本书是《社会语言学引论》的第七版。由罗纳德？沃德华教授撰写，弗勒教授执笔修订。本书在形式和内容上较前几版都有了较为全面的更新，反映了社会语言学领域近期新的发展情况。修订者对全书各章内容进行了重新编排，更加注重采用当下较为普遍使用的术语和概念。书中全面涵盖了社会语言学的基本内容，并且对这些内容进行了深入浅出的讨论。本书丰富的参考文献、网上学习资源以及研究案例，为读者提供了坚实的研究基础。本书是研究人员、教师、学生学习社会语言学的一本好参考书。

  Contents
Companion Website xxv
List of Figures xxvi
List of Tables xxvii
Preface xxviii
Acknowledgments xxix
1 Introduction 1
Key Concepts 1
Knowledge of Language 3
Competence and performance 4
Variation 5
Speakers and Their Groups 7
Language and Culture 10
Directions of influence 10
The Whorfian hypothesis 11
Correlations 14
The Boundaries of Sociolinguistics 15
Methodological Concerns 17
Data 18
Research design 18
Overview of the Book 19
Chapter Summary 20
Exercises 20
Further Reading 22
References 22

Part I Languages and Communities 25
2 Languages, Dialects, and Varieties 27
Key Concepts 27
Language or Dialect? 28
Mutual intelligibility 29
The role of so identity 32
Standardization 33
The standard as an abstraction 34
The standardization process 35
The standard and language change 36
Standard English? 36
The standard–dialect hierarchy 37
Regional Dialects 38
Dialect continua 39
Dialect geography 39
Everyone has an accent 40
So Dialects 42
Kiezdeutsch ‘neighborhood German’ 43
Ethnic dialects 45
African American Vernacular English 46
Features of AAVE 47
Development of AAVE 48
Latino Englishes 50
Styles, Registers, and Genres 52
Style 52
Register 53
Genre 53
Chapter Summary 54
Exercises 54
Further Reading 56
References 57
3 Defining Groups 62
Key Concepts 62
Speech Communities 63
Linguistic boundaries 63
Shared norms 65
Communities of Practice 68
So Networks 70
So Identities 72
Beliefs about Language and So Groups 74
Ideologies 75
Perceptual dialectology 76
Chapter Summary 77
Exercises 77
Further Reading 78
References 79
4 Languages in Contact: Multilingual Societies and
Multilingual Discourse 82
Key Concepts 82
Multilingualism as a Societal Phenomenon 83
Competencies and convergence in multilingual societies 84
La