The basic questions that a scholar interested in the study of language asks are concerned with language structure, acquisition, and change. William Labov is a linguist who has deeply influenced the linguistic scene in the past 60 years. It is to Labov's credit that he showed, backed by solid evidence, that the questions concerning language change,…

It is a long-standing and commonly held belief in the United Kingdom and elsewhere that the use of elite forms of language reflects superior intellect and education. Expert opinion from sociolinguistics, however, contends that such a view is the result of middle-class bias and cannot be scientifically justified. In the 1960s and 1970s, such…

Basil Bernstein's research on the sociology of language indicates that he views language as both subjective and objective. Subjectively, it structures an individual's intentions and thought processes; objectively, it preserves and makes public the store of knowledge of human society. The sharing of language is the basic way in which the objective…

This text on the sociology of language, hear defines as "...a focus upon the entire gamut of topics related to the social organization of language behavior," lays the groundwork for the theoretical development of this emerging branch of linguistics. The author proposes that sociolinguists investigate everything concerned with language from the…

This article discusses sentence structure and sentence production as an integral process that reflects the given situation as perceived by the speaker, and not merely as a grammatical combination of words. The role of predicativity in sentence production is outlined. (CLK)

This article proposes a new analysis of illocutionary force, in terms of discourse practices, and specifically analyzes the act of reproaching. (Text is in French.) (CLK)

In analyzing utterances whose singular property is to become true simply by being uttered, this article discusses the theory of explicit performatives and proposes an alternative explanation which focuses on meaning rather than on the fact of these utterances are speech acts. (Text is in French.) (CLK)

Deals with patterns of limited borrowing in Tarahumara, or Raramuri, a Uto-Aztecan language in northern Mexico. Probes the sociolinguistic constraints that have apparently caused Raramuri to have borrowed surprisingly little from Spanish. (Author/RM)

Outlines three features that render creoles synchronically distinguishable from other languages, all three clear results of a break in transmission followed by a development period too brief for the traits to be undone as they have been in older languages. Shows that an expanded data set reveals flaws in the socio-historical argumentation behind…

Sociopragmatic ambiguity (SPA) is claimed here to differ from other, better-known types of ambiguity, in terms of its locus, cause, and effect. SPA is characteristic of whole-discourse features rather than of lexical items or phrases. The ambiguity is one of social rather than ideational or semantic meaning. It is claimed that SPA arises through…

Africanisms are characteristics occurring frequently in African languages but rarely elsewhere. This paper reviews Africanisms presented by Greenberg and Larochette and submits a number of others with sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic relevance. Items are grouped according to phonology, morphology, syntax and lexicon. (CK)

The author presents this monograph as essentially a "prise de position" with regard to certain of the central questions in current debates over the nature of human linguistic systems and techniques of analyzing and describing them. While it is presumed that the reader is already acquainted with the issues being debated in linguistics in the…

The papers included in this volume discuss the relationship of sociolinguistics to social interaction, sociolinguistic surveys, the intersection of sociolinguistics with education, and the influence of linguistics and sociology on sociolinguistics. The papers include: "Optional Rules in Grammar" (Fraser); "The Structure of Polylectal Grammars"…

This paper examines language variation in terms of overdetermination and underdetermination of structural information as related to grammatical rules and the structure of social behavior. (CLK)

A sociological critique of language which substitutes the notion of acceptability for grammaticallity; the analogy of symbolic force for communication; the question of the value and power of discourse for meaning; and "symbolic capital," inseparable from the social position of the interlocuter, for purely linguistic competence. (Text is in…