社会语言学社会语言学是语言学中的重要研究领域或之一，它是一门研究语言与社会的关系的学问。
语言社会相互影响。
首先社会对语言的影响，具体指语言的变异、变体和语言使用习惯上的差异。
其次是语言对社会的影响，具体指语言的社会功能。
而社会对语言的影响是社会语言学的研究重点。
语言是一种社会现象，在社会生活中起着极其重要的作用，而社会对语言产生巨大的影响。
人们的阶级出身、社会地位、接受的教育、从事的职业、再加上各自年龄、性别、民族等各方面有很大的不同，所以使用的语言就会有差异，这就形成了语言的变异和变体。
语言的变异和变体反映在语音、语调、语法和语汇的差别上，也反映道语言使用习惯的差别上。
正是因为这一点，有的语言学家用下面一句话来概括社会语言学：社会语言学的任务在于描述“语言和社会结构的共变”。
(William Bright,1964) 后来，美国的另一位社会语言学家Nessa Wolson (1983)用一句话来概括社会语言学的范围：Who says what to whom, when and how.这句话概括了社会语言学的要素：what 代表语言部分，how代表说话的方式方法，who、whom和when代表社会变量，即说话人和听话人在什么时候或什么场合讲的话。
综上所述，不管语言学家如何界说社会语言学，作为一门重要的学科领域，它主要研究语言的变异、变体、语言使用习惯上的差异，以及造成这些变异、变体及差异的社会文化因素。
本系社会语言学方向开设的课程有“社会语言学导论”、“语言与社会”、“跨文化交际”、“文体学”、“统计学”等，系统地介绍社会语言学中的各种概念及理论，为学生打下坚实的理论基础，使学生对社会语言学有系统的认识，并培养学生初步进行实地调查的能力。
Sociolinguistics is the study of language in relation to society. Sociolinguistics is concerned with investigating the relationships between language and society with the goal being a better understanding of the structure of language and of how languages function in communication. Coulmas (1997) says that sociolinguistics (micro-sociolinguistics) investigates how social structure influences the way people talk and how language varieties and patterns of use correlate with social attributes such as class, sex, and age.Language is closely intertwined with society, and it is impossible to understand one without the knowledge of the other. Therefore, we must look into various aspects of the possible relationships between language and society. There is no human society that does not depend upon, is not shaped by, and does not itself shape language. The relationship between language and society can be interestingly reflected in the ways people use language in social interaction, actually in the whole stuff of everyday life; how you talk to your friends, family, and teachers, as well as to storekeepers and strangers——everyone you meet in the course of a day——and why you talk as you do and they talk as they do. Almost all of our contact with family and friends, and much of our contact with strangers, involves speaking. Much of such speaking is strongly governed by rules, rules that dictate others with language, and they manipulate us, often without either party being at all aware of the manipulation. A communicatively competent person must know when it is appropriate to open a conversation and how, what topics are appropriate to particular speech events, whichforms of address are to be used to whom and in which situations, and how such speech acts as greetings, complements, apologies, invitations and complaints are to be given, interpreted and responded to.Relevantly concerned with both language and society are also apparently trivial matters, with the talk on street corners as well as in the classroom, the things that people do when they want to talk and the ways they signal that they are listening. Even matters like where you choose to sit in a cafeteria or at a meeting, or the amount of space you want between you and someone else when you are talking, concern the sociolinguist.语言、文化与翻译当代翻译研究已不单纯限于语言方面，越来越多的翻译工作者开始把目光投向文化与翻译之间的关系；因此，翻译不仅需要进行不同语言之间的转换工作，而且还要关注文化因素在翻译中起的作用。
