Product Description

Language, Society and Power looks at the ways in which language functions, how it influences thought and how it varies according to age, ethnicity, class and gender. It seeks to answer such questions as: How can a language reflect the status of children and older people? Do men and women talk differently? How can our use of language mark our ethnic identity? The book also looks at language use in politics and the media and examines how language affects and constructs our identities, exploring notions of correctness and attitudes towards language use. This edition has been updated to include recent developments in theory and research. It features: *new examples from everyday life: conversation transcripts, novels including Ian McEwan's Atonement , television and the Internet *new activities designed to give students a real understanding of the topic *an international perspective, with examples from the world's press, including The Washington Post , the Daily Mail and the New Zealand Listener *updated and expanded further reading sections and glossary. Language, Society and Power remains an essential introductory text for students of English language and linguistics. It will also be useful for students of media, communication, cultural studies, sociology and psychology.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #58388 in Books
• Published on: 2003-11-20
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 264 pages

Customer Reviews

A thorough introduction to sociolinguistics.
'Language, Society and Power' is a nice, accessible introduction to the discipline of sociolinguistics. It covers a variety of topics (including language & gender, language & age, language & ethnicity and language in the media) but does not delve very deeply into any of the areas, which is why the book can only serve as a starting point for any serious sociolinguistic reading. Each chapter is written by a different author, with each linguist tackling their specialist topic, which works well to keep the topics full of interesting ideas. Having studied the Language, Society and Power course which the book accompanies, I found this book stood me in good stead throughout and helped me to develop my particular areas of interest.

The power of words
A decent text for A-level (mainly AS) students on an English Language/Language and Literature course. Aimed specifically at the AQA B syllabus module with this title but a good introduction to this area of Sociolinguistics.

Somewhat simplistic...
This is an okay introduction to the issues in sociolinguistics, but overall it is quite simplistic - more an outline of the areas available than an in-depth analysis of any.
You could get almost as much by just taking the title headings ('Language & Gender,' 'Language & Ethnicity' etc) and adding the qualification "the words we use to describe things affect our perception of those things." The book does have some information on studies which show this, which is useful.
Worth buying if you want a very simple overview, but there are better books on sociolinguistics out there if you're really interested in the subject.
It gets 3 stars because it isn't misleading or badly written or anything definitively negative like that - it just doesn't have enough non-common-sense content for my tastes.