Language Regard: Methods, Variation and Change

Bringing together a team of renowned international scholars, this volume provides a wide-ranging collection of historical and state-of-the-art perspectives on language regard, particularly in the context of language variation and language change, and importantly, highlights the range of new methodologies being used by linguists to explore and evaluate it. The importance of language regard to the inquiry of language variation and change in the field of sociolinguistics is increasingly being recognized, yet misunderstandings about its nature and importance continue to exist. This volume provides scholars and students of sociolinguistics, with the tools and theory to pursue such inquiry. Contributions and research come from Europe, North America, and Asia, and language varieties such as Spanish, Dutch, Danish, and American Sign Language are discussed.

Table of Contents:
1. Language regard: what, why, how, whither? Dennis R. Preston; Part I. Language Regard: Varied Methods: 2. A variationist approach to studies of language regard Patricia Cukor-Avila; 3. The emic and the etic in perceptual dialectology Jennifer Cramer; 4. Variation in language regard: sociolinguistic receptivity and acceptability of linguistic features Erica J. Benson and Megan L. Risdal; 5. Social meanings of the north-south divide in the Netherlands and their linkage to standard Dutch and dialect varieties Leonie Cornips; 6. Language subordination on a national scale: examining the linguistic discrimination of Hungarians by Hungarians Miklós Kontra; 7. Regional identity and listener perception Valerie Fridland and Tyler Kendall; Part II. Language Regard and Language Variation: 8. Language regard and migration: Cuban immigrants in the United States Gabriela Alfaraz; 9. Perceptions of Black American Sign Language Robert Bayley, Joseph C. Hill, Carolyn McCaskil and Ceil Lucas; 10. Ethnolinguistic assertions regarding people who allegedly 'talk White', or 'talk Black' John Baugh; 11. Language regard in liminal Hmong American speech communities James Stanford, Rika Ito and Faith Nibbs; 12. Language regard and sociolinguistic competence of non-native speakers Alexei Prikhodkine; Part III. Language Regard and Language Change: 13. Cracking the code: wedgies and lexical respectability Jack Chambers; 14. Language regard and cultural practice: variation, evaluation, and change in the German regional languages Christoph Purschke; 15. Tabula rasa new-dialect formation: on the occasional irrelevance of language regard Peter Trudgill; 16. Sharedness and variability in language regard among young Danes: focus on gender Tore Kristiansen.

About the Author :
Betsy E. Evans is Associate Professor of Linguistics at the University of Washington. Her research concentrates on linguistic variation and how that relates to the functions of language in marking identity, status, group solidarity, and cultural values and draws heavily on perceptions and attitudes of language variation. Erica J. Benson is Professor of Linguistics and Chair of the English Department at the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire. Her areas of interest include American social and regional dialects, language variation and change, folk linguistics, and the role of the individual in language regard. James N. Stanford is an Associate Professor of Linguistics at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire. He researches language variation and change in underrepresented indigenous minority languages, including Sui, Hmong, and other languages of China and southeast Asia. He is co-editor, with Dennis Preston of Variation in Indigenous Minority Languages (2009).

Review :
'This volume contains data-rich, methodologically and theoretically innovative contributions to the field of language regard. It is truly a tribute to the far-reaching impact of Dennis Preston's work, to the ways that current research is pushing and challenging the theoretical frameworks in which it is embedded, and to the potential for continuing directions and future work in the field.' Anna Babel, Ohio State University