totally understand the message you intended to convey. Sociolinguistic competence ensures that the language does not result in misunderstandings between the participant and speech. Sociolinguistic competence ensures that the speaker is familiar with the cross-culture to know the differences in cultures. Public speakers must be able to speak with ease about any topic in their second language for them to be bilingual speakers (MOUTON). They are required to express language proficiency and mastery of the language.

Isogloss is a boundary or line on a map between regions that differ in a specific linguistic feature. Sociolinguistic research aims at understanding the relationship between language use and social behavior. It aims at protecting the minority speech community in society. It tries to explain how language is widely used to express a social meaning. It is able to explain people’s social behavior when using language, for example, during demonstrations or strikes.

Regional dialect is the variation of a language spoken by a particular language speaker in the region. Features of regional dialect include variation in pronunciation, grammar, and language vocabulary. Context, usually, leads to different interpretations of the language. Pragmatic purpose does not base only on structural and linguistic knowledge. Pragmatic purposes aim at the context of the speech to interpret the meaning thus leading to multiple varieties of a language. It eradicates ambiguity since the meaning is based on the context.

Our attitude towards a language variety or its speakers is based on subjective criteria since it gives the overall picture of language usage and performance. We tend to use our beliefs, opinions,s, and attitudes to gauge the performance of a language variety. The “American Tongue” documentary outlines how language attitude may have a greater impact on communication and relation. In addition to gender and ethnic differences, there is an influence of the foreign language that presents language attitude. A regional variety affects communication (MOUTON).

Standardization is the process of creating uniformity in a given thing or class of objects.