Sociology
Portal
General aspects
History · Positivism · Antipositivism Functionalism · Conflict theory Social theory · Critical theory Structure & agency · Socialization Research · Public sociology Sociology of: childhood · culture deviance · education · environment · ethnicity · family · gender · health industry · internet · knowledge · law military · rationalization · religion science · secularization · stratification
Related fields and subfields
Criminology · Cultural studies Economic sociology · Islamic sociology Media studies · Medical sociology Political sociology · Social anthropology Social psychology · Sociobiology Socioeconomics · Sociolinguistics Statistics · Systems theory
Categories and lists
Journals · Publications · Outline List of sociologists · Index
v • d • e

Sociology of language focuses on the language's effect on the society. It is closely related to the field of sociolinguistics, which focuses on the effect of the society on the language.

A sociology of language would seek to understand the way that social dynamics affect individual and group language use. It would have to do with who is 'authorized' to use what language, with whom and under what conditions. It would have to do with how an individual or group identity is established by the language that they have available for them to use. It would seek to understand individual expression, one's (libidinal) investment in the linguistic tools that one has access to in order to bring oneself to other people.

The key figure in the establishment field is Joshua Fishman, founder and still editor of the International Journal of the Sociology of Language.

[edit] See also

• Linguistic anthropology
• Anthropological linguistics

[edit] References

• Fishman, Joshua A. (1972). The sociology of language: An interdisciplinary social science approach to language in society. Newbury House Publishers. ISBN: 978-0912066165.
• Spolsky, Bernard and Francis M. Hult eds. (2007) The Handbook of Educational Linguistics. [1] eISBN: 9781405154109.
• International Journal of the Sociology of Language [2]. Mouton de Gruyter. Editor: Joshua A. Fishman. ISSN (Print) 0165-2516.

This sociology-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v • d • e