ABSTRACT
Sociolinguistic studies look at social structures and how these are reflected in language use in a speech community. The basic linguistic system of a community is described by the linguist in terms of the formal rules (phonological, syntactic) and the situations in which these rules are used and interpreted. According to Fishman,1 a situation is defined by the cooccurrence of two or more interlocutors related to each other in a particular way, communicating about a particular topic, in a particular setting.
