Norms And The Study Of Language In Social Life

Sociolinguistics and the social sciences more generally tend to take an interest in norms as central to social life. The importance of norms is easily discernible in the sociolinguistic canon, for instance in Labov’s definition of the speech community as ‘participation in a set of shared norms’ and Hymes’ concepts of ‘norms of interaction’ and ‘norms of interpretation’. Yet, while the notion of norms may play a central role in sociolinguistic theory, there is little explicit theoretical work around the notion of norms itself within the discipline. Instead, norms tend to be treated as conceptual primes – convenient building blocks, ready-made for sociolinguistic theorizing – rather than theoretical constructs in need of reflexive attention. The aim of this book is to assess and advance current understandings of norms as a theoretical construct and empirical object of research in the study of language in social life. The contributors approach the topic from a range of complementary disciplinary perspectives, including sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, EM/CA, socio-cognitive linguistics and pragmatics, to provide a multifaceted view of norms as a central concept in the study of language in social life.

Sociolinguistics and the social sciences more generally tend to take an interest in norms as central to social life. The importance of norms is easily discernible in the sociolinguistic canon, for instance in Labov’s definition of the speech community as ‘participation in a set of shared norms’ and Hymes’ concepts of ‘norms of interaction’ and ‘norms of interpretation’. Yet, while the notion of norms may play a central role in sociolinguistic theory, there is little explicit theoretical work around the notion of norms itself within the discipline. Instead, norms tend to be treated as conceptual primes – convenient building blocks, ready-made for sociolinguistic theorizing – rather than theoretical constructs in need of reflexive attention. The aim of this book is to assess and advance current understandings of norms as a theoretical construct and empirical object of research in the study of language in social life. The contributors approach the topic from a range of complementary disciplinary perspectives, including sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, EM/CA, socio-cognitive linguistics and pragmatics, to provide a multifaceted view of norms as a central concept in the study of language in social life.

The most comprehensive overview available, this Handbook is an essential guide to sociolinguistics today. Reflecting the breadth of research in the field, it surveys a range of topics and approaches in the study of language variation and use in society. As well as linguistic perspectives, the handbook includes insights from anthropology, social psychology, the study of discourse and power, conversation analysis, theories of style and styling, language contact and applied sociolinguistics. Language practices seem to have reached new levels since the communications revolution of the late twentieth century. At the same time face-to-face communication is still the main force of language identity, even if social and peer networks of the traditional face-to-face nature are facing stiff competition of the Facebook-to-Facebook sort. The most authoritative guide to the state of the field, this handbook shows that sociolinguistics provides us with the best tools for understanding our unfolding evolution as social beings.

The empirical and descriptive strengths of sociolinguistics, developed over more than 40 years of research, have not been matched by an active engagement with theory. Yet, over this time, social theorising has taken important new turns, linked in many ways to linguistic and discursive concerns. Sociolinguistics and Social Theory is the first book to explore the interface between sociolinguistic analysis and modern social theory. The book sets out to reunite sociolinguistics with the concepts and perspectives of several of the most influential modern theorists of society and social action, including Bakhtin, Foucault, Habermas, Sacks, Goffman, Bourdieu and Giddens. In eleven newly commissioned chapters, leading sociolinguists reappraise the theoretical framing of their research, reaching out beyond conventional limits. The authors propose significant new orientations to key sociolinguistic themes, including- - social motivations for language variation and change - language, power and authority - language and ageing - language, race and class - language planning In substantial introductory and concluding chapters, the editors and invited discussants reassess the boundaries of sociolinguistic theory and the priorities of sociolinguistic methods. Sociolinguistics and Social Theory encourages students and researchers of sociolinguistics to be more reflexively aware and critical of the social bases of their analyses and invites a reasessment of the place sociolinguistics occupies in the social sciences generally.

This book proposes a comprehensive discussion of the issue of linguistic feeling, the subject’s metalinguistic capacity to intuitively apprehend the normative – lexical, syntactic, morphological, phonological... – dimensions of a definite language he or she is acquainted with. The volume’s twelve contributions aim to revisit a concept that, through a fluctuating terminology (“Sprachgefühl,” “sentiment de la langue,” “linguistic intuitions,” etc.), had developed, since the late 18th century, within a variety of cultural contexts and research traditions, and whose theoretical, epistemological, and historical ins and outs had not been systematically explored so far. Beginning with a long opening chapter, the book consists of two parts, one tracing the multifaceted approaches to linguistic feeling from Herder to Wittgenstein, and one offering a representative overview of the debates about the issue at stake in current linguistics and philosophy, while addressing the question of the place of metacognition, normativity, and affectivity in language processes.

This encyclopaedia of one of the major fields of language studies is a continuously updated source of state-of-the-art information for anyone interested in language use. The IPrA Handbook of Pragmatics provides easy access – for scholars with widely divergent backgrounds but with convergent interests in the use and functioning of language – to the different topics, traditions and methods which together make up the field of pragmatics, broadly conceived as the cognitive, social and cultural study of language and communication, i.e. the science of language use. The Handbook of Pragmatics is a unique reference work for researchers, which has been expanded and updated continuously with annual installments since 1995. Also available as Online Resource: benjamins.com/online/hop/

This book developed from a symposium in which participants examined childhood socialization from a number of perspectives and with several disciplinary lenses. The major purpose of the symposium and thus of this volume is to provide an integrative, multidisciplinary discussion of the social development of preschool and young elementary school-aged children. As a result, there are contributions to this volume from anthropologists (Leacock, Ogbu), psychologists (Lippincott, Mueller, Ramey and Snow), sociologists (Borman, Denzin) and scholars who have self-consciously adopted an interdisciplinary framework. First published in 1984. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.