Sociolect And the Cognitive Development of Youth

Abstract

The undertaken study is a theoretical investigation into the concept of sociolect and its influence on the cognitive development of language users. Current study reviews the wide tiers of varied linguistic features and to mark an established relationship among them. As Heller (2007) says that the practices of language are socially and politically enroot. This paper revealed the occurrence of changes in Urdu language usage in our youth by the influence of sociolect and resultantly unveil those factors which become the cause of certain changes. This study underlain the impressive behavior of our youth towards extreme practice of English lexis in their social media language/sociolect. Although English is a lingua franca all over the world but such an excessive use of this language created a schema in our youngster’s mind that more they use it, the more they will be called modern and educated. The present study has revealed the existence of linguistic variation at certain level in Urdu language. Qualitative research paradigm has been used which is multi-method in focus, involving an interpretive, naturalistic approach to its subject matter (Denzin & Lincoln, 2005). It is used to examine the change happening in our Pakistani English. Research has been conducted through collecting different status updates randomly and by collecting some comments of the active users of social networks by taking prior consent to those certain social media users.