Language Policy (Key Topics in Sociolinguistics) - Softcover

Spolsky, Bernard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0521011752 ISBN 13: 9780521011754

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2004

Synopsis

The volume brings together leading experts from a range of disciplines to create a broad perspective on the study of style and variation in spoken language. The book discusses key approaches to stylistic variation, including such issues as attention paid to speech, audience design, identity construction, the corpus study of register, genre, distinctiveness and the anthropological study of style. Rigorous and engaging, this book will become the standard work on stylistic variation. It will be welcomed by students and academics in sociolinguistics, English language, dialectology, anthropology and sociology.

About this title

About the Author:

Bernard Spolsky is Emeritus Professor at Bar-Ilan University, Israel, and Senior Associate, the National Foreign Language Center at the University of Maryland.

Review:

"It is one of the virtues of this book that what one author suggests or asserts may be supplemented or argued with by another. Reading these papers is therefore not unlike attending a thoughtful debate carried on by experts...it is a rigorous and well-referenced (there is a 32-page bibliography) exploration of style from a variety of perspectives. In addition, the work provides fascinating critiques of the many viewpoints presented during the workshop." Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

"Taking into account this gathering of refined versions of classical approaches to style with others completely new perspectives on the one hand, and the extensive reflections on each of these that other experts offer, the book constitutes an excellent up to date of research into the role of style in sociolinguistic variation and represents a serious attempt to solve the problems that its analysis poses. The collection is a fundamental reference, therefore, for students and academics whose works have to deal more or less directly with the complex but at the same time fascinating task of interpreting stylistic variation in speech." Estudios de Sociolinguistica Virginia Acuna Ferreira, Universidade de Vigo

About this edition

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0521011752
• ISBN 13: 9780521011754
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 264