Sociolinguistics

Description

This handbook is intended for students who have studied some linguistics and sociolinguistics and are looking for a more advanced and up-to-date account of the field. The contributors, who were all chosen for their outstanding contributions to sociolinguistics, were tasked with providing authoritative and detailed yet easily accessible overviews of key areas of the subject. It is not expected that readers will read the entire work, as this is clearly not an introductory textbook, but rather that they will read specific chapters based on their needs and areas of interest. In addition, the chapters will be useful to academics and researchers outside of sociolinguistics who want to stay up to date on new developments in a field that is becoming increasingly important in the humanities.

This handbook is the most comprehensive overview available, and it is an essential guide to sociolinguistics today. It surveys a wide range of topics and approaches in studying language variation and uses in society, reflecting the breadth of research in the field. In addition to linguistic perspectives, the handbook includes insights from anthropology, social psychology, discourse and power research, conversation analysis, style and styling theories, language contact, and applied sociolinguistics. Language practices have advanced to new heights since the late-twentieth-century communications revolution. At the same time, spoken communication remains the primary source of language identity, even as traditional face-to-face social and peer networks face stiff competition from facebook-to-facebook networks. This handbook, the most authoritative guide to the state of the field, demonstrates that sociolinguistics, in conjunction with other types of linguistics and the social and natural sciences, provides us with the best tools for understanding our unfolding evolution as social beings.

Each chapter in this book provides a comprehensive state-of-the-art overview of a major sub-discipline within language study and research. The chapters in each volume are organized into broad thematic areas and cover the most important issues and topics within each subject, providing a cohesive picture of the most recent theories and findings. The volumes will be combined to form an integrated overview of the discipline as a whole.