English in Its Social Contexts

Download or read book English in Its Social Contexts written by Tim William Machan and published by Oxford University Press on Demand. This book was released on 1992 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The second volume in the Oxford Studies in Sociolinguistics series, this collection of essays addresses each of the traditional periods of English, acknowledging the effect of external social context on determining the direction of changes within the language's syntax, phonology, and lexicon.Topics covered include the social status and uses of English, the relationship between English and co-existent languages, the relationship between varieties of spoken and written language, language as a political and socioeconomic instrument, and attitudes towards varieties of English. A broadintroduction to sociolinguistics, this text also provides students of linguistics and the English language with an important revision of the traditional approaches to the history of language.