LINGUIST List 12.1984

Wed Aug 8 2001

Books: Sociolinguistics

Editor for this issue: Jody Huellmantel <jodylinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Joyce Reid, Language and the Internet
2. Joyce Reid, Class, Language, and American Film Comedy
3. Joyce Reid, Message #14: New Book: Sociolinguistics

Language and the Internet 
David Crystal


"This book provides an important look at how the Internet has affected our
use of language. To my knowledge, there are no other comparable books 
available on this subject. Issues of language are certainly treated in 
many other books about the Internet, but this one features linguistics as 
its main topic. The book will be an important contribution."-Patricia 
Wallace, Ph.D., Director, Information Services and Instructional 
Technologies Center for Talented Youth, The John Hopkins University, 
Author, The Psychology and the Internet

According to popular mythology, the Internet will be bad for the
future of language--technospeak will rule, standards will be lost, and
creativity diminished as globalization imposes sameness. David
Crystal, one of the foremost authorities on language, argues the
reverse in his new book: that the Internet is enabling a dramatic
expansion of the range and variety of language and is providing
unprecedented opportunities for personal creativity. In order to grow
and be maintained as a linguistic medium, the principles and standards
of the Internet must evolve--and they will be very different from
other mediums.

Is the Internet a revolution? Is it a linguistic revolution? Beyond
the visual panache of the presentation on a screen, the Internet's
"linguistic"

character is immediately obvious to anyone online. As the Internet has
become incorporated into our lives, it is becoming clearer how it is
being shaped by and is adapting language and languages. Language and
the Internet is the first book by a language expert on the
linguistic aspects of the Internet. Opening up linguistic issues for
a general readership, Crystal argues that "netspeak" is a radically
new linguistic medium that we cannot ignore.

David Crystal is one of the foremost authorities on language, and as
editor of the Cambridge Encyclopedia he has used the Internet for
research purposes from its earliest manifestations. His work for the
technology company Classification Data Limited has involved him in the
development of an information classification system with several
Internet applications, and he has extensive professional experience of
Web issues.

 Crystal is author of several books with Cambridge, including the
Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language (1997), Cambridge Encyclopedia of
the English Language (1995), English as a Global Language (1997), and
Langugage Death ( 2000) and Words on Words (University of Chicago,
2000) . An internationally renowned writer, journal editor, lecturer
and broadcaster, he received an OBE in 1995 for his services to the
English language. His edited books include The Cambridge Encyclopedia
(Fourth Edition, 2000) The Cambridge Paperback Encyclopedia (Third
Edition, 1999), The Cambridge Biographical Encyclopedia (Second
Edition, 1997) and The Cambridge Factfinder ( Fourth Edition, 2000).
Contents:

Preface; 1. A linguistic perspective; 
2. The medium of Netspeak; 
3. Finding an identity; 
4. The language of e-mail; 
5. The language of chatgroups; 
6. The language of virtual worlds; 
7. The language of the Web; 
8. The future of the Internet; 
Index.

2001/272 pp./8 tables
0-521-80212-1/Hb/List: $19.95

Class, Language, and American Film Comedy
Christopher Beach

Examining the evolution of American film comedy since the beginning of the
sound era (c. 1930), Christopher Beach focuses on how language, class, and
social relationships in early sound comedies by the Marx Brothers, the 
screwball comedies of the 1930s by Capra, Sturges and others, and 1950s
comedies of Frank Tashlin and Vincente Minnelli, and contemporary films by 
Woody Allen, Whit Stillman, and the Coen brothers. Beach argues that sound 
and narrative expanded the semiotic and ideological potential of a film, 
providing moments of genuine social critique and also mass entertainment.

Christopher Beach teaches at the University of California, Irvine, and has
taught at the University of Montana and Claremont Graduate University. He 
is the author of three books on American poetry, including Poetic Culture
(Northwestern, 1999). This is his first book on film.

Contents:
Introduction; 1; A Troubled Paradise: Utopia and Transgression in Comedies of
the Early 1930s; 2; Working Ladies and Forgotten Men: Class Divisions in
Romantic Comedy, 1934-37; 3; "The Split-Pea Soup and the Succotash": Frank
Capra's 1930s Comedies and the Subject of Class;4; Is Class Necessary?: 
Preston Sturges and Howard Hawks in the Early 1940s; 5; Desperately 
Seeking Status: Class, Gender, and Social Anxiety in Postwar Hollywood 
Comedy; 6; Is There a Class in This Text?: Woody Allen and Postmodern 
Comedy; 7; Yuppies and Other Strangers: Class Satire and Cultural Clash in
Contemporary Film Comedy

2002/c. 256 pp.
0-521-80749-2/Hb/List: $54.95*
0-521-00209-5/Pb/List: $18.95*

Style and Sociolinguistic Variation

Editors
Penelope Eckert, Stanford University, CA
John R. Rickford, Stanford University, CA


The volume brings together leading experts from a range of disciplines to
create a broad perspective on the study of style and variation in spoken
language. The book discusses key approaches to stylistic variation, including
such issues as attention paid to speech, audience design, identity 
construction, the corpus study of register, genre, distinctiveness and the 
anthropological study of style. Rigorous and engaging, this book will 
become the standard work on stylistic variation. It will be welcomed by 
students and academics in sociolinguistics, English language, dialectology,
anthropology and sociology.

Contributors:
John R. Rickford, Penelope Eckert, Judith T. Irvine, Susan Ervin-Tripp,
Richard Bauman, Ronald Macaulay, William Labov, John Baugh, Elizabeth 
Closs Traugott, Allan Bell, Malcah Yaegar-Dror, Nikolas Coupland, Howard 
Giles, Edward Finegan, Douglas Biber, Lesley Milroy, Dennis R. Preston.

Context:
Introduction John R. Rickford and Penelope Eckert; Part I. Anthropological 
Approaches: 1. 'Style' as distinctiveness: the culture and ideology of 
linguistic differentation Judith T. Irvine; 2. Variety, style-shifting,
and ideology Susan Ervin-Tripp; 3. The ethnography of genre in a Mexican 
market: form, function, variation Richard Bauman; 4. The question of genre 
Ronald Macaulay; Part II. Attention Paid to Speech: 5. The anatomy of 
style shifting William Labov; 6. A dissection of style shifting John Baugh;
 7. Style and social meaning Penelope Eckert; 8. Zeroing in on 
multifunctionality and style Elizabeth Closs Traugott; Part III. Audience 
Design and Self-Identification: 9. Back in style: reworking audience 
design Allan Bell; 10. Primitives of a system for 'style' and 'register' 
Malcah Yaegar-Dror; 11. Language, situation and the relational self: 
theorising dialect-style in sociolinguistics Nikolas Coupland; 12. 
Couplandia and beyond Howard Giles; 13. Style and stylizing from the 
perspective of a non-autonomous sociolinguistics John R. Rickford; Part IV.
 Functionally Motivated Situational Variation: 14. Register variation and 
social dialect variation: re-examining the connection Edward Finegan and 
Douglas Biber; 15. Conversation, spoken language and social identity 
Lesley Milroy; 16. Style and the psycholinguistics of sociolinguistics: 
the logical problem of language variation Dennis R. Preston.

2001/c. 340 pp./15 graphs/10 line diagrams/26 tables
0-521-59191-0/Hb/List: $69.95*
0-521-59789-7/Pb/List: $24.95*