Product Description: Synchronic sociolinguistics has been particularly convincing in its use of quantitative models to demonstrates how 'the present might explain the past'. However, the relevance of sociolinguistics to historical linguistics 'using the past to explain the present', has been largely ignored...read more

Product Description: Tok Pisin is one of the most important languages of Melanesia and is used in a wide range of public and private functions in Papua New Guinea. The language has featured prominently in Pidgin and Creole linguistics and has featured in a number of debates in theoretical linguistics...read more

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Product Description: This collection in honor of creolist Charlene Junko Sato (1951–1996) brings together contributions by leading specialists in pidgin-creole studies in three primary areas: Pidgin-Creole Genesis and Development; Attitudes and Education, and Creole Discourse and Literature...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

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Taking a cross-disciplinary approach, Suzanne Romaine's main concern is to show how language and discourse play key roles in understanding and communicating gender and culture. In addition to linguistics--which provides the starting point and central focus of the book--she draws on the fields of anthropology, biology, communication, education, economics, history, literary criticism, philosophy, psychology, and sociology. The text covers the "core" areas in the study of language and gender, including how and where gender is indexed in language, how men and women speak, how children acquire gender differentiated language, and sexism in language and language reform. Although most of the examples are drawn primarily from English, other European languages and non-European languages, such as Japanese are considered. The text is written in an accessible way so that no prior knowledge of linguistics is necessary to understand the chapters containing linguistic analysis. Each chapter is followed by exercises and discussion questions to facilitate the book's use as a classroom text. The author reviews scholarly treatments of gender, and then uses her own data material from the corpora of spoken and written English usage. Special features include an examination of contemporary media sources such as newspapers, advertising, and television; a discussion of women's speculative fiction; a study of gender and advertising, with special attention paid to the role played by language in these domains; and a review of French feminist thought, particularly as it relates to the issue of language reform.

It has been estimated that about half the world's population is bilingual and that bilingualism can be found in virtually every country of the world. This book is a general introduction to the study of bilingualism from a combined sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic perspective. Drawing on her reseach with Punjabi/English bilinguals in Britain and Tok Pisin/English bilingual children in Papua New Guinea, Professor Romaine explores bilingualism as both a societal and cognitive phenomenon. She therefore sees various aspects of bilingual behaviour such as code-switching and language mixing, in terms of their social functions within the bilingual speech community as well as in terms of neurolinguistic organization in the individual speaker. The author also assesses the positive and negative claims made for the effects of bilingualism on children's cognitive, social and academic development, and examines the assumptions behind various language policies and programs for bilingual children. (view table of contents)

Sociolinguistics explores the relationship between society and language. Suzanne Romaine has written a lively and readable introduction to the field, covering both traditional and more recent issues such as language and gender, language in education, pidgins and creoles, and language change, drawing on examples from cultures all over the world. The text is suitable for first-year students studying on introductory courses, both general introductions to linguistics and to sociolinguistics, and for the general reader interested in language issues. (view table of contents)

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Product Description: This book defines and describes the linguistic features of these languages and considers the dynamic developments that bring them into being and lead to changes in their structure.