This textbook is enormously enabling. Not only does it

comprehensively provide the basic theory and method at the right level, but beginners have the means and the models so that they can get their 'hands dirty' with real data and real problems in doing sociolinguistics." -William Downes, University of East Anglia Including a disparate range of texts from an interview with Madonna to an article from the Calcutta Telegraph and core readings from Deborah Cameron, Rosina Lippi-Green and Norman Fairclough, this book brings together sample texts, commentaries, activities and key secondary texts. It covers every conceivable topic in the field, including accent and dialect, ethnicity and multilingualism, class, age, gender, pidgins and national and international Englishes. This book will be the number one resource for all people trying to understand the complex tie between sociology and linguistics. Flagship volume in the Routledge English Introductions series, edited by Peter Stockwell. Forthcoming volumes include Grammar and Vocabulary and Pragmatics and Discourse.

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CONTENT

Part 1: Introduction: Key Concepts in Sociolinguistics

1. A Sociolinguistic Toolkit

2. Accent and Dialect

3. Register and Style

4. Ethnicity and Multilingualism

5. Variation and Change

6. Standardisation

7. Gender

8. Pidgins and Creoles

9. New, National and International Englishes

10. Politeness and Accommodation

11. Conversation

12. Applying Sociolinguistics

Part 2: Development: Studies in Language and Society

1. Undertaking a Sociolinguistic Study

2. Attitudes to Accent Variation

3. Euphemism, Register and Code

4. Code-Switching

5. Social Networks

6. Shifts in Prestige

7. Genderlects

8. Patwa and Post-Creolisation

9. Singlish and New Englishes

10. Politeness in Mixed-Sex Conversation

11. Phatics in Spoken Discourse

12. Language and Ideology

Part 3: Exploration: Data for Investigation

1. Collecting and Exploring Data

2. Dialectal Variation

3. Register

4. Ethnology

5. Perceptions of Variation

6. Prestige

7. Gender

8. Creole

9. New English

10. Politeness

11. E-Discourse

12. Critical Discourse Analysis

Part 4: Extension: sociolinguistic reading

1. Sociolinguistics and Language Change

2. Foreign Accents in America

3. Style and Ideology

4. Language Contact and Code-Switching

5. The Sociolinguist’s Responsibility

6. The Process of Standardisation

7. Men’s Language

8. The Origins of Pidgins and Creoles

9. World Englishes and Contact Literature

10. The Politics of Talk

11. Closing Turns

12. Linguistic Detection

Further Reading

References

Glossarial Index

Peter Stockwell is Professor of Literary Linguistics at the University of Nottingham and the author of many books and academic articles in the fields of literature and language, sociolinguistics, critical discourse analysis, language and cognition, surrealism and literary theory. Peter is the editor of the Routledge English Language Introductions series.