Rajen Mesthrie (Ed.). The Cambridge Handbook of Sociolinguistics

Reviewed by Zaenal Arifin

Tulungagung, 30 November 2013

Rajen Mesthrie (Ed.). The Cambridge Handbook of Sociolinguistics

All stuffs about sociolinguistics are in. 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 wide 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, spoken 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 – in tandem with other brands of linguistics and the social and natural sciences – with the best tools for understanding our unfolding evolution as social beings.

Big book, with more than 500 pages. I, myself, have 3 points of the goodness of this book. First, recent book, 2011. Second, wide range of sociolinguistic topics discussion, simply complete. Third, Cambridge-published.

Contents

Part I  Foundations of sociolinguistics

2  Power, social diversity, and language

3  Linguistic anthropology: the study of language as a non-neutral medium 

4  The social psychology of language: a short history

5  Orality and literacy in sociolinguistics

6  Sign languages

Part II  Interaction, style, and discourse

7  Conversation and interaction

8  Pragmatics and discourse

9  The sociolinguistics of style

Part III  Social and regional dialectology

10  Language, social class, and status 

11  Language and region

12  Language and place

13  Language, gender, and sexuality

14  Language and ethnicity

Part IV  Multilingualism and language contact

15 Multilingualism

16 Pidgins and creoles

17 Code-switching

18 Language maintenance, shift, and endangerment

19 Colonization, globalization, and the sociolinguistics of World Englishes

Part V  Applied sociolinguistics

20 Language planning and language policy

21 Sociolinguistics and the law

22 Language and the media

23 Language in education

So, whatever you need about sociolinguistics, find it here.

Download the book here!

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Nikolas Coupland. Style: Language Variation and Identity - Download

Reviewed by Zaenal Arifin

Tulungagung, 30 November 2013

Nikolas Coupland. Style: Language Variation and Identity

"Style refers to ways of speaking – how speakers use the resource of language variation to make meaning in social encounters. This book develops a coherent theoretical approach to style in sociolinguistics, illustrated with copious examples. It explains how speakers project different social identities and create different social relationships through their style choices, and how speech-style and social context inter-relate. Style therefore refers to the wide range of stra-tegic actions and performances that speakers engage in, to con-struct themselves and their social lives. Coupland draws on and integrates a wide variety of contemporary sociolinguistic research as well as his own extensive research in this field. The emphasis is on how social meanings are made locally, in specific relationships, genres, groups and cultures, and on studying language variation as part of the analysis of spoken discourse." - Nikolas Coupland.

This book explains and explores any variations of language used by people in their social interaction, that includes some aspects related to the why or how the variations are there.

The book itself is series, from Key Topics in Sociolinguistics by Rajend Mesthrie (Ed.), where there are still other titles, dealing with sociolinguistics, like Politeness by Richard J. Watts, Language Policy by Bernard Spolsky, Discourse by Jan Blommaert, Analyzing Sociolinguistic Variation by Sali A. Tagliamonte and Language and Ethnicity by Carmen Fough.

Contents

Introduction

1.1 Locating ‘style’

1.2 Variationism in sociolinguistics

1.3 Style in sociolinguistics and in stylistics

1.4 Social meaning

1.5 Methods and data for researching sociolinguistic style

1.6 Style in late-modernity

1.7 Later chapters

Style and meaning in sociolinguistic structure

2.1 Stylistic stratification

2.2 Limits of the stratification model for style

2.3 ‘Standard’ and ‘non-standard’

2.4 ‘Non-standard’ speech as ‘deviation’

2.5 Social structure and social practice

3. Style for audiences

3.1 Talking heads versus social interaction 54

3.2 Audience design 58

3.3 Communication accommodation theory

3.4 Some studies of audience design and speech accommodation

3.5 Limits of audience-focused perspectives

Sociolinguistic resources for styling

4.1 Speech repertoires

4.2 The ideological basis of variation

4.3 Habitus and semantic style

4.4 Language attitudes and meanings for variation

4.5 Metalanguage, critical distance and performativity

4.6 Sociolinguistic resources?

Styling social identities

5.1 Social identity, culture and discourse

5.2 Acts of identity

5.3 Identity contextualisation processes

5.4 Framing social class in the travel agency

5.5 Styling place

5.6 Voicing ethnicities

5.7 Indexing gender and sexuality

5.8 Crossing

5.9 Omissions

High performance and identity stylisation

6.1 Theorising high performance

6.2 Stylisation

6.3 Decontextualisation

6.4 Voicing political antagonism – Nye

6.5 Drag and cross-dressing performances

6.6 Exposed dialects

Coda: Style and social reality

7.1 Change within change

7.2 The authentic speaker

7.3 The media(tisa)tion of style

I recommend this book for you who are studying language variations.

Download the book here!

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