12 - Language and place

Summary

Sociolinguists have always been concerned with place. This chapter summarizes emergence of dialectology in the nineteenth century in the context of the politics of the European nation-state. It summarizes the twentieth-century dialect atlas projects, conducted in the context of a renewed interest in region across the disciplines. The chapter traces ideas about place in quantitative, social-scientific approaches to variation and change. Finally, it outlines several newer ways of thinking about language and place that have emerged in the context of widespread interest in how the social world is collectively shaped in discourse and in how individuals experience language and linguistic variation. Geographers' focus on regions and regional exceptionalism mirrors dialectologists' work of the period in the Linguistic Atlas of the United States and Canada projects. Lesley Milroy and James Milroy brought social network theory to bear on sociolinguistic issues.