This volume explores the linguistic complexities and critical issues of the Midland dialect area of the USA, and contains a unique data-based set of investigations of the Midlands dialect. The authors demonstrate that the large central part of the United States known colloquially as the Heartland, geo-culturally as the Midwest, and linguistically as the Midland is a very real dialect area, one with regional cohesiveness, social complexity, and psycho-emotional impact. The individual essays problematize historical origins, track linguistic markers of social identity over time and across social spaces, frame dialect issues within the linguistic marketplace, account for extra-linguistic influences on changing patterns of linguistic behaviors, and describe maintenance strategies of non-English languages. This book is an important move forward in the understanding of American English. Sociolinguists, dialectologists, applied linguists, and all those involved in the statistical and qualitative study of language variation will find this volume relevant, timely, and insightful.

This collection identifies the main theoretical and methodological issues currently preoccupying researchers in social dialectology, drawing not only on variation in English in the UK, USA, New Zealand, Europe and elsewhere but also in Arabic, Greek, Norwegian and Spanish dialects. The volume brings together previously unpublished work by the world's most prolific and well-respected social dialectologists as well as by some younger, dynamic researchers. Together the authors provide new perspectives on both the traditional areas of sociolinguistic variation and change and the newer fields of dialect formation, dialect diffusion and dialect levelling.

World Englishes is a twelve-volume series, presenting a comprehensive, detailed survey of English as it is spoken all over the world. The volumes are organised into four groups, covering Britain, Europe, America, Africa and Asia, and celebrate English in all its diversity. The chapters contain maps, facts and figures, and a detailed description about English as it is spoken in each region and are an invaluable library resource for undergraduates, postgraduates and academics interested in the diversity of the English language.

This volume connects the latest research on language acquisition across the lifespan with the explanation of language change in specific sociohistorical settings. This conversation benefits from recent advances in two areas: on the one hand, the study of how learners of various ages and in various sociolinguistic contexts acquire language variation; on the other, historical sociolinguistics as the field that focuses on the study of historical patterns of language variation and change. The overarching rationale for this interdisciplinary dialogue is that all forms of language change start and spread as the result of individual acts of acquisition throughout the speakers’ lives. The thirteen chapters in this book are authored by an international group of both established and emerging scholars. They encompass theoretical overviews of specific research areas within the broader realm of the acquisition of language variation, as well as case studies applying these theoretical advances to the exploration of language change in a wide range of sociohistorical contexts in the Americas, Oceania, and Asia. This volume will be of interest to students and researchers in the area of language acquisition, language variation and language change, especially those working on interdisciplinary and crosslinguistic connections among these areas.

This book is about responses to language variety — their variability, shape, and content, as well as the variable cognitive and neural pathways underlying them. The chapters explore access to, processing of, and outcomes of that diversity and complexity. Many traditions are represented: from social psychology come classic experimental methods as well as more current discourse-based analyses; anthropology is represented in indexicality, iconization, recursivity, erasure, enregisterment, and ideologies; the sociolinguistic focus on specific rather than global elements that trigger responses is highlighted. The individual chapters address a variety of questions concerning language attitude, belief, and ideology, in some cases singly, in others with a more general focus, including attempts to relate one style of research to another. If we accept the fact that individuals house great variability in the underlying cognitive structures that inform responses, it follows that no single way of eliciting and studying them will do. This book provides a tour of the emerging tools that have been productive in such investigations.

Thoroughly updated and revised, An Introduction to Sociolinguistics, 7th Edition presents a comprehensive and fully updated introduction to the study of the relationship between language and society. Building on Ronald Wardhaugh’s classic text, co-author Janet Fuller has updated this seventh edition throughout with new discussions exploring language and communities, language and interaction, and sociolinguistic variation, as well as incorporating numerous new exercises and research ideas for today’s students. Taking account of new research from the field, the book explores exciting new perspectives drawn from linguistic anthropology, and includes new chapters on pragmatics, discourse analysis, and sociolinguistics and education. With an emphasis on using examples from languages and cultures around the world, chapters address topics including social and regional dialects, multilingualism, discourse and pragmatics, variation, language in education, and language policy and planning. A new companion website including a wealth of additional online material, as well as a glossary and a variety of new exercises and examples, helps further illuminate the ideas presented in the text. An Introduction to Sociolinguistics, 7th Edition continues to be the most indispensable and accessible introduction to the field of sociolinguistics for students in applied and theoretical linguistics, education, and anthropology.

The Handbook of Dialectology provides an authoritative, up-to-date and unusually broad account of the study of dialect, in one volume. Each chapter reviews essential research, and offers a critical discussion of the past, present and future development of the area. The volume is based on state-of-the-art research in dialectology around the world, providing the most current work available with an unusually broad scope of topics Provides a practical guide to the many methodological and statistical issues surrounding the collection and analysis of dialect data Offers summaries of dialect variation in the world's most widely spoken and commonly studied languages, including several non-European languages that have traditionally received less attention in general discussions of dialectology Reviews the intellectual development of the field, including its main theoretical schools of thought and research traditions, both academic and applied The editors are well known and highly respected, with a deep knowledge of this vast field of inquiry