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Article contents
Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 June 2016
Extract
The identification of varieties (dialects) — which requires relating linguistic features to major social categories such as class, age, gender, ethnicity and geographical origin — is one of the main achievements of variationist sociolinguistics. The task is central to the aims of sociolinguistics in two ways. First, it reveals the presence of structured heterogeneity within linguistic variation. Second, it accounts for the social meaning of linguistic variants: through the definition of bounded “social”, “regional” or “ethnic” varieties, so-called inter-speaker variation is directly associated with group membership and linguistic features become social identity markers.
- Type
- Introduction
- Information
- Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique , Volume 49 , Issue 3-4 , December 2004 , pp. 247 - 251
- Copyright
- Copyright © Canadian Linguistic Association 2004
References
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