Sociolinguistic Analysis Of Language Transfer

Language is a system of use whose rules and norms are an integral part of culture. Differences in cultures will no doubt bring about diverse characteristics in languages. As the emissary and medium of the culture where it originates, language serves the society all along. Thus, learning a language is more like developing communicative competence. What one acquires is knowledge that governs appropriate use of language in concrete situations of everyday life. However, many language learners approach a -foreign language as an exclusively linguistic phenomenon, rather than a cultural and social one. The lack of attention to the intrinsic and cultural part of the language then easily gives rise to misunderstandings and failures in the acquisition of the foreign language. In the course of learning and using a language, it is unavoidable and essential to comprehend the cultural information behind it. Likewise it is unsound and mistaken to separate language from the society and culture.In addition to the challenges of the target language, the learners' mother tongue serves as a constant source of influences too. The role of language transfer in second language acquisition has long been a very controversial topic. Some scholars have indeed argued for the importance of transfer; some have gone so far as to consider it the paramount factor of second language acquisition. Yet other scholars have been very skeptical about the importance of transfer. Among linguists and language teachers today, there is still no consensus about the nature or the significance of cross-linguistic influences.This paper will introduce two of the most notable psychological approaches in dealing with Language transfer and set out some attemptable work to shed light on the cognitive approach with multiple examples, both well-known and unknown, from a Sociolinguistic perspective. The analyses of these examples will provide us with a ready insight into how cultures differ from one another and how cultural diversity contributes to language and ideology uniqueness. The efforts are expected to bring due attention to the cultural and societal implications of learning and teaching a foreign language that the acquisition of a foreign language is not just a matter of learning its grammar and piling up the vocabulary. No two things are ever fully and substantially alike. Problems do arise if learners fail to take into account the sociolinguistic information of the target language.