Theory and practice

Theory and practice are terms that are often set in opposition to each other, but not for very good reasons. This is a book about theory, but it is not a book that is, one might say, ‘couched in abstractions with little relevance to the real world of language use’. Who needs theory, if that's what theory is? On the contrary, theory is about what we see and experience in the social world of language, and about how we impute meaning to actions. As language users, we are all theorists, although the discipline of sociolinguistics has particular responsibilities in fostering, through its theory, awareness of what happens at the interface between language and society, and in reviewing what we know and what we have not yet adequately explained. So this is actually a book about practice too – practices of using language and practices of interpreting language in society.

My main task in the chapter is to set the scene for the nineteen chapters that follow; I introduce the chapters and the structure of the volume in the second half of this chapter. Before that it may be useful to comment in quite general terms on ‘theory’, and then on ‘sociolinguistic theory’, the object of debate in this volume, and its historical status in the field. That will lead to an overview of the types of theory that sociolinguistics has aligned with to date, and might profitably align with in the future. This is a necessary debate in itself, especially if it is right to observe that sociolinguistics has entered a phase where ‘theory is everywhere’ and that this is radically influencing what sociolinguistics is and what it does. But we are also arguably in a phase where discussion of what counts as theory, and why it matters in so many practical regards, is still generally lacking. In other words, we need to keep revisiting some basic metatheoretical questions about sociolinguistics, following a line of reflexive commentary started by Figueroa over twenty years ago. Figueroa (1994) set out the different principles and assumptions that supported the research of three of the ‘founding fathers’ of sociolinguistics, Labov, Gumperz, and Hymes.

Sociolinguistic change

In a few earlier publications I have lobbied for sociolinguists to begin working with a conception of sociolinguistic change (Coupland 2009; 2014a,c). Androutsopoulos (2014a) uses this concept in titling his comprehensive volume, Mediatization and Sociolinguistic Change, and in his introduction to that book (2014b) he points out that the phrase has been in fitful circulation for some years with a range of different meanings. To my mind the idea of sociolinguistic change is both liberating and focusing for sociolinguistics. It liberates the field to look beyond ‘language change’, which has set its sights on highly constrained sorts of change. The idea of sociolinguistic change focuses sociolinguistics by requiring it to be specific about what other sorts of change are then in question (principally in relation to what is generally called social change). In other words, theorising sociolinguistic change will entail reconsidering what priorities sociolinguistics should have in connection with change, why, and with what implications.

The present chapter firstly (in the rest of this section) extends this view of sociolinguistic change, vis-à-vis language change and social change; sociolinguistic change is broadly defined as consequential change over time in language–society relations. Then, in later sections, several of the main themes that have emerged in the earlier chapters of this book are reconsidered – all of them explicitly relevant to sociolinguistic change in this sense and able to contribute to the further theorising of this concept. The five themes, or thematic clusters, can be referred to (without undue artificiality) by five ‘m’-led keywords: markets, mobility, modalities, media, and metacommunication. Overlaps between this list and earlier sections and chapters of this book are, therefore, easily visible. It is unlikely that the whole of what we should call sociolinguistic change can ultimately be contained within changes in these five thematic dimensions. On the other hand, separately and together, they account for a substantial part of the changes in language–society relations that have already been debated in earlier chapters.

My brief comments on social theory in Chapter 1 pointed to ambiguity in the use of this term, but also to repeated efforts in the social sciences to establish, in broad theoretical terms, how a given society stands in its historical trajectory, from different critical standpoints.

I would like to express my thanks to the many people who have shown confidence in this book project and patience in the face of delays in its completion. I had originally envisaged this book as a short review of ‘sociolinguistic theory’, written in my own name. As time went on, and as the field expanded and theory proliferated, I came to realise the impossibility of shouldering even the core of this task myself. It was once possible to argue that there was rather little theoretical ambition in sociolinguistics. Even if originally true – not true any longer!

The project then evolved into one based on ‘theoretical debates’, necessarily so because many of the emerging theory-rich perspectives came from different parts of what I take to be sociolinguistics – the fertile and shifting multi- and interdisciplinary fields of enquiry where language and society come into contact with each other in so many ways. This made any single theoretical vision contentious in its wider context. What was needed, I latterly realised, was to bring as many as possible of the leading researchers into this debate, and I am again grateful that so many of them have been willing to play along.

In the pages of this book many different voices interact with each other, sometimes harmoniously, sometimes less so, but in all cases with importantly distinctive ways of representing what we know in the field of sociolinguists, what we need to know, what we can generalise about, what generalising means, where we are heading, and what next, with a modicum of ‘so what’ thrown in too. In some cases the debates in question have been actual collaborative discussions based around first drafts of the chapters that appear here. Regrettably, I was not able to realise my ambition of circulating all or even most of such drafts around the full set of contributors, theme by theme. Coordinating the timing of different contributors’ writing, and my own, and getting to a finishing line, proved to be enough of a challenge. But a spirit of debate certainly comes through the chapters: All contributors are striving for consolidation and clarification, and often genuine innovation and agenda-setting, and to this extent the book serves as an opportunity to take stock across many of the central fields of sociolinguistic research and to conceive of future developments.