Domains of Sociolinguistics

Domain is an area of human activity in which one particular speech variety or a combination of several varities is regularly used.A domain can be considered as a groupe f related social situations. A useful way of classifying social situations is to analyze them into three defining characteristics: Place, role-relationship and topic. Together these make up a set of typical domains. One common domain is 'home'. Domains are named usually for a place or an activity in it. Home then is the place. The role relationships associated with home include family members and visitors. There are a suitable set of topics such as activities of the family, news about family members , the meal, the household. A particular variety nof language is appropriate to the domain. In a multilingual community, different languages may well be considered appropriate for different domains role relationships might involve different languages choice. For instance, husband and wife might use one language to each other but father and children might use another.