Sociodialectology

Abstract

This chapter defines sociodialectology as the application of sociolinguistic study to dialectology, where dialectology is understood in its traditional sense of dialect geography. Jack Chambers organizes his landmark volume Sociolinguistic Theory around the three first of variables of sociolinguistics: sex, age, social class. The chapter shows an example of the embedding of a linguistic variable in the social contexts of age, sex, and class. In order to discuss it, it introduces the distinction between studies in apparent time and real time, a contrast that has been central to sociolinguistic study since its introduction by William Labov in his New York City study. The distribution of linguistic variation in geographical space is an aspect of social embedding, of course, and dialectologists have naturally always been interested in how and why isoglosses move. Late-modern Denmark has been thoroughly Copenhagenized through variation and change in the social, language-ideological, and linguistic spheres.

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