Sociolinguistics
- LAST REVIEWED: 12 April 2019
- LAST MODIFIED: 30 September 2013
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199766567-0117
- LAST REVIEWED: 12 April 2019
- LAST MODIFIED: 30 September 2013
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199766567-0117
Introduction
Sociolinguistics is the study of language in culture and society, within the field of linguistics. In its broad goal of describing language and its relationship to society, social behavior, and culture, it overlaps with numerous other disciplines, most notably linguistic anthropology, but also sociology, philosophy, psychology, and dialectology. More specifically, sociolinguistics may be distinguished in having a narrower goal of advancing linguistic theory. Sociolinguists believe that the pursuits of linguistics, a field devoted to modeling the unique human faculty for language, cannot be accomplished without the incorporation of the social. This is not a view held by all linguists, in particular the formal linguists who work within the Chomskyan generative tradition, and so the work of sociolinguistics is in large part to incorporate the social as a central focus of linguistic inquiry. In contrast, other disciplines that focus on language in use may have the ultimate goal of sociological or anthropological description. This division according to ends is not so rigid in practice, so that sociolinguists can be thought of as part of a larger group of scholars of the social life of language. This broad characterization reflects the emergence of sociolinguistics as an identifiable discipline, generally acknowledged to have occurred in the 1960s in the United States. At that time, scholars from a number of fields worked together as part of a more general move in the social sciences to devote increased amounts of scholarly attention to the social study of language. Today, the term usually references a solidly linguistic enterprise, a result of the solidification of disciplinary boundaries over time. The goal of this article is to capture both the history of sociolinguistics as the study of the social life of language (sociolinguistics in the broader sense) as well as sociolinguistics as an integral part of linguistics (sociolinguistics in the narrow sense).
General Overviews
Texts that are appropriate for an introduction to the field are either singly authored or coauthored overviews, like Romaine 2000; Meyerhoff 2011; and Mesthrie, et al. 2009, or edited volumes that bring foundational texts and early-21st-century scholarship together to provide a sense for the field. Of the latter, Coupland and Jaworski 2009 and Wodak, et al. 2010 provide thorough treatments.
Coupland, Nikolas, and Adam Jaworski, eds. 2009. The new sociolinguistics reader. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
An edited, comprehensive introduction to sociolinguistics, with sections on variation, gender and sexuality, style and identity, language ideologies, contact, and interaction.
Mesthrie, Rajend, Joan Swann, Ana Deumert, and William L. Leap. 2009. Introducing sociolinguistics. 2d ed. Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univ. Press.
This introductory book covers a broad range of sociolinguistic topics presented in sections written by the coauthors.
Meyerhoff, Miriam. 2011. Introducing sociolinguistics. New York: Routledge.
A thorough overview of major topics in sociolinguistics, including variation, style, attitudes, language choice, change, and contact.
Romaine, Suzanne. 2000. Language in society: An introduction to sociolinguistics. 2d ed. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
An accessible introductory text with sections on language choice, gender, variation and change, pidgins and creoles, and applied topics.
Wodak, Ruth, Barbara Johnstone, and Paul Kerswill, eds. 2010. The SAGE handbook of sociolinguistics. London: SAGE.
This large, edited book covers a wide range of sociolinguistic topics, including the history of the field, social theory, variation and change, language and interaction, contact, and applied topics.
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Article
- Africa, Anthropology of
- Aging
- Agriculture
- Animal Ritual
- Animal Sanctuaries
- Anorexia Nervosa
- Anthropocene, The
- Anthropological Activism and Visual Ethnography
- Anthropology and Education
- Anthropology and Theology
- Anthropology of Islam
- Anthropology of Kurdistan
- Anthropology of the Senses
- Anthrozoology
- Antiquity, Ethnography in
- Applied Anthropology
- Archaeobotany
- Archaeological Education
- Archaeology
- Archaeology and Museums
- Archaeology and Political Evolution
- Archaeology and Race
- Archaeology and the Body
- Archaeology, Gender and
- Archaeology, Global
- Archaeology, Historical
- Archaeology, Indigenous
- Archaeology of Childhood
- Archaeology of the Senses
- Archives
- Art Museums
- Art/Aesthetics
- Autoethnography
- Bakhtin, Mikhail
- Bass, William M.
- Beauty
- Belief
- Benedict, Ruth
- Binford, Lewis
- Bioarchaeology
- Biocultural Anthropology
- Bioethics
- Biological and Physical Anthropology
- Biological Citizenship
- Boas, Franz
- Bone Histology
- Bureaucracy
- Business Anthropology
- Capitalism
- Cargo Cults
- Caribbean
- Caste
- Charles Sanders Peirce and Anthropological Theory
- Childhood Studies
- Christianity, Anthropology of
- Citizenship
- Clinical Trials
- Cobb, William Montague
- Code-switching and Multilingualism
- Cognitive Anthropology
- Cole, Johnnetta
- Colonialism
- Commodities
- Consumerism
- Cultural Heritage Presentation and Interpretation
- Cultural Heritage, Race and
- Cultural Materialism
- Cultural Relativism
- Cultural Resource Management
- Culture
- Culture and Personality
- Culture, Popular
- Curatorship
- Cyber-Archaeology
- Dalit Studies
- Dance Ethnography
- de Heusch, Luc
- Deaccessioning
- Design
- Design, Anthropology and
- Diaspora
- Digital Anthropology
- Disability and Deaf Studies and Anthropology
- Douglas, Mary
- Drake, St. Clair
- Dreaming
- Durkheim and the Anthropology of Religion
- Economic Anthropology
- Embodied/Virtual Environments
- Embodiment
- Emotion, Anthropology of
- Environmental Anthropology
- Environmental Justice and Indigeneity
- Ethics
- Ethnoarchaeology
- Ethnocentrism
- Ethnographic Documentary Production
- Ethnographic Films from Iran
- Ethnography
- Ethnography Apps and Games
- Ethnohistory and Historical Ethnography
- Ethnomusicology
- Ethnoscience
- Europe
- Evans-Pritchard, E. E.
- Evolution, Cultural
- Evolutionary Cognitive Archaeology
- Evolutionary Theory
- Experimental Archaeology
- Federal Indian Law
- Feminist Anthropology
- Film, Ethnographic
- Folklore
- Food
- Forensic Anthropology
- Francophonie
- Frazer, Sir James George
- Geertz, Clifford
- Gender
- Gender and Religion
- Gene Flow
- Genetics
- Genocide
- GIS and Archaeology
- Global Health
- Globalization
- Gluckman, Max
- Graphic Anthropology
- Grass
- Haraway, Donna
- Healing and Religion
- Health and Social Stratification
- Health Policy, Anthropology of
- Heritage Language
- HIV/AIDS
- House Museums
- Human Adaptability
- Human Evolution
- Human Rights
- Human Rights Films
- Humanistic Anthropology
- Hurston, Zora Neale
- Identity
- Identity Politics
- Indigeneity
- Indigenous Economic Development
- Indigenous Media: Currents of Engagement
- Industrial Archaeology
- Institutions
- Interpretive Anthropology
- Intertextuality and Interdiscursivity
- Kinship
- Laboratories
- Language and Emotion
- Language and Law
- Language and Media
- Language and Race
- Language and Urban Place
- Language Contact and its Sociocultural Contexts, Anthropol...
- Language Ideology
- Language Socialization
- Leakey, Louis
- Legal Anthropology
- Legal Pluralism
- Liberalism, Anthropology of
- Linguistic Anthropology
- Linguistic Relativity
- Linguistics, Historical
- Literacy
- Literary Anthropology
- Lévi-Strauss, Claude
- Magic
- Malinowski, Bronisław
- Margaret Mead, Gregory Bateson, and Visual Anthropology
- Maritime Archaeology
- Marriage
- Material Culture
- Materiality
- Mathematical Anthropology
- Matriarchal Studies
- Mead, Margaret
- Media Anthropology
- Medical Anthropology
- Medical Technology and Technique
- Mediterranean
- Memory
- Mendel, Gregor
- Mental Health and Illness
- Mesoamerican Archaeology
- Mexican Migration to the United States
- Migration
- Militarism, Anthropology and
- Missionization
- Mobility
- Modernity
- Morgan, Lewis Henry
- Multispecies Ethnography
- Museum Anthropology
- Museum Education
- Museum Studies
- Myth
- NAGPRA and Repatriation of Native American Human Remains a...
- Narrative in Sociocultural Studies of Language
- Nationalism
- Needham, Rodney
- Neoliberalism
- NGOs, Anthropology of
- Niche Construction
- Northwest Coast, The
- Oceania, Archaeology of
- Paleolithic Art
- Paleontology
- Performance Studies
- Performativity
- Personhood
- Perspectivism
- Philosophy of Museums
- Pilgrimage
- Plantations
- Political Anthropology
- Postprocessual Archaeology
- Postsocialism
- Poverty, Culture of
- Primatology
- Primitivism and Race in Ethnographic Film: A Decolonial Re...
- Processual Archaeology
- Psycholinguistics
- Psychological Anthropology
- Public Archaeology
- Public Sociocultural Anthropologies
- Race
- Religion
- Religion and Post-Socialism
- Religious Conversion
- Repatriation
- Reproductive and Maternal Health in Anthropology
- Reproductive Technologies
- Rhetoric Culture Theory
- Rural Anthropology
- Sahlins, Marshall
- Sapir, Edward
- Scandinavia
- Science Studies
- Secularization
- Semiotics
- Settler Colonialism
- Sex Estimation
- Sexuality
- Shamanism
- Sign Language
- Skeletal Age Estimation
- Social Anthropology (British Tradition)
- Social Movements
- Socialization
- Society for Visual Anthropology, History of
- Socio-Cultural Approaches to the Anthropology of Reproduct...
- Sociolinguistics
- Sound Ethnography
- Space and Place
- Stable Isotopes
- Stan Brakhage and Ethnographic Praxis
- Structuralism
- Studying Up
- Sub-Saharan Africa, Democracy in
- Surrealism and Anthropology
- Technological Organization
- Tourism
- Trans Studies in Anthroplogy
- Transnationalism
- Tree-Ring Dating
- Turner, Edith L. B.
- Turner, Victor
- Urban Anthropology
- Value
- Violence
- Virtual Ethnography
- Visual Anthropology
- Whorfian Hypothesis
- Willey, Gordon
- Witchcraft
- Wolf, Eric R.
- Writing Culture
- Youth Culture
- Zoonosis
- Zora Neale Hurston and Visual Anthropology