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Intended for non-majors, this introductory textbook covers a broad and exciting array of topics in the interaction of language and society. It focuses in particular on the complex political and sociological roles of the world's dominant language groups and nationalized languages, and the rapid extinction of minority languages.
List of contents
- Foreword
- Chapter 1: Languages and Dialects
- Chapter 2: Languages with Special Roles/functions: National and Official Languages
- Chapter 3: Languages Under Pressure: Minority Groups and Language Loss
- Chapter 4: Diglossia and Code-Switching
- Chapter 5: Pidgins and Creoles: The Birth and Development of New Languages
- Chapter 6: The Globalization of English
- Chapter 7: Language(s) in the USA
- Chapter 8: Bilingualism
- Chapter 9: Language and Thought: The Linguistic Relativity Controversy
- Chapter 10: Language and Gender
- Chapter 11: Language Variation and Change
- References
- Subject Index
About the author
Andrew Simpson is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Southern California. He is the editor of Language and National Identity in Asia (Oxford University Press, 2007), Language and National Identity in Africa (Oxford University Press, 2008), and the author of many articles in linguistic journals on aspects of the languages of South Asia, East Asia, and Southeast Asia. He is also joint general editor of the Journal of East Asian Linguistics.
Summary
Intended for non-majors, this introductory textbook covers a broad and exciting array of topics in the interaction of language and society. It focuses in particular on the complex political and sociological roles of the world's dominant language groups and nationalized languages, and the rapid extinction of minority languages.
Additional text
Professor Simpson's book is one of the best introductions to sociolinguistics to come out in recent years, and exactly the kind of textbook that I was hoping to assign to my students. It is extraordinarily comprehensive, with a wide range of topics explored thoroughly and illustrated with case studies and examples from across the world and from many linguistic contexts. It is a truly global textbook. Perhaps most significantly, the book opens with chapters of multilingualism and language contact, establishing these as central to sociolinguistics, and this focus on multilingualism is sustained throughout the book, which is a very refreshing and long overdue approach.
