This volume offers a synthetic approach to language variation and language ideologies in multilingual communities. Although the vast majority of the world’s speech communities are multilingual, much of sociolinguistics ignores this internal diversity. This volume fills this gap, investigating social and linguistic dimensions of variation and change in multilingual communities. Drawing on research in a wide range of countries (Canada, USA, South Africa, Australia, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu), it explores: connections between the fields of creolistics, language/dialect contact, and language acquisition; how the study of variation and change, particularly in cases of additive bilingualism, is central to understanding social and linguistic issues in multilingual communities; how changing language ideologies and changing demographics influence language choice and/or language policy, and the pivotal place of multilingualism in enacting social power and authority, and a rich array of new empirical findings on the dynamics of multilingual speech communities.

This volume offers a synthetic approach to language variation and language ideologies in multilingual communities. Although the vast majority of the world s speech communities are multilingual, much of sociolinguistics ignores this internal diversity. This volume fills this gap, investigating social and linguistic dimensions of variation and change in multilingual communities. Drawing on research in a wide range of countries (Canada, USA, South Africa, Australia, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu), it explores: connections between the fields of creolistics, language/dialect contact, and language acquisition; how the study of variation and change, particularly in cases of additive bilingualism, is central to understanding social and linguistic issues in multilingual communities; how changing language ideologies and changing demographics influence language choice and/or language policy, and the pivotal place of multilingualism in enacting social power and authority, and a rich array of new empirical findings on the dynamics of multilingual speech communities.

This book is a volume in the Penn Press Anniversary Collection. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, the University of Pennsylvania Press rereleased more than 1,100 titles from Penn Press's distinguished backlist from 1899-1999 that had fallen out of print. Spanning an entire century, the Anniversary Collection offers peer-reviewed scholarship in a wide range of subject areas.

Part of the "Learning About Language" series, this text examines sociolinguistics and covers such topics as multilingual speech communities and language variation.

What makes a speech community? How do they evolve? Speech communities are central to our understanding of how language and interactions occur in society. In this book readers will find an overview of the main concepts and critical arguments surrounding how language and communication styles distinguish and identify groups.

Using a multidisciplinary approach, this book explores how multilingualism is shaped by a variety of factors such as globalisation and migration. It examines language use in a range of cultural contexts, exploring how children and adults become multilingual and the impact of multilingualism on society and identity.

Why do we speak the way we do? What are the social factors that influence our choices of expression? This best-selling introduction to the study of language and society encourages students to think about these fundamental questions, asking how and why we select from the vast range of different words, accents, varieties and languages available to us. In this new and updated edition, students are taken step-by-step through the analysis of linguistic expressions, speech varieties and languages in complex settings. Enriched with recent findings from different languages and speech communities around the world, this comprehensive textbook equips students with knowledge of the main concepts and gives them a coherent view of the complex interaction of language and society. • 'Questions for Discussion' help students understand how speakers' choices are conditioned by the society in which they live • New to this edition is a rich repertoire of online resources and further reading, enabling students to investigate more deeply and advance their learning • Includes a topical new chapter on research ethics, guiding students on the ethical questions involved in sociolinguistic research.

As an effort to portray the richness of how language is used by the society, the book entitled Sociolinguistics: A Social Linguistics Reality is a book worth reading to highlight the recent issues on language development. This book overviews important sources of materials as the background knowledge, followed by some authentic samples of linguistics reality for both the teachers and the students to engage in classroom settings. The authors have chosen the most common topics found in the research on Sociolinguistics covering the scope of Sociolinguistics studies, language codes in multilingual society, language variation, language and culture, language and politeness, and also the shift, the change, and the maintenance of language. These topics would be of valuable insights to develop students’ awareness on their surrounding language phenomena and are considered to be helpful to invite more ideas to do research in Sociolinguistics. English teachers, students, researchers, as well as people in general will find this book beneficial since it gives some ideas, samples activities, and projects which are open for discussion and collaboration. Language shapes the way we think and determine what we can think about (Benjamin Lee Whorf)

Too small to be big, but also too big to be really small, medium-sized language communities (MSLCs) face their own challenges in a rapidly globalising world where multilingualism and mobility seem to be eroding the old securities that the monolingual nation states provided. The questions to be answered are numerous: What are the main areas in which the position of these languages is actually threatened? How do these societies manage their diversity (both old and new)? Has state machinery really become as irrelevant in terms of language policy as their portrayals often suggest? This book explores the responses to these and other challenges by seven relatively successful MSLCs, so that their lessons can be applied more generally to other languages striving for long term survival.

Fully updated to reflect the most recent scholarship in the field and revised to include many more pedagogical features, An Introduction to Sociolinguistics, 7th Edition builds on its foundation as the most preeminent textbook in sociolinguistics, updated for today's students. • Significantly revised discussions throughout each of the book's four key parts reflect the state of the field today • Includes new chapters on Pragmatics, Discourse Analysis, and Sociolinguistics and Education • Incorporates innovative new perspectives drawn from linguistic anthropology • Provides an accessible history of the development of sociolinguistic thought and how this fast-moving field is integral to our lives • Includes numerous opportunities for students to engage with ideas presented in the text through a new glossary, new Explorations and end-of-chapter exercises, links, and key concepts • New companion website includes links and resources for students