Sociolinguistics

Sociolinguistics
Key concepts
Code-switching Language change Language ideology Language planning Multilingualism Prestige Variation
Areas of study
Accent Bilingual pun Dialect Diglossia Homophonic translation Macaronic language Phono-semantic matching Register Discourse analysis Language varieties Linguistic description Loanword Pragmatics Pidgin Soramimi
People
Sociolinguists
Related fields
Applied linguistics Historical linguistics Linguistic anthropology Sociocultural linguistics Sociology of language
Category Linguistics portal
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Sociolinguistics is the descriptive study of the interaction between society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context and language and the ways it is used. It can overlap with the sociology of language, which focuses on the effect of language on society. Sociolinguistics influences, and is influenced by pragmatics, and is closely related to linguistic anthropology.

Sociolinguistics' historical interrelation with anthropology^[1] can be observed in studies of how language varieties differ between groups separated by social variables (e.g., ethnicity, religion, status, gender, level of education, age, etc.) and/or geographical barriers (a mountain range, a desert, a river, etc.). Such studies also examine how such differences in usage and differences in beliefs about usage produce and reflect social or socioeconomic classes. As the usage of a language varies from place to place, language usage also varies among social classes, and some sociolinguists study these sociolects.

Studies in the field of sociolinguistics use a variety of research methods including ethnography/participant observation, analysis of audio or video recordings of real life encounters or interviews with members of a population of interest. Some sociolinguists assess the realization of social and linguistic variables in the resulting speech corpus. Other research methods in sociolinguistics include matched-guise tests (in which listeners share their evaluations of linguistic features they hear), dialect surveys, and analysis of preexisting corpora.