This chapter outlines the linguistic properties of Welsh and its historical and sociolinguistic context. It sketches the main features of Welsh phonology, including vowel, diphthong and consonant phoneme inventories, focusing on issues involving vowel length, the complex set of diphthongs, and voiceless nasal consonants, including major dialect differences. Mutation, changes in word-initial consonants triggered by morphosyntactic features, is a characteristic of Welsh that has drawn considerable attention, and both phonological and morphosyntactic aspects of the phenomenon are discussed. In morphology, topics of interest include extensive regular vowel alternation and the formation of the singular–plural distinction. Mildly synthetic verbal morphology sits alongside another typologically significant property, inflection of prepositions for person and number. Major features of Welsh syntax include head-initial and VSO word order, restrictions on finite verbs in complement clauses, an elaborate system of clause-initial particles, and marking of predicate adjectives and nominals with a dedicated predicative particle. A final section looks at current sociolinguistic issues, including changes in the traditional diglossic relationship between literary and spoken Welsh, and changes that are often attributed to language contact and revitalisation.

Diamesic variation, a concept coined by variationist researchers in Italy, helps to understand the impact of media on linguistic structures and their evolution. By distinguishing medial, sociolinguistic, and functional aspects of diamesic variation, it becomes clear that media not only affect the (phonic and graphic) materiality of signifiers but also interact strongly with diasystematic variation along regional, social, and situational parameters and with variability of verbalization strategies between the poles of communicative immediacy and communicative distance. The latter, functional aspect of diamesic variation is anthropologically rooted and forms a universal, omnipresent background in the history of the Romance languages. Several paradigmatic analyses of Latin and Romance historical data show how the communicative variation between, for example, the maximal degree of familiarity between partners vs formal, public encounters, a high degree of spontaneity vs a high degree of planning, intensive involvement in a situation vs decontextualized speaking and writing determines standardization processes of elaboration, centralization, and codification as well as linguistic change ‘from below’ or ‘from above’.

In addition to time and place, which are inseparable from sociolinguistic variation, language may vary according to age, social class, sex or (social) gender, ethnicity, medium, style, and register. Contact between speakers often leads to change, and different patterns result according to whether this contact involves first-language (L1) or second language (L2) acquisition. Thus, ‘family tree’ aspects of language change are largely accounted for by transmission (involving L1 acquisition), whilst ‘wave model’ changes can be explained in terms of diffusion (involving L2 acquisition). Languages with a high degree of L2 contact will tend to simplify, whilst stable bilingualism or isolation will often lead to complexification. Contact may be interlinguistic or intralinguistic, sometimes resulting in complex linguistic repertoires, with up to four different levels existing simultaneously (national standard, regional standard, interdialectal koiné, local dialect). Contact may also result in code-switching, the emergence of contact vernaculars, and ‘language death’. The receptiveness of a variety to contact influence depends on the extent to which its social networks are open or closed and on the social attitudes of its speakers. Standard languages emerge through a variety of conscious and unconscious processes, and attempts may be made to give non-standard speech varieties a distinct linguistic identity through codification and the creation of literature.

The introductory chapter is a succinct overview of the principles and approaches to variation in Arabic as followed in the book. It also defines the scope of coverage. It briefly explains the historical connection between sociolinguistics and dialectology, advocating an empirically based approach to analysing variation in spoken Arabic.

Through the perspectives of raciolinguistics, language ideology, power, and identity, Kendall King explores the tectonics of theoretical changes in applied linguistics over the last thirty years. She challenges the concepts of the native speaker, motivation, and even the notion of language itself. From the study of language loss, maintenance, and revitalization, she moved to superdiverse contexts. She discovered the hybridity and fluidity of languages and cultures, and shifted toward a more holistic view of bilingualism and bilinguals.

In Belgium, Piet Van Avermaet and Sven Sierens offer a joint biography where "Dutch" and local dialects were their norm. Both of them grew up in a multilingual environment with migrant classmates. As researchers, they turned to a critical sociolinguistic perspective to propose functional multilingual learning to give multilingual students a chance to use their linguistic repertoires.

The purpose of the chapter is: first, to provide an overview of the socio-linguistic landscape of the late antique Mediterranean as a historical setting in which early Christian writers lived, worked, and developed their ideas on languages and religious identities; the linguistic and social practices they observed and experienced everyday set up an important context, even though their theoretical speculations may not directly reflect realities on the ground. Second, to briefly account for Christian encounters with foreign cultures and languages as the religion took off and to inquire into how the socio-linguistic situation in the ancient Mediterranean influenced the development of Christianity in its nascent stage and how Christianity in turn affected linguistic processes in the region. The spread of Christianity among various peoples and ethnic groups within and without the gradually disintegrating Roman empire was concurrent with complex formative processes within Christianity itself and took place amidst Trinitarian and Christological debates. The survey problematizes the role languages and linguistic distinctions played in these controversies and indicates several loci of potential tensions to be discussed further in the book (the alleged links between Punic speakers and Donatists, Germanic speakers and Arians, Syriac speakers and followers of non-Chalcedonian doctrines).

Uri Horesh discusses how sociolinguistic theory and research are expressed and investigated in Arabic. He focuses on variation, stating that ‘Arabic as a natural language… exhibits and has always exhibited, a vast degree of variation’. He explores gender, class, and age as variable factors in language change, and the effects of urban/rural differences. Horesh aims to specify how research in Arabic linguistics can enrich concepts in sociolinguistics, especially as pertains to phonological processes. He examines Labov’s concept of chain shift for both vowels and consonants in Arabic dialects, and suggests how both quantitative and qualitative research findings in Arabic can contribute to sociolinguistic theory.

Samira Farwaneh interrogates the largely unquestioned and untested assumption in linguistics that languages are all equally complex. Again, the indelible mark of diglossia in Arabic on theorizing about language colours the analysis, specifically with the notion that the formal Arabic of writing and declamation is necessarily more complex than the natively spoken varieties of the language. Starting from the assumption, shared by native speakers of Arabic and many linguists studying Arabic alike, that spoken varieties are simplifications of a more structurally complex and presumably chronologically older Arabic, represented by the Arabic of classical writing and its modern written descendant, she demonstrates that Arab dialects are in some ways more structurally complex than the Arabic of writing, specifically respecting the tense, mood, and aspect systems of spoken Arabi, the manifestations of indefinite noun constructs and object marking, and specifically in the so-called ‘dialectal tanwin’, co-referential and ethical dative marking, and in negation.

Taking on a contemporary topic of pervasive importance, Francesco Sinatora examines in detail linguistic heterogeneity and identity construction as they impact Arabic Facebook and YouTube discourse. Key issues of identity, positioning, performance, and multimodality are embedded in Arabic speakers’ use of discourse strategies that convey meaning in multiple ways and on multiple levels. ‘Social media’, states Sinatora, ‘provides a platform for the emergence of more hybrid practices, including the mixing of the vernaculars with MSA, as well as the localization of multilingual forms and global pop culture references.’ Sinatora reviews concepts of intertextuality and indexicality as they pertain to the use of language both written and spoken in Arabic-based social media. He connects these concepts to the idea of ‘vernacular globalization’, which refers to the linguistic construction of identities through diverse and multimodal formulation of powerful and appealing text messages. The second part of his paper documents how dissent is expressed through close examination of postings on Facebook and on YouTube. Through both written and spoken text analysis and face-to-face interviews with authors, Sinatora takes steps toward creating a new methodology for analysing variation in Arabic.

This assessment of studies of Arabic child language acquisition shows the inescapable influence of diglossia on approaches to such study and its effects on children acquiring Arabic. Observing that studies of the acquisition of Arabic as a first language are necessary but lacking, they also note with some irony that some of the studies that have been conducted, of which investigations into the phonological development of Arab children are the most numerous, examine children’s spoken productions of the formal Arabic of writing and declamation, which includes sounds not shared by their native dialects of Arabic. While agreeing that it is necessary to consider children’s attention to the phonology of MSA as an integral dimension of their Arabophone environment and therefore part of the phonological repertoire of their native dialects, they also lament the dearth and small size of studies investigating native dialect acquisition. After phonology, much of the chapter is devoted to assessing the implications of Arabic root-and-pattern morphology in child recognition and acquisition of Arabic morphosyntax and the intriguing findings of such few studies that address such matters as, for example, the acquisition of gender and case marking.

This chapter reviews the existing literature on two types of linguistic phenomena, both related to dialect contact: on the one hand, the dynamics of language diffusion and convergence which lead to processes of ‘informal standardization’; and on the other, the mix of varieties that are found in urban centres following the demographic growth of the latter (usually due to immigration from other regions or countries). In the first part of this work, the study of these two phenomena is reviewed in the different historical phases of the literature on sociolinguistics and dialect contact, and a comparison is made between the two types of varieties which, according to most authors, result from each phenomenon, and which are respectively termed ‘unofficial spoken standards’ and ‘new urban vernaculars’ in this chapter. In the second part, the same issues are examined in detail in the literature on Arabic sociolinguistics. Here, the importance of examining the interaction between the processes connected to the two types of varieties is underlined, in light of the fact that the different strands of studies have focused on just one of these two aspects of Arabic dialect contact while neglecting the other.

A significant proportion of the threatened idioms of the world are small, pre-literate languages spoken by communities encapsulated within modern ‘developed’ countries (e.g. Canada, the USA, Australia and New Zealand) whose dominant population uses a European competitor language of great prestige and wide currency. This acute asymmetry has been referred to by some Canadian indigenous leaders as characterizing the ‘Fourth World’ languages. Growing concern about the future of these languages has led to a focus on developing indigenous language literacy to prevent or even to reverse their loss. Focusing on the ‘standardization’ of the Innu language spoken in Quebec (Canada), this case study addresses the issue of whether standardization can actually foster literacy in the indigenous language and curtail (or even reverse) shift to the dominant language. The chapter discusses the process of orthographic standardization among the Innus as it unfolded in the past fifty years. It compares it with similar contexts across the world. A growing consensus emerges that standardization and literacy skills in indigenous languages cannot prevent language loss, and it is doubtful that it can foster the revitalization of the receding language.

Chapter 2 discusses the questions ‘what is language’ and ‘what is a language’. We explore properties of standard national languages as compared to regional dialects, registers, and pidgin and creole varieties. This survey illustrates that language seen as an abstract ability underlies all forms of linguistic variation and that the same sorts of grammatical concepts underlie any variety while questions of prestige or standard usage are fundamentally social and cultural issues. The interaction of social, cultural and linguistic issues is discussed from the perspective of language education.