Urban Sociolinguistics: The City as a Linguistic Process and Experience

By: Dick Smakman and Patrick Heinrich

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Synopsis: From Los Angeles to Tokyo, Urban Sociolinguistics is a sociolinguistic study of twelve urban settings around the world. Building on William Labov’s famous New York Study, the authors demonstrate how language use in these areas is changing based on belief systems, behavioural norms, day-to-day rituals and linguistic practices. All chapters are written by key figures in sociolinguistics and presents the personal stories of individuals using linguistic means to go about their daily communications, in diverse sociolinguistic systems such as: extremely large urban conurbations like Cairo, Tokyo, and Mexico City smaller settings like Paris and Sydney less urbanised places such as the Western Netherlands Randstad area and Kohima in India. Providing new perspectives on crucial themes such as language choice and language contact, code-switching and mixing, language and identity, language policy and planning and social networks, this is key reading for students and researchers in the areas of multilingualism and super-diversity within sociolinguistics, applied linguistics and urban studies.