Directions in Sociolinguistics. The Ethnography of Communication

The present work integrates in a single volume some major directions of research on the social basis of verbal communication, a subject which has become of considerable interest to social scientists working at both theoretical and applied levels. In recent years, most linguists, in their concern with formal methods of description, have concentrated on the internal relations of linguistic signs, ruling out consideration of extra linguistic factors. Today, semantics is once more a legitimate subject, and syntax is seen to raise questions of the status of sentences as acts of speech and parts of discourse. Basic theoretical problems of the nature of grammar and its relation to speakers' verbal competence are therefore once more becoming relevant. Similarly, questions of the functions of language are again receiving serious attention. The importance of language in social problems, especially education and national development, also is drawing linguistics into wider concerns. The last decade has seen an increasing number of conferences, interdisciplinary symposia, and monographs attempting to stimulate serious behaviorally oriented research on stylistics and expressive speech, intrasocietal diversity of language, attitudes to language, language politics and policy, and other similar peripheral subjects (Sebeok I 960; Bright 1966; Lieberson I 966b; Capell 1966; Haugen 1966; MacNamara 1967; Fishman et al. 1968). Although sustained empirical work is only beginning, the response so far seems highly promising.