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Chapter 9 - The Sociolinguistics of Globalization

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 May 2025

Daniel Schreier
Affiliation:
University of Zurich
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Summary

In this chapter, we look at sociolinguistic aspects of globalization. The sociolinguistic turn entailed a focus on variation, which became more intricate as social barriers shifted. Recent changes have intensified such trends, and today language variation is no longer seen as static, in a socially stratified and rather rigid system. Rather, it represents a negotiated system and a fluid form of identity construction characterized by ever-widening social networks in an increasingly digital world. We look at superdiversity in the postmodern world and effects of mobility on sociolinguistic repertoires, present theoretical and methodological issues, both geopolitically and geoculturally, and introduce the World Language System, which orders the world’s languages into different layers according to criteria such as usage, function and speaker numbers. Finally, we look at winners and losers of language and globalization (countries, companies and individuals) so as to assess general sociolinguistic trends in a postmodern world.

Type
Chapter
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English Sociolinguistics
An Introduction
, pp. 252 - 271
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

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References

Further Reading

Blommaert, J. (2010). The Sociolinguistics of Globalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de Swaan, A. (2001). Words of the World: The Global Language System. Malden, MA: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Mair, C. (2013). The world system of Englishes: Accounting for the transnational importance of mobile and mediated vernaculars. English World-Wide, 34(3), 253278.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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