The second edition of Sociolinguistics/Soziolinguistik: An international handbook of the science of language and society/Ein internationales Handbuch zur Wissenschaft von Sprache und Gesellschaft contains extensive and important revisions from the first edition (Ammon, Dittmar & Mattheier Reference Ammon, Dittmar and Mattheier1987). As the editors explain in the preface, this recently completed handbook pays increased attention to the interrelationship of language and society, reflects the nature and autonomy of sociolinguistics as a now independent rather than “hyphenated” discipline, and includes a broad array of articles – some new, others reworked from the first edition as necessary (pp. v–xvii). This edition of the bilingual (English/German) handbook will also prove more appealing to its English-speaking audience, as it includes more English contributions. Finally, the editors note they “have tried to achieve encyclopaedic usefulness for all potential readers” (vi) – a goal that this cross-referenced, cumulatively indexed three-volume handbook with 11 sections of conveniently outlined and clearly written articles certainly seems to meet.
Section 1, “The subject matter of sociolinguistics,” is new to the second edition. Its 13 articles summarize current areas of interest, strands of research, and various subdisciplines that relate to sociolinguistics, including variationist sociolinguistics, social dialectology, the sociology of language, and functional sociolinguistics. Each article is practical, explaining “what sociolinguists actually do and why they do it” (1). For example, in “The geography of language,” Colin H. Williams touches upon (among other topics) the history of geolinguistics, cartographic representation of linguistic data, the import of geolinguistic research, and new trends and advances in the field, including the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and other computer-aided mapping techniques.
Sections 2 and 3 cover “Basic sociolinguistic concepts” and “Sociological concepts,” respectively. Section 2 is comprised of 28 articles that deal individually with what have become established terms in sociolinguistics, such as “speech community,” “communicative competence,” “language norm,” and “linguistic variable.” Concepts in Section 2 that are new to the second edition include “Focussing and diffusion” (Ronald Butters), “Domain” (Iwar Werlen), and “Code-switching” (Georges Lüdi), while other terms, including “Dialect and accent” (David Britain), “Vernacular – nonstandard” (Norbert Dittmar), and “Style” (Bernd Spiller), have been revised. Within Section 2, Martin Durrell's “Linguistic variable – linguistic variant” stands out as a particularly clear and comprehensive overview of this integral concept. Section 3 is comprised of 20 articles on sociological and social-psychological concepts that are critically important to the field of sociolinguistics, such as class, nation, attitude, and identity. Each article first provides an overview of the concept's relevance to sociolinguistic research, contextualizes the sociological or social-psychological traditions that informed its development, and resituates the concept in relation to longstanding and current sociolinguistic issues. Some articles, such as Gary D. Bouma & Haydn Aarons's piece on religion and spirituality as language-dependent activities, represent underresearched areas in sociolinguistics. Other new articles tackle the concepts “City” (Hartmut Häussermann), “Minority” (Rosita Rindler Schjerve), and “Community” (Glyn Williams). English-speaking readers should note that most articles in Section 3 are in German.
Section 4, “The social implications of levels of linguistic analysis,” contains 17 articles that take as their central question, “Which extralinguistic factors influence linguistic characteristics on the different levels of analysis of the linguistic code and to what extent?” (ix). The section begins with phonetics, phonology, morphology, lexicon, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics, and then moves on to code-switching, discourse, politeness forms, text, orthography, paralinguistic phenomena, nonverbal phenomena, and sign language. The updated article on phonetics (Bernd Pompino-Marschall) will prove particularly useful, as it includes current information from the TELSUR project that resulted in Labov, Ash & Boberg's (Reference Labov, Ash and Boberg2006) Atlas of North American English. Section 5, “The history of sociolinguistics,” includes 10 articles that review various strands of theory and research that have influenced the development of sociolinguistics, both before and after the field was recognized. While many readers might be familiar with the actual history of sociolinguistics, several chapters explore precursors to sociolinguistic theory and the treatment of language-related issues from related disciplines. Harald Haarman's “Sociolinguistic aspects of cultural anthropology” compares and contrasts sociolinguistics and cultural anthropology, while Martin Steinseifer, Jean Baptiste Marcellesi & Abdou Elimam's “Marxian approaches to sociolinguistics” carefully explores the few considerations of language in the writings of Marx and Engels. Section 5 ends volume 1 of the handbook.
Volume 2 begins with Section 6, “Neighbouring disciplines.” Rather than centering on linguistics, sociology, and anthropology broadly defined, the six articles in this section instead concentrate on subfields within these and other neighboring disciplines, as they relate to sociolinguistics: “Cultural sociology,” “Social psychology,” “Ethnology and anthropology,” “Dialectology,” “Psycholinguistics,” and “Human geography.” Christine A. Monnier's “Cultural sociology,” which focuses on the work of the French social theorist Pierre Bourdieu, is of interest, as a growing number of sociolinguists adopt a practice-based approach to sociolinguistic variation.
Section 7, “Sociolinguistic methodology,” is an expansive 32-article section on “the methodology of describing verbal, and to some extent also non-verbal, behaviour” (xii). Compact, comprehensible, and practical entries deal with such topics as research design, data collection, representation of data, and research ethics. A standout in this section is “Quantitative methods” (Toni Rietveld & Roeland van Hout), which reviews statistical techniques used in sociolinguistic research. The authors focus on single factor and multifactorial analysis of variance (ANOVA) tests, explaining everything from the assumptions behind the tests to how to analyze data using the statistical package SPSS and interpret results. The authors also mention t-tests, multiple regression analysis, and two advanced techniques less common to sociolinguistic research – hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) and LISREL. Other noteworthy chapters in Section 7 include Charles L. Briggs's “Sociolinguistic interviews,” which evaluates this common sociolinguistic data collection method; Edward Finegan's “The possibilities and limits of corpus-linguistic description,” which discusses available corpora for sociolinguistic research, corpus design and use, and software for exploring corpora; and Cailin Kulp, Karen M. Cornetto & Mark L. Knapp's “The description of non-verbal behaviour,” which discusses research on the face, eye gaze, the voice, gestures, and proxemics.
Section 8, “Findings of sociolinguistic research,” is similarly comprehensive, consisting of 42 articles about research on sound change, language attitudes, language contact, national languages, and more. The editors note that some articles, such as “Research on urban varieties” (William F. Mackey), are extensively revised from the first edition of the handbook, while others, such as “Research on sociolinguistic style” (Françoise Gadet) and “Code-switching” (Jeanine Treffers-Daller), are new. More attention is also paid in this section to issues of bilingualism, multilingualism, pluralingualism, national languages, and language conflict, as seen in the articles by Peter Hans Nelde, William F. Mackey, Guus Extra & Durk Gorter, Harald Haarmann, Ulrich Ammon, Karen Risager, and more. Some articles explore language prejudice and perception, such as those by Richard Y. Bourhis and Dennis R. Preston, while articles by Ruth Wodak, Ruth Wodak & Rudolf de Cillia, Florian Coulmas, and others explore the relationship between language and social institutions. The entries in Section 8 delve more deeply into aspects of language and social identity as well – for example, “Research on sociolinguistic style” (Françoise Gadet), “Research on youth-language” (Jannis K. Androutsopoulos), “Sex and language” (Gisela Klann-Delius), and “Language and identity” (Monica Heller). The last five articles in Section 8 are devoted to historical sociolinguistics as well as sound, grammatical, semantic, and lexical change. Section 8 ends Volume 2.
Volume 3 begins with Section 9, “Regional overview.” For each area, country, set of countries, or region, the author(s) contextualize the sociohistorical, cultural, and political situation, describe the languages and varieties spoken there and their genetic relationships, and detail current debates or political tensions related to language. Revised and updated from the first edition of the handbook, these 50 articles do an impressive job of “represent[ing] all areas of the world,” as contended in the introduction (xiv). Section 10, “Linguistic change, sociolinguistic aspects,” consists of 14 articles that consider how various social processes that affect communities or societies – such as alphabetization or language reform, for example – result in linguistic change. Prominent articles in this section include “Migration and language” (Paul Kerswill), “Sociolinguistic developments as a diffusion process” (Marinel Gerritsen & Roeland van Hout), “Colonisation and decolonisation” (Robert Phillipson), and “The development of language empires” (Ranier Enrique Hamel), each of which carefully contextualizes the historical development and contemporary status of the social processes and linguistic changes at issue.
The final section of the handbook, “Application,” surveys sociolinguistic approaches to and research on language-related social problems in a range of fields that include education, medicine, law, and politics. The 25 articles in this section touch on foreign language pedagogy, official languages, feminist linguistic reform, graphization, therapeutic discourse, speech therapy, and more. The closing entry, “Linguistic human rights” (Tove Skutnabb-Kangas), defines linguistic human rights, explains the nature of possible challenges to them, provides examples of disputes relating to linguistic human rights from around the globe, and discusses contemporary measures in the form of proposed and/or adopted drafts, declarations, and covenants to protect them.
The revised edition of the Sociolinguistics/Soziolinguistik handbook is as comprehensive, practical, and user-friendly as its editors attest. Several aspects enhance the accessibility of the handbook, such the brief outlines that begin each article, the cross-referencing of articles, and the cumulative index. Though its size and cost may be daunting, the second edition of the handbook stands as an exemplary reference tool to which researchers and students alike can turn for concise, yet thorough, current information on nearly any topic of sociolinguistics.
