Sociolinguistics
In the same way an understanding of physics is necessary for engineering, an understanding of sociolinguistics is foundational to all language related work. Sociolinguistics is the field of study having to do with the interaction of language and society; how all aspects of society have an effect on language, and how language has an effect on society. The field of sociolinguistics can be described as a mixture of sociology and linguistics, or of anthropology and linguistics.
Typical sociolinguist topics include:
- Multilingualism and language choice
- Speech communities
- Dialects, accents
- Language contact: pidgins and creoles
- Language death, maintenance and shift
- Variation in language
- Language planning
- Regional and social dialects
- Social networks
- Language change
- Style, context, register
- Solidarity, politeness and cross-cultural communication
- Speech functions
- Culture, cognition, and language
- Language and gender
- Language, power and disadvantage
- Language attitudes