Anyone interested in the world generally can't help being interested in young adult culture - in the music, the bands, the books, the fashions, and the way in which the young adult community develops its own language.
Politics is the language through which a free society expresses itself
My father is from North Carolina, and he got rid of his drawl really fast. He's very much about speaking correctly, enunciating in certain ways.
Language is by its very nature a communal thing.
I grew up in a physical world, and I speak English. The next generation is growing up in a digital world, and they speak social.
I think a very important aspect of language has to do with the establishment of social relations and interactions. Often, this is described as communication. But that is very misleading, I think.
I speak Swedish mainly with my kids' friends.
Anyone interested in language ends up writing about the sociological issues around it.
Language ought to be the joint creation of poets and manual workers.
Nonverbal communication forms a social language that is in many ways richer and more fundamental than our words.
Language is decanted and shared. If only one person is left alive speaking a language - the case with some American Indian languages - the language is dead. Language takes two and their multiples.
I have resisted the term sociolinguistics for many years, since it implies that there can be a successful linguistic theory or practice which is not social.
There is undoubtedly much to learn about the social uses of language, for communication or for other purposes. But at present there is not much in the way of a theory of sociolinguistics, of social uses of languages, as far as I am aware.
