Sociolinguistics (Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics)

Rating:
Summary: Wordy
Review: This is a passable, though wordy, introduction to the field. The book covers the standard topics in sociolinguistics, including: language variation, language varieties, code-switching, anthropological linguistics, gender differences, and educational implications of sociolinguistics (concentrating on Britain). The organization of topics often seems to circle back on itself, with points being repeated in different places rather than being grouped together. The author attacks the work of both Labov and Chomsky without following through with comprehensible arguments.

The explanations are not always clear, especially in the section on quantitative study of speech, which is replete with unlabeled or poorly labeled graphs. The author is also not very careful with his accuracy of comments. Consider for instance, this quote from page 61 about pidgins: "As for morphology, this is left out altogether, which again makes for ease of learning....The best way to illustrate these characteristics of pidgins is by discussing a sentence from Tok Pisin, the English-based pidgin spoken in Papua New Guinea. Bai em i no lukim mi. 'He will not see me.'" Below this, luk- is glossed as 'see', and -im is glossed as "added obligatorily whenever the verb has an object". It's hard to see how this example illustrates how morphology has been left out altogether! The book contains many examples of such blanket overstatements or carelessness.

Although the book is often used as a course text, it lacks suggested exercises, projects, or suggestions for additional reading. It does contain an excellent bibliography and index.