Language Variation as Social Practice

List of Figures.

List of Tables.

Preface.

Introduction: Variation and Agency.

Interpreting the Meaning of Variation.

The Social Order of Belten High.

Sociolinguistic Research in the School.

The Vocalic Variables.

Outline of Variation in Belten High.

We Are What We Do.

Friendships, Networks, and Communities of Practice.

Style, Social Meaning, and Sound Change.

References.

Index.

"This long-awaited volume demonstrates that Eckert is the
sociolinguist. No other student of language and society comes close
to Eckert in providing social explanations for linguistic behavior
and no other study has probed so deeply the social motivation of
sound change. Eckert's unique combination of ethnographic practice
and sophisticated quantitative analyses will be the target to
emulate for many decades to come." Bill Labov, University of
Pennsylvania

"Penelope Eckert's work provides a fine ethnographic account of
the social organization and social practices of a varied set of
Detroit adolescents. At the same time, she builds in a much-needed
critique of current sociolinguistic work on the relationship
between language variation and social constructs such as class and
gender. The work as a whole is an excellent and readable synthesis,
representing the current state of the art in sociolinguistics."
Lesley Milroy, University of Michigan

"Nobody combines the insights of ethnographic study and
variation analysis more creatively than Eckert. She invariably
connects systematic language variation with the complexities of
social practice in a way that challenges our reified
interpretations of sociolinguistic behavior." Walt Wolfram,
North Carolina State University

"Eckert has provided us with an array of priceless information
on the local social matrix in which change takes place. If we are
not ready to answer every question that might be posed about
linguistic change, the first step is to master the rich store of
information and insight that she has given us, and to plan our
future research with this in mind." Language in Society

Penelope Eckert is Professor of Linguistics at Stanford University and Senior Research Scientist at the Institute for Research on Learning in Menlo Park, CA. She has also taught at the University of Michigan and the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is the author of Jocks and Burnouts (1989), editor of New Ways of Analyzing Sound Change (1991), and co-editor of The Cornell Lectures: Women in the Linguistic Profession (1990).

P. Eckert, Stanford University