Introduction

Chapters in this book

1. Prelim pages i
2. Table of contents v
3. List of contributors xi
4. Acknowledgements xii
5. Introduction 1
6. 1. Where does the sociolonguistic variable stop? 17
7. 2. Syntactic variation and dialect divergence 31
8. 3. The autonomy of social variables 59
9. 4. The quiet demise of variable rules 79
10. 5. The status of sociological models and categories in explaining language variation 99
11. 6. Descriptive and explanatory power of rules in sociolinguistics 115
12. 7. Report from an underdeveloped country 151
13. 8. Language death 195
14. 9. Sex roles, interruptions and silences in conversation 211
15. 10. Communication in a multilingual society 237
16. 11. The political topography of Spanish and English: The view from a New York Puerto Rican neighborhood 255
17. 12. Language planning as discourse 281
18. References 305
19. Authors index 333
20. Language index 338
21. Subject index 340