Making Waves The Story of Variationist Sociolinguistics

by Tagliamonte, Sali A.

• ISBN13: 9781118455166
• ISBN10: 1118455169
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2015-11-02
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Summary

Making Waves tells the human story of an academic field based on one-to-one interviews with 43 of the most famous scholars in Variationist Sociolinguistics. Explanations of concepts, ideas, good practice and sage advice come directly from the progenitors of the discipline.

• An authentic, inside story about the origins of Sociolinguistics as Language Variation and Change, recording the context and spirit of sociolinguistics
• Gives students access to the views on language variation of major sociolinguists such as Bill Labov and Peter Trudgill
• Offers a human story of an academic field, and is written in the style of a novel, offering complete accessibility with minimal in-group terminology
• Provides a timely audio archive of the reminiscences of the major Sociolinguists, including Labov, Fasold, Milroy, Trudgill, and Wolfram, with a companion website featuring 400 audio clips from the interviews. Visit the site at www.wiley.com/go/tagliamonte/makingwaves

Author Biography

Sali A. Tagliamonte is a Professor in the Linguistics Department at the University of Toronto, Canada. She is author of Analysing Sociolinguistic Variation (2006) and Variationist Sociolinguistics: Change, Observation, Interpretation (Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), among other books and has published on African American varieties; British, Irish, and Canadian dialects; as well as child, teen, television, and Internet language.

Table of Contents

Preface viii

1 Where It Begins 1

2 Synchronicity and Sociolinguistics 25

3 A Crescendo of Research 53

4 Roots of Variationist Thinking 74

5 Sociolinguistics in the Street 88

6 Why Statistics Is in Your Head 107

7 Sociolinguistics From the Heart 121

8 Branching Out; Bursting at the Seams 131

9 Why Do You Like Variation? 158

10 Launching the Future 169

Afterword 185

Appendix A List of Interviews 186

Appendix B VSLX Family Tree 187

References 194

Index 202