LINGUIST List 13.1526

Sun May 26 2002

Qs: Lang Planning & Policy, Socioling Variables

Editor for this issue: Karen Milligan <karenlinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Elke Stracke, Language planning & policy
2. Richard Cameron, A question for Variationists in Sociolinguistics

Dear colleagues,

I am looking for textbooks etc. for a course in "Language Planning and
Language Politics". The course I have to teach is aimed at both
undergraduate and graduate students.

a) Could anyone recommend textbooks (in English) for such a course?
b) What other reading material (preferably in English) would you
recommend to complement the textbook(s) ?

Thanks in advance for helping me out !

Elke Stracke

In Puerto Rican Spanish, one finds a male favoring, relative to
females, for null forms in at least 3 sociolinguistic variables: Word
final (s), direct quotation strategies, and intervocalic (d). In
English, for variables such as word-final (r) and t/d deletion, if I
recall correctly, males favor, relative to females, the deleted or
null forms also. In fact, I cannot find a reliable example, in the
literature, of a sociolinguistic variable which shows two or more
variants, one of which is null, in which female speakers favor the
null variant relative to males. Of course, I have not read all of the
literature, so I may simply be overlooking examples of this.

Question: Does anyone know of a sociolinguistic variable, in any
language, which has the following characteristics: First, there is an
alternation between something and nothing. Second, this alternation is
constrained by categories of gender identity. In other words, the
variable shows a gender effect. Third, female speakers as a group
favor the null variant relative to males?

- Richard Cameron