- "Sociolinguistics is the descriptive study of the effect of any or all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context, on language and the ways it is used."
The study of how language is used in social contexts, including variation across dialects, language attitudes, and language policy.
Language variation and change: This topic explores how languages vary according to different factors such as geographic location, social status, age, gender, and ethnicity. It also explores how language changes over time and how these changes can be traced through historical linguistics and sociolinguistics.
Language and identity: This topic explores the relationship between language and identity, especially how it can reflect social and cultural identities. It examines how language can be used to establish and maintain certain social, cultural, and political identities.
Language and power: This topic examines the relationship between language and power, exploring how language use can reflect and reinforce power dynamics in society. It also explores how language can be used to challenge and resist power structures.
Language attitudes and ideologies: This topic focuses on language attitudes and beliefs, exploring how they influence language use and variation. It also examines how language ideologies can reflect and reinforce social hierarchies and power dynamics.
Multilingualism: This topic explores the use and acquisition of multiple languages by individuals and communities. It examines how different languages interact and affect one another, and the social and cultural implications of multilingualism.
Language and education: This topic explores the relationship between language and education, examining how language use and language policies affect the education system, including issues of language instruction, bilingual education, and language acquisition.
Language and gender: This topic focuses on the relationship between language and gender, exploring how language use and attitudes reflect and reinforce gender roles and identities.
Language and media: This topic examines the role of language in the media, exploring how language use and representation reflect and influence social and cultural norms and values.
Language planning and policy: This topic explores the development and implementation of language policies at national and international levels, examining issues of language use, planning and standardization, bilingualism, and language rights.
Corpus linguistics: This topic introduces the use of digital tools to study language and its variation, exploring how large sets of linguistic data can be analyzed and visualized using computational methods. It also introduces research methodologies such as quantitative and qualitative analysis of data.
Dialectology: The study of regional variations of a language.
Sociophonetics: The study of the relationship between social variables and phonetic variables in a language.
Language and gender: The study of language and its relationship with gender and gender roles.
Language and ethnicity: The study of the relationship between language and ethnicity.
Language ideology: The study of the beliefs, values, and attitudes attached to language and its use.
Language planning and policy: The study of how language policies are formulated and implemented.
Multilingualism: The study of the use and acquisition of more than one language in a community.
Creole linguistics: The study of Creole languages, which are formed by the combining of different languages.
Code-switching: The study of the use of more than one language or language variety in a single conversation.
Pragmatics: The study of how context and cultural knowledge affect the interpretation of meaning in language use.
Language contact: The study of the interaction of different languages in a community.
Language variation: The study of the different ways in which a language can vary within a community.
Historical sociolinguistics: The study of how language changes over time and how that change is related to social factors.
- "It can overlap with the sociology of language, which focuses on the effect of language on society."
- "Sociolinguistics is closely related to linguistic anthropology."
- "Sociolinguistics' historical interrelation with anthropology can be observed in studies of how language varieties differ between groups separated by social variables and/or geographical barriers."
- "Such studies examine how such differences in usage and differences in beliefs about usage produce and reflect social or socioeconomic classes."
- "As the usage of a language varies from place to place, language usage also varies among social classes."
- "Sociolinguistics can be studied in various ways such as interviews with speakers of a language, matched-guise tests, and other observations or studies related to dialects and speaking."
- "Sociolinguistics is the descriptive study of the effect of any or all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context, on language and the ways it is used."
- "Sociolinguistics is closely related to linguistic anthropology."
- "Sociolinguistics overlaps considerably with pragmatics."
- "Such studies also examine how such differences in usage and differences in beliefs about usage produce and reflect social or socioeconomic classes."
- "Such studies examine how language varieties differ between groups separated by...geographical barriers (a mountain range, a desert, a river, etc.)."
- "Sociolinguistics studies language varieties differ between groups separated by social variables."
- "The sociology of language focuses on the effect of language on society."
- "Sociolinguistics is the descriptive study of the effect of any or all aspects of society, including cultural norms."
- "Sociolinguistics is the descriptive study of the effect of any or all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context, on language and the ways it is used."
- "Language usage also varies among social classes, and it is these sociolects that sociolinguistics studies."
- "Sociolinguistics can be studied in various ways such as...matched-guise tests."
- "Such studies examine how language varieties differ between groups separated by social variables (e.g., ethnicity, religion, status, gender, level of education, age, etc.)."
- "Sociolinguistics is the descriptive study of the effect of any or all aspects of society... Sociolinguistics' historical interrelation with anthropology can be observed in studies of how language varieties differ between groups separated by social variables and/or geographical barriers."