How We Talk about Language
Exploring Citizen Sociolinguistics

With examples of conversation, this book is a lively account of social and intellectual import of everyday talk about language.

Betsy Rymes (Author)

9781108725965, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 24 September 2020

250 pages
15 x 23 x 1 cm, 0.32 kg

'This is an extremely useful call to think new and to try to go to the roots of how to democratise our understandings of how we talk about language from a participatory, dialoguing and non-authoritative sociolinguistics perspective. Indeed, an invitation worth considering, for anyone to become not only a citizen but a citizen sociolinguist actor.' Maria Sabaté-Dalmau, Language in Society

The most important challenges humans face - identity, life, death, war, peace, the fate of our planet - are manifested and debated through language. This book provides the intellectual and practical tools we need to analyse how people talk about language, how we can participate in those conversations, and what we can learn from them about both language and our society. Along the way, we learn that knowledge about language and its connection to social life is not primarily produced and spread by linguists or sociolinguists, or even language teachers, but through everyday conversations, on-line arguments, creative insults, music, art, memes, twitter-storms - any place language grabs people's attention and foments more talk. An essential new aid to the study of the relationship between language, culture and society, this book provides a vision for language inquiry by turning our gaze to everyday forms of language expertise.

Introduction: How We Talk About Language: Citizen Sociolinguistics and its Study
1. Citizen's arrest: the 'citizen' and sociolinguistic expertise
2. Wonderment: the spark that starts talk about language
3. Doing citizen sociolinguistics: the medium is the method
4. Fomenting arrest and wonderment: citizen sociolinguistic feedback loops
5. Citizen sociolinguistics and narrative
6. Acts of citizen sociolinguistics
Conclusion: why we must talk about language.

Subject Areas: Anthropology [JHM], Sociolinguistics [CFB], Linguistics [CF]