SOCIOLINGUISTICS: AN INTRODUCTION TO LANGUAGE & SOCIETY

Why do men swear more than women? How do speech styles of most Black Americans, and whites growing up in 'Black areas', differ from those of other whites? Does it make sense to defend a language against 'contamination' from foreign words and phrases? Why are languages dying out at a catastrophic rate and what can we do about it? Should Serbo-Croat now be called Serbian, Croatian or even Bosnian? And in what sense, if any, is standard French 'better' than Quebecois or High German 'better' than Schweizerdeutsch?