sociolinguistics (n.)

A branch of LINGUISTICS which studies all aspects of the relationship between LANGUAGE and society. Sociolinguists study such matters as the linguistic identity of social groups, social attitudes to language, STANDARD and non-standard forms of language, the patterns and needs of national language use, social VARIETIES and LEVELS of language, the social basis of MULTILINGUALISM, and so on. An alternative name sometimes given to the subject (which suggests a greater concern with sociological rather than linguistic explanations of the above) is the sociology of language. Any of the branches of linguistics could, in principle, be separately studied within an explicitly social perspective, and some use is accordingly made of such terms as sociophonetics and sociophonology, when this emphasis is present, as in the study of the properties of ACCENTS. In HALLIDAYAN linguistics, the term sociosemantics has a somewhat broader sense, in which the choices available within a GRAMMAR are related to communication roles found within the speech situation, as when a particular type of question is perceived in social terms to be a threat.

The term overlaps to some degree with ETHNOLINGUISTICS and ANTHROPOLOGICAL LINGUISTICS, reflecting the overlapping interests of the correlative disciplines involved – sociology, ethnology and anthropology. The study of DIALECTS is sometimes seen as a branch of sociolinguistics, and sometimes differentiated from it, under the heading of DIALECTOLOGY, especially when regional dialects are the focus of study. When the emphasis is on the language of face-to-face interaction, the approach is known as interactional sociolinguistics. Sociological linguistics is sometimes differentiated from sociolinguistics, particularly in Europe, where the term reflects a concern to see language as an integral part of sociological theory. Also sometimes distinguished is sociohistorical linguistics, the study of the way particular linguistic functions and types of variation develop over time within specific languages, speech communities, social groups and individuals.