An Introduction to Sociolinguistics explains how people use language in different social settings and how the way they speak signals who they are. It is arranged in three sections: multilingual speech communities; variation between speakers, by region, social group, gender, age, ethnicity and social network; and variation by use, from style and politeness to discourse and language attitudes.
The sixth edition adds new material on social media, codeswitching, gender and language policy, with fresh examples from Asia and South America and a companion website of audio and video. It is written for undergraduate courses in linguistics, English language studies and applied linguistics, and serves as a reference well beyond the first year.
