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A collection of seminal articles that show how linguists who study variation and change in language and society, and those who study pidgin and creole languages, have benefitted from sharing their respective data, theories and methods. Ideal for scholars and students of sociolinguistics, creole studies, and Caribbean and African American studies.
List of contents
Foreword Gillian Sankoff; Acknowledgements; Introduction; 1. Sociolinguistic fieldwork in a racial and political maelstrom: getting in, getting on, and primary recording instruments and techniques; 2. Symbol of powerlessness and degeneracy? Or symbol of solidarity and truth? Paradoxical attitudes towards pidgins and creoles with Elizabeth Closs Traugott; 3. 'Me Tarzan, you Jane!': cognition, expression and the creole speaker; 4. The haves and have nots: sociolinguistic surveys and the assessment of speaker competence; 5. Connections between sociolinguistics and pidgin-creole studies; 6. Implicational scales; 7. Variation and the versatility approach to language arts in schools and societies with Angela E. Rickford; 8. Le Page's theoretical and applied legacy in sociolinguistics and creole studies; 9. The social and the linguistic in sociolinguistic variation: Mii en noo (me ain' know); 10. A variationist approach to subject-aux question inversion in Bajan and other Caribbean creole Englishes, AAVE and Appalachian with Robin Melnick; 11. Situation: stylistic variation in sociolinguistic corpora and theory; 12. Language and linguistic on trial: hearing Rachel Jeantel (and other vernacular speakers) in the courtroom and beyond with Sharese King; 13 The continuing need for new approaches to social class analysis in sociolinguistics; 14. Concord and conflict in the speech community; 15. The joy of sociolinguistic fieldwork.
About the author
John Russell Rickford is J. E. Wallace Sterling Professor of Humanities and Linguistics at Stanford University, California. Author of over 100 articles and author/editor of fourteen books in Linguistics, John won the American Book Award in 2000 for Spoken Soul (2000), co-authored with his son Russell, and the 'Best Paper in Language Award, 2016' for a paper (co-authored with Sharese King and included in this volume) on the 2013 trial of George Zimmerman for the murder of Trayvon Martin.
Summary
A collection of seminal articles that show how linguists who study variation and change in language and society, and those who study pidgin and creole languages, have benefitted from sharing their respective data, theories and methods. Ideal for scholars and students of sociolinguistics, creole studies, and Caribbean and African American studies.
Additional text
'This book has a broad scope, addressing methodological and theoretical issues in sociolinguistics and creole studies, but also in applied and forensic linguistics. The chapters related to language, education, and law are great examples of how the work of linguists can have a meaningful impact on people's lives and the communities they investigate. In this sense, this book is very inspiring; it is a call for action. Action is needed because, as Rickford writes [(p. 49)], although 'all languages are POTENTIALLY equal, […] ACTUAL equality of languages is a myth.' Linguists, as the specialists in language, can act on this. Also, throughout the book Rickford points toward areas of research where more work is needed. This, in my opinion, can be especially useful to students and young scholars.' Marie-Eve Bouchard, LINGUIST List
