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This book aims to offer a new perspective and a new methodology which provide a tool for all researchers in historical sociology of language, but also social history, cultural history, historical sociolinguistics and the fields of research that link language and society, in a diachronic perspective but also in a synchronic perspective. The original point of view from which this methodology arises is Basque studies, but it can almost completely be applied to any international linguistic context, with some little changes.This work is the result of a long methodological reflection that has been developed in different publications. This book is a presentation of the taxonomy and the methodology proposal that our team has created to help sociology of language and sociolinguistics researchers in their work.The taxonomy was created to analyse and classify the sociolinguistic information taking into account the most usual variables that arise in the international bibliography linked to the sociology of language.To create that methodology, we have examined methodological findings since the foundation of sociolinguistics and the tools it has developed, as well as its main theoretical concepts and, bearing our task in mind, we have tried to put together a wide-ranging, flexible and detailed methodology.
About the author
Mikel Zalbide is an industrial engineer, studied at the University of Navarre. He has worked in various fields of linguistics and social sciences, and has supported the Basque Autonomous Community for many years in the area of bilingual education, to advance our knowledge of the sociology of language, social history, and language planning programs.
He was one of the founders of the Elhuyar Association (1972) and was also a full member of the Council for the creation of the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) in 1978-1979. From 1981 until his retirement in 2014, he was the head of the Basque Language Service of the Education, University and Research Department of the Basque Government. He has participated in the implementation and creation of many projects in the fields of pedagogy, education and sociolinguistics.
He has written numerous books and articles dealing with these fields, and has been a professor in several courses on sociolinguistics in the Basque Country and abroad. He was named a member of Euskaltzaindia in 1983, and full member in 2006. He is currently the director of the Social History of the Basque project.
