Foundations in Sociolinguistics: An Ethnographic Approach

by Dell Hymes

Overview

Sociolinguistics is conceived here as a fundamental critical perspective on the whole of the study of language. The scientific problems within present linguistics, the book contends, combine with social problems of the society in which linguists participate to press linguistics to discover ethnographic foundations. The work of providing such foundations largely remains to be done. Working out the implications of these three principles requires a new mode of description of linguistic features and relationships, a mode which can treat the verbal means of a community as a part of its organization of communicative means.

In Part One, Dell Hymes indicates the place of linguistic inquiry as part of an inquiry into communicable conduct in general. Part Two demonstrates the mutual relation between linguistics and other disciplines that contribute to the common larger field—sociology, social anthropology, education, folklore, and poetics are discussed. In Part Three the author argues that problems within linguistic inquiry suggest social foundations of linguistics deeper than presently assumed, such that social meaning and stylistic function must be taken into account systematically, and social life seen as a source of the organization of linguistic means.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780812210651
Publisher:	University of Pennsylvania Press, Inc.
Publication date:	05/01/1974
Series:	Conduct and Communication
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	260
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.63(d)

Table of Contents

Introduction

TOWARD ETHNOGRAPHIES OF COMMUNICATION
1. Toward ethnographies of communication
2. Studying the interaction of language and social life

THE STATUS OF LINGUISTICS AS A SCIENCE
3. Why linguistics needs the sociologist
4. Social anthropology, sociolinguistics, and the ethnography of speaking
5. Bilingual education: linguistic vs. sociolinguistic bases
6. The contribution of folklore to sociolinguistic research
7. The contribution of poetics to sociolinguistic research

LINGUISTICS AS SOCIOLINGUISTICS
8. Linguistic theory and functions in speech
9. Syntactic arguments and social roles: Quantifiers, Keys, and Reciprocal vs. Reflexive Relationships
10. The scope of sociolinguistics

Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

"Stimulating and provocative. . . . Highly recommended . . . both as an introduction for beginning students in courses dealing with language and culture and as a useful synthesis of the important theoretical issues for more advanced scholars."

Anthropological Quarterly

"Stimulating and provocative. . . . Highly recommended . . . both as an introduction for beginning students in courses dealing with language and culture and as a useful synthesis of the important theoretical issues for more advanced scholars."—Anthropological Quarterly

From the Publisher