Norms and the Study of Language in Social Life

Janus Mortensen, Kamilla Kraft

• Publisher: De Gruyter Mouton
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781501511899
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Sociolinguistics and the social sciences more generally tend to take an interest in norms as central to social life. The importance of norms is easily discernible in the sociolinguistic canon, for instance in Labov's definition of the speech community as 'participation in a set of shared norms' and Hymes' concepts of 'norms of interaction' and 'norms of interpretation'. Yet, while the notion of norms may play a central role in sociolinguistic theory, there is little explicit theoretical work around the notion of norms itself within the discipline. Instead, norms tend to be treated as conceptual primes – convenient building blocks, ready-made for sociolinguistic theorizing – rather than theoretical constructs in need of reflexive attention. The aim of this book is to assess and advance current understandings of norms as a theoretical construct and empirical object of research in the study of language in social life. The contributors approach the topic from a range of complementary disciplinary perspectives, including sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, EM/CA, socio-cognitive linguistics and pragmatics, to provide a multifaceted view of norms as a central concept in the study of language in social life.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• 1 Introduction: ‘Behind a veil, unseen yet present’ – on norms in sociolinguistics and social life
• 2  Attitudes, norms and emergent communities
• 3  Norms, accountability and socialisation in a refugee language classroom
• 4 Norms in the making – exploring the norms of the teaching register selkosuomi in immigrant integration training classrooms in Finland
• 5 Norms and stereotypes: Studying the emergence and sedimentation of social meaning
• 6 Multilingual creativity and emerging norms in interaction: Towards a methodology for micro-diachronic analysis
• 7 What’s in a sociolinguistic norm? The case of change in prevocalic /r/ in Received Pronunciation
• 8 What we share: The impact of norms on successful interaction
• 9 Normativity, language and Covid-19
• Index