Introduction to Sociolinguistics: Society and Identity

Abstract

This book is an excellent introductory text to modern sociolinguistics that looks at the study of language and society through the concept of identity. It moves from looking at language varieties and globalization to a close examination of language in social interaction, covering the concepts of ideology and power and their influence on people’s construction of identity. In the first introductory chapter, the authors start by defining the term ‘sociolinguistics’. Moving away from a narrow definition which looks at language varieties and globalization, they lay the emphasis on the broader scope of the term by adopting an interdisciplinary approach that presents work from linguistics, anthropology, sociology, psychology and education. The second chapter is dedicated to the definition of the key concept ‘identity’, which is presented as a central theme in linguistics. The authors adopt a constructionist approach to identity and provide an overview of the central role that identity plays in sociolinguistic scholarship, through a discussion of the construct of identity, including its history and significance in academic thought. They emphasize the importance of looking at language and identity construction from an interactional and dialogic perspective that includes notions of construction and co-construction, and they analyze the relationships between identity and stylistic variation, gender, expert-novice interactions, or migration.