Microsociolinguistics

Abstract

Quite contrary to the presuppositions of the editors of this review, I approached the production of this chapter without the feeling of beingau fait, having spent the past year on a small-is-beautiful campus with limited access to the literature, with this period having been preceded by three years in the Middle East, which is surely not a hotbed of applied microsociolinguistic research or dissemination. Additionally disabled with a shattered writing hand, I resorted to sending off thirty mimeographed requests for assitance in turning up seminal items for 1979 to sociolinguists the world over. This salvo netted thirteen replies (43% response-rate) with the following variation in content: one person telephoned from Washington, D.C. for clarification and then promptly mailed me some references; three others––one in Nigeria and two on opposite coasts of the USA––wrote back to ask what I meant by microsociolinguistics; three––one each from Israel, Jordan, and the USA––replied with friendly notes that neither mentioned my request nor responded to it; three others––from England, Tunisia, and the USA respectively––wrote to say that they had seen nothing that I would not have seen myself; and only three––one each from Guyana, Poland, and the southwest USA––provided references at first shy! Of the items mentioned by this last group, the Guyana reference fit the section in this volume on Pidginization and Creolization, and those from the southwest USA fit the section on Second-Language Acquisition/Learning, leaving my Polish correspondent as the sole collaborator––pending translation, his language being one of those more uncommonly taught abroad. I was clearly as handicapped as when I had begun, but was there really nothing to report about microsociolinguistics?

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