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1 results

  • Chapter 1 - English Sociolinguistics: Why It Matters

  • Daniel Schreier, University of Zurich
  • Book:
    English Sociolinguistics
    Published online:
    01 May 2025
    Print publication:
    15 May 2025, pp 1-19

  • Summary

    We will look at attitudes and value judgments which speakers and communities have about English dialects and discuss their social relevance of language in general. We will see that language is not only a means to share information but an essential part of social life which helps us organize ourselves and define our identity. There are different levels of usage (regional, social, ethnic, individual) and that variation has regional, social and individual dimensions. We start with a short discussion of general attitudes about language varieties, look at social prejudice based on language usage, find out why some varieties are stigmatized whereas others have high prestige and get a first glance of perceptions about standard and non-standardized varieties. Looking at examples from English around the world, we take a look at perceptual dialectology to demonstrate how views toward dialects affect our ives – not forgetting their negative side effects.