Abstract
This work studied the sociolect in Selina Tested from Dell Hymes' sociolinguistic perspective. It explained the social meanings of expressions used by the characters in the movie. The empirical review of this study revealed that scholars have worked on sociolect in films and television series using different linguistic theories. However, no work has been done on the sociolect in Selina Tested from an ethnographic perspective. This paper therefore, filled the gap. Dell Hymes' Ethnography of Communication was used as a theoretical framework. Analysis was based on three of the SPEAKING models which are setting, participants and instrumentalities. The research is qualitative in nature. YouTube served as the source of data. Observation and documentation were the two methods used for data collection. 15 samples of sociolect were purposively selected as texts for analysis. This study found out that the culture of a speech community is expressible in their language.
Keywords: Sociolinguistics, Sociolect,
Ethnography of Communication, Communicative Competence, Speech Community.
DOI: 10.36349/sojolics.2026.v02i02.019
author/Andrew Ali Danjuma
journal/Sokoto JOLICS 2(2) | August 2026 |
