Gringo/a as Sociolinguistic Fractal

Updating "gender" as a sociolinguistic variable

Quantitative approaches in the study of language variation have been strongly influenced by the sociolinguistic methodologies established by Labov's (1966 [1982]) study of the speech community of New York's Lower East Side. The sociolinguistic variables that have been pursued and studied in subsequent work have often used the non-linguistic variables that Labov investigated as their primary foc...

Sociolinguistic Justice in the Schools: Student Researchers as Linguistic Experts

The commitment of sociocultural linguistics to the cause of social justice has been central to the discipline since its foundation. This commitment is nowhere more evident than in the educational domain and particularly in the development of sociolinguistically informed curricula and teacher preparation programs. Such programs help ensure that students who speak politically subordinated linguis...

Sociolinguistic Approaches to Sla

The study of second language acquisition involves understanding what bilinguals know about their second language and how they acquire and use it. Because acquisition and use occur in a social context, it is important for secondlanguage acquisition researchers to understand the ways in which social context and the acquisition and use of a second language are related. In recent years, our underst...

Style and Sociolinguistic Variation

Simulating Cities as Fractal Picturescapes

Suppose I want to understand the 'structure' of something. Just what exactly does this mean? It means, of course, that I want to make a simple picture of it, which lets me grasp it as a whole. And it means, too, that as far as possible, I want to paint this picture out of as few elements as possible. The fewer the elements there are, the richer the relationships between them, and the more of th...