DickSmakman and PatrickHeinrich (eds.). Globalising Sociolinguistics: Challenging and Expanding Theory. Abingdon, U.K./New York: Routledge. 2015. 276 pp. Hb (9780415725590) £125.00 / Pb (97804157256060) £34.99 (original) (raw)
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Globalising sociolinguistics: challenging and expanding theory
Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 2016
Globalising Sociolinguistics: Challenging and Expanding Theory From Routledge This book challenges the predominance of mainstream sociolinguistic theories by focusing on lesser known sociolinguistic systems, from regions of Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, South America, the European Mediterranean, and Slavic regions as well as specific speech communities such as those speaking Nivkh, Jamaican Creole, North Saami, and Central Yup'ik. In nineteen chapters, the specialist authors look at key sociolinguistic aspects of each region or speech community, such as gender, politeness strategies, speech patterns and the effects of social hierarchy on language, concentrating on the differences from mainstream models. The volume, introduced by Miriam Meyerhoff, has been written by the leading expert of each specific region or community and includes contributions by Rajend Mesthrie, Marc Greenberg and Daming Xu. This publication draws together connections across regions/communities and considers how mainstream sociolinguistics is incomplete or lacking. It reveals how lesser-known cultures can play an important role in the building of theory in sociolinguistics. Globalising Sociolinguistics is essential reading for any researcher in sociolinguistics and language variation and will be a key reference for advanced sociolinguistics courses.
The Routledge Handbook of Sociolinguistics around the World edited by Martin J. Ball
Journal of Sociolinguistics, 2011
(Chapter 1) provides insights into highly diverse sociolinguistic research in the United States and proposes a distinction between two broad, overlapping areas: the sociolinguistics of society (region and dialectology; ethnicity; sexuality and gender; language change/age; community groupings; multilingualism; perception studies) and the sociolinguistics of language (phonology and phonetics; morphology and syntax; lexicon, mental grammar and language acquisition; pragmatics, discourse, and conversation). Hazen's overview ends with a call for a greater integration of sociolinguistics driven by a 'motivation towards a unified goal' (p. 7). It must be said that the rest of the book does not achieve this integrative aim with most chapters biased towards one or the other approach. The Canadian sociolinguistic situation (Chapter 2 by Elaine Gold) is selectively described with reference to the English-and French-languages communities. As a relatively new but expanding field, sociolinguistic research in Mexico (Chapter 3) has developed within three distinct paradigms-anthropological linguistic, variationist sociolinguistics, and most recently the 'sociolinguistics of conflict'-but, as explained by José Antonio Flores Farfán, an imbalance remains with more studies examining Spanish rather than the indigenous languages of Mexico. The author subsequently gives a taste of future research directions in an area he labels as 'militant sociolinguistics' (p. 39), by explaining the need to address difficulties and challenges of linguistic and cultural revitalization initiatives of endangered languages in Mexico. The sociolinguistics of language endangerment and revitalization is also discussed in Chapter 4 on South America. Serafin Coronel-Molina and Viviana Quinteros overview the Andean Quechuaspeaking communities mainly from the vantage point of language contact with Spanish and Quechua. In Chapter 5, Valerie Youssef describes sociolinguistic research in the Anglophone Caribbean area. Following an overview of Creole studies, Youssef discusses the emergence of new influences on Carribean
“Tings change, all tings change”: The changing face of sociolinguistics with a global perspective
Globalising Sociolinguistics
An introductory chapter for the forthcoming volume "Globalising Sociolinguistics" edited by Dick Smakmann and Patrick Heinrich (eds). James Stanford and I focus on five themes that we believe are especially pertinent to the project of globalising sociolinguistics. None of them are entirely independent of the others. They are: 1. The multilingual reality of most people’s experience; 2. The notion of standard languages, and how these interact with local vernaculars; 3. The native speaker; 4. The application of third wave approaches to sociolinguistics with a global perspective; and 5. Cross-cultural collaboration.
Three Waves of Variation Study: The Emergence of Meaning in the Study of Sociolinguistic Variation
Annual Review of Anthropology, 2012
The treatment of social meaning in sociolinguistic variation has come in three waves of analytic practice. The first wave of variation studies established broad correlations between linguistic variables and the macrosociological categories of socioeconomic class, gender, ethnicity, and age. The second wave employed ethnographic methods to explore the local categories and configurations that inhabit, or constitute, these broader categories. In both waves, variation was seen as marking social categories. This article sets out a theoretical foundation for the third wave, arguing that (a) variation constitutes a robust social semiotic system, potentially expressing the full range of social concerns in a given community; (b) the meanings of variables are underspecified, gaining more specific meanings in the context of styles, and (c) variation does not simply reflect, but also constructs, social meaning and hence is a force in social change.
2014
This volume collects seven papers in contemporary sociophonetic research. It addresses hot themes in sociophonetics and proposes a fresh look at old problems still open to debate. A variety of approaches is proposed without neglecting the need for a coherent discussion of the nature of variation in speech and how speakers develop a cognitive representation of it. These characteristics distinguish the present volume from the panorama of comparable sociophonetic literature, which mainly consists of textbooks, readers, and journal special issues (as well as individual journal articles, conference proceedings, and informal reports). , contemporary sociophonetics and sociophonology differ from early variationist sociolinguistics for their focus on the cognitive representation of phonetic variation in the mind of the individual. Stated differently, the fundamental purpose of sociophonetic studies should be that of analyzing how the concrete communicative experiences are categorized by the speakers and, most importantly, of establishing the function of such complex nucleus of information in the structuring of linguistic systems. The fusion of sociolinguistics and phonetics occurs therefore within a cognitivist perspective in which the probabilistic nature of the language and the interest for the processes of language use and comprehension play a special role.
Sociolinguistics from the Periphery
2016
Small languages in new circumstances? In Saariselkä, a centre for Lapland tourism in northern Finland, a longstanding hotel has branded its new conference facilities and accommodation block with the Northern Sámi word Gielas, which refers to the geographical location of the resort. This is the first time that a Sámi word has been used in this tourist context to brand a hotel. On the island of Corsica, vendors sell plain black and white T-shirts adorned only with the Corsican language name of a local brand, Bianc'è Neru ('black and white'). The Corsican language brand is presented in an unexplained, minimalist way, in the style of a global brand such as Hollister or Ralph Lauren. Meanwhile, in Ireland, a thriving web-based enterprise markets T-shirts printed with Irish language slogans such as 'Luke, is mise d'athair', a direct translation of 'Luke, I am your father', the catchphrase of Darth Vader from Star Wars, the global media phenomenon. And, finally, to round up our anecdotes, we come to Wales, where a brand of organic, artisan potato crisps uses Welsh-language-branded sea salt, Halen Môn, to complete a distinctive and exclusive brand identity. These four small-scale, local branding activities exemplify the kinds of shifts that brought us to the writing of this book. To the four of us, working in different sociolinguistic contexts, phenomena such as these seemed increasingly to represent a growing and more widespread trend, a new moment for what we call 'small languages'. That is, while the commercial use of these languages is not a new phenomenon, the particulars of their use in these examplesranging from playful appropriation of mainstream and even global iconography (Irish) to discreet normalisation (Corsican) to indexing high-end or luxury products by recontextualising 'old' and traditional places and values (Sámi, Welsh)are novel, reflecting both new sociolinguistic developments and an increasingly reflexive stance towards language and culture. Further, it seemed to us that this new moment might represent not just an interesting trend in the use of small languages in peripheral spaces but one that was also illustrative of much broader sociolinguistic shifts whose significance may extend beyond these immediate contexts and indeed beyond the field of minority language sociolinguistics.
New speakers: Challenges and opportunities for variationist sociolinguistics
Language and Linguistics Compass, 2017
While the field of variationist sociolinguistics has advanced rapidly since Labov (1966), it remains the case that a socially informed theory of language change continues to be influenced by only very few languages, typically English and a handful other dominant European languages. This article considers recent work on the emergence of new speakers in (severely) endangered or minority language communities, and what they might have to offer variationist theory. Although definitions can vary, it has become convention to describe new speakers as individuals ‘with little or no home or community exposure to a minority language but who instead acquire it through immersion or bilingual education programs, revitalization projects or as adult language learners’ (O'Rourke, Pujolar, & Ramallo, 2015: 1). There is now a wealth of literature available on new speakers in typologically dissimilar language contexts, though, so far, very little work has adopted the variationist paradigm. This art...
New horizons in sociophonetic variation and change
New horizons in sociophonetic variation and change Arguably the main concern of modern linguistics has been to put forward evidence of an unchangeable and stable grammar in humans. At the same time variability remains a very fundamental property of human language. Language varies across communities, individuals and speech acts, and with language variability comes language change. The question at heart of the scientific endeavour concerned with linguistic variability is what causes language to change? This question is present at the core of disciplines such as historical linguistics, contact linguistics and, especially, (variationist) sociolinguistics. Sociolinguistics as a discipline has made great contributions to our understanding of variability in language and the complex workings of the human communicative faculty by showing that variation in speech follows quite robust patterns that bear relationships with social variables. The papers in this issue of Lingua are concerned with some of the key topics of modern sociolinguistics, namely to which extent individuals' and communities' social histories are reflected in the production of language and to which extent our social experiences influence our perception of language. The current issue even touches upon the question of how linguistic variation commences at an individual level. Phonetic issues have played a central part in studies of linguistic variation and change since the birth of sociolinguistics. William Labov's seminal studies in the 1960s were concerned especially with phonological or phonetic variation and change, and throughout the last half century sound change has remained a core focus of studies concerned with synchronic language variation. This issue of Lingua brings together six studies of phonetic variation and change in the English language. The articles have in common that they use sophisticated methodologies or innovative experimental designs to further our knowledge of exactly how and why language varies and changes and how variation and change relate to social factors. They also fall into the category that one might label sociophonetic research. The merger of the two fields of phonetics and sociolinguistics in sociophonetics has been described by Foulkes et al. (2010:704) as having 'the aim of identifying, and ultimately explaining, the sources, loci, parameters and communicative functions of socially structured variation in speech'. This aim thus applies to a large proportion of work done in the field of sociolinguistics, but also to work done in the discipline of phonetics. The specifically sociophonetic field of research can therefore be viewed as an overarching area of enquiry that contributes fundamental knowledge and theory to both sociolinguists and phoneticians. These two groups of linguists, although both benefitting from work done within the field of sociophonetics, do not necessarily share much more common ground, however. A focus on sociophonetics as a field of linguistics in its own right is therefore part of the motivation for publishing this special issue. Motivation for this issue is also found in the fact that sociophonetic work can help refine general linguistic theories, such as that of exemplar theory. As argued in Pierrehumbert (2001:1) typical phonological theories struggle to account for some of the detailed phonetic knowledge that speakers have, and the variability that exist in one individual's realisation of the same phonological categories in different lexical items. A usage-based component must therefore be included to such theories to account for why perception and production targets vary across lexical items, people, and communities. Exemplar theory does this by allowing for the possibility that informants store and categorise individual instances of sounds and lexical items in memory (cf. e.g. Pierrehumbert, 2001). When accounting for language production and perception the theory also necessarily comprises social exemplars, meaning that speakers can store social information alongside linguistic input. What is more, exemplar theory partly accounts for communal generational differences in language, i.e. observable language change, by suggesting that older speakers' amounts and types of exemplars differ from those of younger speakers simply through an increased amount of experience (cf. Pierrehumbert, 2001:11). Sociophonetic work can inform us of the role of exemplars in our linguistic system by showing variability in how social categories and linguistic detail are connected by listeners. Furthermore, work in sociophonetics can show how linguistic exemplars connected with particular social categories can lose out (or win) in processes of language change. A further motivation for the current special issue is to promote innovativeness in methodology as a general concern for current sociolinguistic research. A heightened awareness of methodological concerns is perhaps something that sets sociophonetic work apart from a lot of other work concerned with language variation and change. As mentioned above, investigations of the relationship between production of fine phonetic detail and social belonging have been prominent in the field of variationist linguistics since the 1960s (from the studies collected in Labov (1972), to more recent work such as Lingua 122 (2012) 749-752
Sociolinguistics I Variationist Theory
Introduce and discuss two traditional social groupings (e.g. social class, ethnicity, race, gender, occupation) that have been used to understand and measure language variation and change. Explain how they are thought to relate to LVC, and discuss pros and cons of using such social groupings. Next, discuss several sources that draw on newer understandings of localized identity (e.g. community of practice, linguistic marketplace, style groups, etc.). Explain how they contrast with the two traditional social-group approaches in terms of data, participants and analytic approach, and discuss their significance for language variation and change.