The rapid adoption of new forms of digital communication is now attracting the attention of researchers from a wide range of disciplines in the social sciences. In the landscape of social media, the microblogging application Twitter has rapidly become an accepted feature of everyday life with a broad appeal. This paper, from a dual autoethnography…

Numerous studies conducted in both the psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic fields have established that the parents' socio-economic status (SES) influences several aspects of children's language production. Moreover, a number of psycholinguistic studies strongly suggest that these differences are due in part to differences in the nature and the…

The variationist paradigm in sociolinguistics is at a disadvantage when dealing with variables that are traditionally treated qualitatively, e.g., "identity". This study essays to level the accuracy and descriptive value of qualitative research in a quantitative setting by rendering such a variable quantitatively accessible. To this end,…

This is an expanded version of a paper given at a conference held in Cape Town, South Africa from December 11-13, 2008 entitled "The Native Speaker and the Mother Tongue." In keeping with the conference's themes of exploring and interrogating the notions of "mother tongue" and "native speaker," I consider…

This study analyzes the variation of syllable- and word-final /s/ among two generations of Cubans in Miami, Florida (USA): older, early exile immigrants who arrived in Miami as adults in the 1960s and 1970s, and young Miami-born Cubans whose maternal and paternal grandparents immigrated to Miami from Cuba prior to 1980. Since sibilant weakening is…

Discusses the evolution of linguistic research in an attempt to delineate the place of sociolinguistics in the language sciences sphere. (EKN)

Discusses an ideology of native language and identity, which holds that native language is seen as a central element of individual identity. Argues that although this ideology can be very valuable in certain circumstances, it can also create an atmosphere of suspicion toward members of certain ethnicities who choose not to use their ancestral…

Investigates the role of language in society from the theoretical framework of the sociology of knowledge. (EKN)

Evaluates ways speaker agency has been discussed by linguists over the last two decades and reviews the explanatory status of traditional "belief-desire" models of action in light of evolutionary, neuropsychological, and sociological contributions to the question of human agency. Considering the definition of language as a collective…

Discusses the presence of linguistic norms as regulating language use in social contexts, and distinguishes between statistical and nomothetic norms: denies there is a social nomothetic norm. (CK)

Reports on four Australian experiments using Lambert's Matched Guise Technique for obtaining sociolinguistic attitudes. The accents studied include Australian; Received Pronunciation English, Liverpool, Glasgow Scots, East Coast U.S.A., French, German, and Italian. (EKN)

The arbitrariness of linguistic categories is discussed. Consideration of some other fields of human activity suggests that the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is true, and it is suggested that the process of grammaticalization might be understood as a kind of ritualization. (57 references) (Author/LB)

Discusses the nature of the difference between dialectology and sociolinguistics and suggests that the findings of dialectology are relevant for use by sociolinguists. (30 references) (CK)

Examines current theories of language change, and proposes the theory that language change can be observed and captured while in progress, and that language change can be considered a manifestation of human change in general. (AM)

Informal language learning is defined as learning assimilated without the pupil's awareness. (LG)