Many linguists and sociolinguists are interested in the relationship between ethnocentrism and language and in how the desire of ethnic groups to maintain their cultural distinctiveness influences linguistic variation. This paper suggests diverse ways in which ethnocentrism and the desire to increase social distance may be realized on several…

Various social, psychological, and linguistic explanations for language variation are examined from the perspective of a fundamental principle that seems to underline interaction, language, and society. That principle lies in the paradigm "same and different." The dialectic resulting from this paradigm is at the basis of the notions of…