Community Commitment and Responsibility

Abstract

Most language variation researchers work with communities, ranging from sharply bounded enclave communities defined by physical geography to widely dispersed populations of imagined and even virtual communities. Social commitment by variationists is hardly new, and researchers have been committed to the linguistic, social, and educational well-being of the communities they research since the modern inception of the field. The range of opportunities and the nature of social responsibility have shifted somewhat over the past half-century of the language variation enterprise, but the resolve of sociolinguists to use their data to address social and linguistic inequalities has remained fairly consistent throughout the history of the discipline. Associating linguistic issues with positive cultural images and using strategic sequencing in the presentation of information can foster the reception of potentially controversial linguistic ideas.

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