Description
Book SynopsisJan Blommaert is Professor of Language, Culture and Globalization and Director of Babylon, Center for the Study of Superdiversity at Tilburg University, the Netherlands.
Trade ReviewBlommaert's book is a theoretical tour-de-force, entertaining, challenging and immensely enlightening. It encompasses a wide swath of thinking about the relationship between language and society, both in history and now. * Internet Pragmatics *
Once again, Blommaert challenges sociolinguists to reflect on our discipline in new and exciting ways. While we have long devoted much energy to the linguistic half of the sociolinguistic equation, here Blommaert makes a compelling argument for engaging more fully with the social half, and for the relevance of classical sociology to understanding the new ways language is being used in the age of globalisation and digital communication. * Rodney H. Jones, Professor of Sociolinguistics, University of Reading, UK *
In this concise but absorbing book, Blommaert provides a highly persuasive argument for why sociology should engage seriously with research into language. In doing so he details the profound and wide-ranging benefits that the study of communicative interaction can offer for a theorization of society in general. The book is likely to become essential reading for both sociolinguists, sociologists, and those interested in the ways that digital media are transforming the modern world. * Philip Seargeant, Senior Lecturer in Applied Linguistics, The Open University, UK *
Table of Contents1. Sociolinguists as sociologists 2. Durkheim’s social fact 2.1 Norms and concepts 2.2 Integration and anomie 2.3 Durkheim’s impact and the challenge of 'Rational Choice' 3. Sociolinguistics and the social fact: Avec Durkheim 3.1 Language as a normative collective system: ordered indexicality 3.2 Language variation: dialects, accents & languaging 3.3 Inequality, voice, repertoire 3.4 Language, the social fact 4. What Durkheim could not have known: Après Durkheim 4.1 Preliminary: A theory of vernacular globalization 4.2 An indexical-polynomic theory of social norms 4.3 A genre theory of social action 4.4 A microhegemonic theory of identity 4.5 A theory of “light” social groups 4.6 A polycentric theory of social integration 4.7 Constructures 4.8 Anachronism as power 5. The sociological re-imagination References
