Florian Coulmas, Sociolinguistics: The study of
speakers' choices. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
Pp. 263. Pb $29.99.
In his new textbook, Coulmas provides readers an easy introduction to
sociolinguistics, using speaker choice as the central notion for
discussion. In a comfortable conversational style, the author slowly
introduces topics, using common examples to demonstrate how sociolinguists
think about language use. He provides summaries of findings of key
sociolinguistic studies that illustrate ideas without overloading readers
with unnecessary and cumbersome details of those studies. The book is
accessible for beginning sociolinguistics students and is equally engaging
for those already familiar with sociolinguistic concepts, largely because
the author uses such interesting and global research to illustrate
ideas.