Sociolinguistics

Sociolinguistics is a multilingual collection of research methodologies with distinct objects, dissimilar agendas, and differing points of origin. Broadly, sociolinguists investigate the relationship between social context and language structure or use on the assumption that aspects of structure and use require reference to social context for their description and explanation. In practice, the “socio-“of sociolinguistics can refer to three things, separately or in combination: an act or action of language use that requires, minimally, two people for its performance or one person acting as two; language use that is connected to the identity or identities, be they achieved or attributed, of a speaker or speakers; and/or language use that is involved in the expression of ideology. Using these three types of social facts, we may ask how researchers find the social in a sociolinguistic analysis of structure and use. We suggest here that sociolinguists use three fundamental approaches. Each involves a positioning of the social with respect to the linguistic or the linguistic with respect to the social. These approaches are: Constraint Approach: One may find the social as extra-linguistic constraints or conditions on use of competing forms. Indexicality Approach: One may find the social as indexed by structures/forms, codes (styles, dialects, languages), or acts. Discursive Construction Approach: One may find the social in the explicit and inferrable details of collaborative, sequential, discursive construction. Because the Indexical and Discursive Construction approaches overlap, we will present selected readings in two broad categories. In the first, we will focus on research in Variationist Sociolinguistics which most aptly illustrates the Constraint Approach. However, in Variationist work, the Indexical Approach also appears within research into the Social Meanings of variation. In turn, we will review key publications in socially informed discourse analysis which further illustrate both the Indexical and Discursive Construction Approaches.