Sociolinguistic Theory presents a critical synthesis of sociolinguistics that centers on the study of language variation and change, and identifies opportunities for future research. Since the inception of sociolinguistics four decades ago, the correlation of dependent linguistic variables with independent social variables has provided the theoretical core of the discipline. This volume reviews the essential findings that form its foundation and shows how empirical explorations have made it the most stimulating field in the contemporary study of language. Sociolinguistic Theory discusses the linguistic variable and its significance, crucial social variables such as social stratification, sex, and age, and the cultural significance of linguistic variation. This second edition has been updated to incorporate new findings and expand on the discussion of communicative competence and developmental sociolinguistics.

Chambers offers a lucid introduction to the basic issues that relate language and society, and leads the reader directly to the quantitative data that define the field. At each turn, we benefit from his personal and insightful weighing of the evidence on why we speak the way we do. William Labov, University of Pennsylvania

J. K. Chambers is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Toronto. He is the co-editor, with Peter Trudgill and Natalie Schilling-Estes, of The Handbook of Language Variation and Change (Blackwell 2002) and co-author, with Peter Trudgill, of Dialectology (second edition, 1998), as well as other books and scores of articles. He works extensively as a forensic consultant and maintains a parallel vocation in jazz criticism, including the prize-winning biography Milestones: The Music and Times of Miles Davis (1998).