Sociology of Language: An Introduction

Abstract

Since at least the 1940s, scholars have been developing a means of understanding the sociological use of contemporary language. Although in the first instance they were concerned with the language use of the European or European-influenced world, research was later extended to include cultures inevitably in contact with the ‘first world’, but displaying patterns of linguistic behaviour not derived from that paradigm. Macrosociolinguistics (as it could also be called) can, with fine tuning, be used to describe the dynamics of language in a wide range of different cultures. While it is not the place of this chapter to give a complete summary of all the sub-disciplines, it will be helpful to the reader to be aware of the state of play in the field before considering the subject matter and narrative of Authority and Identity. The question then is: how far back in time can these findings provide meaningful results?KeywordsNative SpeakerLanguage VarietyGerman SpeakerRomance LanguageAbsolute StandardThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.