CHAPTER ONE
GENERAL INTRODUCTION
1.1 INTRODUCTION                                                                                       
Language is both an individual and a social possession. It is said to serve interactive and integrative functions. We would expect, therefore, that certain individuals would behave linguistically like other individuals; they might be said to speak the same language or the same dialect or the same variety. Language is what the members of a particular society speak. When two or more people communicate with each other in speech, we can call the system of communication a code. In most cases, that code will be something we may also want to call “a language”.
Every culture codifies its values in its own language. Through systems of myths, anecdotes, stories, proverbs and others, values are defined and good-bad differentiations are specified. More formal systems are also evolved and are represented by ethical codes and religious institutions. Communication, including communication through language, can be classified into different modes. That aspect of communication in which comment on behaviour, that is to say, which modifies or makes some definitions of other behaviours, is called “meta-communication” and the aggregate of its forms “meta-systems”. Meta-systems are the carriers of values and as an individual in any culture develops, he learns sets of meta-systems. In this way, the culture passes along its values systems and continuity in the values of the culture is thereby maintained. (Alger, 1970, p. 51).
Sociolinguistics is concerned with investigating the relationship between language and the society with the goal being a better understanding of the structure of language and of how language functions in communication. The equivalent goal in the sociology of language is trying to discover how social structures can be better understood through the study of language.
As observed generally, the use of proverbs, other folklores and songs are dwindling amongst cultures in our day-to-day interaction and even literary works as observed in the 90s. Research works on sociolinguistics will help bring back the cultural values of story- telling, parables, riddles, folklore and so on.