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12144 results in Cambridge Handbooks

Page 549 of 608

  • 1 - Introduction: the sociolinguistic enterprise

  • Edited by Rajend Mesthrie, University of Cape Town
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Handbook of Sociolinguistics
    Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    06 October 2011, pp 1-14

  • Summary

    This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the book, which focuses on the wealth of research undertaken by sociolinguists concerned with language variation and use in society. The core of this specialisation comes from those working in the field of language variation and change. Chomskyans sought to define the essence of language in mentalistic grammars of so abstract and broad a nature that they could capture the entire human capacity for language. It is thanks to the Chomskyan revolution that we have learned an impressive amount about how humans acquire language, store it in the mind, and process it. Linguistics is a fascinating subject in both its sociolinguistic and non-sociolinguistic (cognitive-biological) aspects. This linguistics would embrace the dialectics of langue and parole and competence and performance. The book provides a practitioner's overview of the multifaceted field of sociolinguistics that is an integral part of that linguistics.

  • 18 - Language maintenance, shift, and endangerment

  • from Part IV - Multilingualism and language contact
  • Edited by Rajend Mesthrie, University of Cape Town
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Handbook of Sociolinguistics
    Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    06 October 2011, pp 315-334

  • Summary

    Sociolinguists have always been concerned with place. This chapter summarizes emergence of dialectology in the nineteenth century in the context of the politics of the European nation-state. It summarizes the twentieth-century dialect atlas projects, conducted in the context of a renewed interest in region across the disciplines. The chapter traces ideas about place in quantitative, social-scientific approaches to variation and change. Finally, it outlines several newer ways of thinking about language and place that have emerged in the context of widespread interest in how the social world is collectively shaped in discourse and in how individuals experience language and linguistic variation. Geographers' focus on regions and regional exceptionalism mirrors dialectologists' work of the period in the Linguistic Atlas of the United States and Canada projects. Lesley Milroy and James Milroy brought social network theory to bear on sociolinguistic issues.

  • 7 - Conversation and interaction

  • from Part II - Interaction, style, and discourse
  • Edited by Rajend Mesthrie, University of Cape Town
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Handbook of Sociolinguistics
    Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    06 October 2011, pp 105-121

  • Summary

    This chapter provides an overview of approaches to conversation, and outlines key themes and methods of research. It briefly sketches out three approaches to conversational discourse in the Goffmanian tradition: conversation analysis, the ethnography of communication, and interactional sociolinguistics. The chapter presents major research themes in the field: the exploration of conversation as a structured and emergent phenomenon, as a collaborative endeavor, as an interpersonal and social ritual, as a cultural phenomenon, and as a locus of action. Conversation analysis (CA) investigates conversational structure and takes an interest in exploring how unfolding conversational structure (re)creates social organization. Researchers of conversational discourse must make fundamental choices at every step of the data collection and analysis processes. CA has developed a very detailed transcription system as a means of exploring how interlocutors create discourse and their social worlds turn-by-turn in talk.

  • 3 - Linguistic anthropology: the study of language as a non-neutral medium

  • from Part I - Foundations of sociolinguistics
  • Edited by Rajend Mesthrie, University of Cape Town
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Handbook of Sociolinguistics
    Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    06 October 2011, pp 28-46

  • Summary

    This chapter conceptualizes the field of linguistic anthropology in terms of one general criterion: ontological commitment. Linguistic anthropologists share some core ideas about a small set of essential properties of language, all of which are centered upon one basic assumption that language is a non-neutral medium. The ways in which this basic assumption has been interpreted and transformed into particular research projects gives linguistic anthropology its unique identity within the social sciences and the humanities. The chapter focuses on three essential properties of language that are assumed by linguistic anthropologists: language is a code for representing experience, language is a form of social organization, and language is a system of differentiation. Boas' discussion of the influence of language on the ability of an individual to hear subtle differences in the sounds of another language is the explicit statement of the ontological commitment to thinking of language as a non-neutral medium.

  • References

  • Edited by Rajend Mesthrie, University of Cape Town
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Handbook of Sociolinguistics
    Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    06 October 2011, pp 440-522

  • Summary

    The attractiveness of English in many cultures derives from its identification as a linguistic gateway to economic prosperity. Global English comes in a wide range of different countries and settings, forms and functions, oscillating between the poles of formal and informal discourse, written and oral communication, international and local contacts, and as an expression of distance or social proximity. The most conventional classification is the one into countries where English is a native language (ENL), a second language (ESL), and a foreign language (EFL). In ESL countries, typically former parts of the British Empire, English fulfills important intranational functions as an official or semi-official language. The International Corpus of English (ICE) project has opened valuable research options for comparative research. The differences between speech and writing allow for the study of variability in a framework which is strongly inspired by and closely related to quantitative sociolinguistic methodology.

  • 22 - Language and the media

  • from Part V - Applied sociolinguistics
  • Edited by Rajend Mesthrie, University of Cape Town
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Handbook of Sociolinguistics
    Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    06 October 2011, pp 396-412

  • Summary

    This chapter examines the terms 'pidgin' and 'creole' and the complications that arise from efforts to arrive at precise definitions of them, specifically with regard to determining which speech varieties are pidgins and creoles. Languages whose name contains Pidgin or a variant thereof are regionally restricted to the Pacific and to West Africa, and have English as the source of their lexicon. Languages that are called 'Creole' by their speakers are spoken on both sides of the Atlantic and include English-lexified Creolese in Guyana and Krio in Sierra Leone. Loreto Todd recognized that the term pidgin was variably used to designate makeshift contact varieties as well as fully stabilized languages. The most widely studied cases of pidgins and creoles all emerged from contact situations resulting from European colonial expansion. DeCamp proposed the creole continuum model, and Bickerton and Rickford refined and expanded upon it.

  • 17 - Code-switching

  • from Part IV - Multilingualism and language contact
  • Edited by Rajend Mesthrie, University of Cape Town
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Handbook of Sociolinguistics
    Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    06 October 2011, pp 301-314

  • Summary

    This chapter examines the regions with respect to linguistic systems, and examines how one can use them effectively in sociolinguistics. Wilbur Zelinsky has written extensively about regions as culture areas. Zelinsky insists that a region be genuine, and be recognized by its participants, in order for the region to be distinguished from other locations as an area in which one can observe the evidence of culture, of course including language. Zelinsky also proposes college towns as educational voluntary regions, retirement voluntary regions like those in Arizona and Florida, and "pleasuring places" where people not only visit to play at the beach or in the snow but also choose to live. Las Vegas is one of the fastest-growing places in the country. Zelinsky adds to these two basic kinds of regions one more type: the "vernacular region" or "perceptual region".

  • 6 - Sign languages

  • from Part I - Foundations of sociolinguistics
  • Edited by Rajend Mesthrie, University of Cape Town
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Handbook of Sociolinguistics
    Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    06 October 2011, pp 83-102

  • Summary

    The sociolinguistics of sign languages includes the study of regional and social variation, bi- and multilingualism and language contact phenomena, language attitudes, discourse analysis, and language policy and planning. Sign languages exhibit both regional and social variation. Phonological variation can be seen in the production of the component parts of signs such as handshape, location, palm orientation, number of articulators, non-manual signals, and segmental structure. Deaf communities contain examples of many types of bilingualism. The most crucial language attitudes are those that pertain to the very status of sign languages as viable linguistic systems. The discourse of natural sign languages is structured and subject to sociolinguistic description, and there are as many discourse genres in sign languages: conversations, narratives, lectures, sermons. The legal recognition of sign languages has increased in many countries and the use of sign languages has expanded in many domains.

  • 19 - Colonization, globalization, and the sociolinguistics of World Englishes

  • from Part IV - Multilingualism and language contact
  • Edited by Rajend Mesthrie, University of Cape Town
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Handbook of Sociolinguistics
    Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    06 October 2011, pp 335-354

  • Summary

    This chapter provides an overview of theoretical approaches and important studies in language, gender, and sexuality, beginning with early approaches in which gender and sex were seen as roughly equivalent, essential attributes. It discusses questions concerning the interrelation of language and gender and focusing on male-female language differences. The sociolinguistic study of language and gender traditionally was characterized as falling into one of three approaches or theories: deficit, difference, and dominance. Dominance-based approaches focus on women's relative powerlessness vis-à-vis men in describing and explaining women's vs. men's language. Robin Lakoff holds that women's language as she describes it is weaker than men's, and so she is often characterized as taking a deficit approach. The study of linguistic differences across cultures led researchers focusing on pragmatics and discourse to propose that gender-based language differences can also be conceptualized as cross-cultural differences.

  • 21 - Sociolinguistics and the law

  • from Part V - Applied sociolinguistics
  • Edited by Rajend Mesthrie, University of Cape Town
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Handbook of Sociolinguistics
    Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    06 October 2011, pp 377-395

  • Summary

    This chapter discusses the consequences of linguistic diversity at the level of the individual, and the level of society, that is, the relationship of languages and their speakers within a given territory. It also considers the interaction of multilingualism and multiculturalism as two partially overlapping but non-identical concepts. Linguists tend to see multilingualism as a gradient phenomenon. Inter-Scandinavian communication is an example of what has been called receptive multilingualism with productive monolingualism. Haugen was one of the first linguists to draw attention to the fact that when Danes, Swedes, and Norwegians communicate with one another, they do not use a lingua franca. Many people become multilingual past childhood. Especially in the context of international migration and mobility, language acquisition continues for many throughout their lives. Australia is an example of a society which is characterized by extensive societal but not necessarily individual multilingualism.

Page 549 of 608