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SOCIOLOGY OF LANGUAGE

The sociology oflanguage is the study of the relationship between language

and society. It 'focuses upon the entire gamut of topics related to the social
organization of language behavior, including not only language usage per
se but also language attitudes and overt behaviors toward language and
toward language users' (Fishman, 1971, p. 217). The field begins from
the assumption that language is a social value, and pursues research on
language in contact among social groups, especially phenomena such as
language conflict and multilingualism. While Fishman tends to charac-
terize the study at two levels: descriptive sociology oflanguage, describing
'who speaks what language to whom and when', and dynamic sociology
of language, explaining the different rates of change of language behavior
in different groups, his definition is far from clear in terms of levels of
analysis. This gap was bridged by McKay & Hornberger (1996, p. x), who
have established a distinctive four-level model for approaching the study
of language and society. The scope of this essay falls within the macro -
macro level in their model, i.e. the area of sociolinguistics dealing with the
relationship between the larger social and political contexts and language
use at a macro level. The aim of the essay is to provide an overview of the
theoretical and methodological models in this field and to indicate how it
has advanced in the field of language education (also see reviews by Fettes
and by Schroeder in Volume 1).

EARL Y DEVELOPMENTS

Joyce Hertzler's two publications: 'Toward a sociology of language'

(1953), and 'The sociology of language' (1965), along with a 1966
sociolinguistics conference in California, were catalysts for intense and
sustained research efforts beginning in the late 1960s. Sociologists and
educationalists eagerly sought to understand the relationship between lan-
guage and social disadvantage, linguists eagerly sought to define the notion
of communicative competence in a speech community, and anthropolo-
gists eagerly sought to investigate the relationship between language and
culture.
The explosion of this research interest began with early scholars largely
from sociology and anthropological linguistics, who applied their method-
ologies and theories to the description of the contextual correlates of the
use of linguistic varieties. Some scholars (e.g. Haugen, 1966; Gumperz,

N.H. Hornberger and D. Corson (eds), Encyclopedia of Language and Education,

Volume 8: Research Methods in Language and Education, 1-13.
© 1997 Kluwer Academic Publishers.
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1968) identified concepts (e.g. dialect; speech community) of fundamental

importance; others (e.g. Ferguson, 1966; Stewart, 1968; Kloss, 1968),
based on census and language surveys, established formulas and typolo-
gies for description and comparison of sociolingusitic situations. Their
purpose was to describe a nation's language use by a language profile
method. These early scholars of the sociology of language commonly used
a demographic approach to the quantitative study of speech communities.
A nation's population was categorized in terms of a language criterion
(e.g. mother tongue), and the verbal repertoire of a speech community was
profiled into 'major' and 'minor' languages, with dimensions including
number and function of languages; number and distribution of language
users.
While the 'static' approach of the language profile did not interpret the
dynamic process of language use and change, it catalogued the diversity
and inequality of sociolinguistic situations. Subsequent scholars have
advanced this line of research, in which linguistic differences and educa-
tional and social disadvantages of minority language groups have become
one of the major concerns. Another foundational work, Labov's (1969)
exposition on the logic of nonstandard English, played a central role
in clarifying that language differences become deficits through popular
convention and prejudice (on the standard/non-standard issue see reviews
by Corson in Volumes 1 and 6). The confluence of social, cultural and
linguistic factors contributing to these inequalities and how they affect
the domain of language education havc become widely researched topics
thereafter.

MAJOR CONTRIBUTIONS

The scope and depth of research has been expanded since the mid-1970s.
Investigation of many 'macro-issues' , such as language contact and spread,
societal multilingualism, diglossia, language policy and language plan-
ning, language maintenance and shift, and language attitude, has produced
a substantial body of literature. The study of those topics springs from the
core sociolinguistic concern, i.e. 'the description and analysis of the orga-
nization and change of verbal repertoires in relation to the main processes
of societal evolution' (Hymes, 1984, p. 44). Specifically, the work in
developed nations mainly focuses on language policies and immigrant
language maintenance and shift, while that in developing nations focuses
on national language policies and language policies in education. Despite
differences in dimensions and in national-type contexts, issues oflanguage
education are directly relevant to those sociolinguistic concerns, because
educational choices being made can have a direct impact on the opportuni-
ties of minority speakers. Issues commonly addressed in the sociology of
language in relation to advances in language education include language