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• Christine Mallinson Christine Mallinson University of Maryland, Baltimore County
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.013.22
• Published online: 03 November 2015

The study of sociolinguistics constitutes a vast and complex topic that has yielded an extensive and multifaceted body of scholarship. Language is fundamentally at work in how we operate as individuals, as members of various communities, and within cultures and societies. As speakers, we learn not only the structure of a given language; we also learn cultural and social norms about how to use language and what content to communicate. We use language to navigate expectations, to engage in interpersonal interaction, and to go along with or to speak out against social structures and systems.

Sociolinguistics aims to study the effects of language use within and upon societies and the reciprocal effects of social organization and social contexts on language use. In contemporary theoretical perspectives, sociolinguists view language and society as being mutually constitutive : each influences the other in ways that are inseparable and complex. Language is imbued with and carries social, cultural, and personal meaning. Through the use of linguistic markers, speakers symbolically define self and society. Simply put, language is not merely content; rather, it is something that we do , and it affects how we act and interact as social beings in the world.

Language is a social product with rich variation along individual, community, cultural, and societal lines. For this reason, context matters in sociolinguistic research. Social categories such as gender, race/ethnicity, social class, nationality, etc., are socially constructed, with considerable variation within and among categories. Attributes such as “female” or “upper class” do not have universal effects on linguistic behavior, and sociolinguists cannot assume that the most interesting linguistic differences will be between groups of speakers in any simple, binary fashion. Sociolinguistic research thus aims to explore social and linguistic diversity in order to better understand how we, as speakers, use language to inhabit and negotiate our many personal, cultural, and social identities and roles.

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The Scope of Sociolinguistics

As sociolinguistics continued to develop in the 1970s, members of the Council’s Committee on Sociolinguistics (1963–1979) reflected on the direction and intellectual impact of this emergent discipline. In this 1972 article, Dell Hymes, cochairman of the committee, describes several orientations toward the field among its practitioners, and argues for what he regarded as the most ambitious: a “socially constituted linguistics.” By this, Hymes meant a sociolinguistics that challenges linguistics’ core theoretical starting points of linguistic structure and grammar with a focus on the social meaning and functions of language in context. In relation to our “Sociolinguistic Frontiers” series, Hymes presciently argues that ultimately the field must address how inequality and language intersect, going “beyond means of speech and types of speech community to a concern with persons and social structure.”

The term “sociolinguistics” began to gain currency about ten years ago. The subsequent decade has seen a great deal of activity. There have been general symposia; symposia on major topics; notable major research efforts; the launching of series of working papers; books of readings, increasingly specific to the field; textbooks; even a series of collected papers of middle-aged men who find themselves senior scholars; and journals.

The present meeting is in a way a culmination of the decade’s activity. Where do we stand? How far have we progressed? In some ways, very far. In one fundamental regard, I think, simply to a threshold.

We are all familiar with the gap that can exist between public concerns and the competence of scientists. The energetic activity in sociolinguistics is nourished in important part by the obvious relevance of much of its subject matter, joining other academic fields in which concern for education, children, ethnic relations, and governmental policies find expression. However, there are scientific as well as practical needs. If relevance to social problems were not recognized, sociolinguistic research would still be needed for the sake of an adequate theory of language. Some of what is done under the rubric of sociolinguistics may be justified only in the sense that something is better than nothing, when need is great. But in the present state of sociolinguistics, I would maintain (1) that the scientific as well as the practical side of linguistics stands in need; (2) that scientific and practical needs converge; and (3) that steps taken during the past decade have brought us to the threshold of an integrated approach to linguistic description. As to (1), witness the current disarray with regard to arguments in syntax and semantics and to the place of semantics, intonation, and even phonology and lexicon in a model of grammar itself, as issues of empirical adequacy and validity are pressed against the dominant “intuitionist” approach—and as other, contextually oriented traditions of work are gradually reinvented or grudgingly rediscovered. As to (2), note that findings about the organization of variation and the structure of speech acts—both are central to linguistic theory—contribute to the scientific basis that successful practice needs. At the same time, facts of practical experience (e. g., the organization of linguistic features in terms of verbal repertoires; the role of social meaning as a determinant of acceptability and the “creative aspect of language use”; the effects of personal identity, role, and setting as constraints on competence) point to severe limitations of present linguistic theory and stimulate efforts to overcome them. As to (3), if we take “integrated” to encompass the structure of sentences within the structure of discourse, of referential meaning within the meanings of speech acts, and of dialects and languages within the organization of verbal repertoires and speech communities, then we can see a convergence implicit in much of the best recent work and envisage a unity it can attain.

Orientations and concerns in sociolinguistics

The term sociolinguistics means many things to many people, and of course no one has a patent on its definition. Indeed, not everyone whose work is called sociolinguistic is ready to accept the label, and those who use the term include and emphasize different things. Nevertheless, three main orientations can be distinguished, orientations that can be labeled: the social as well as the linguistic; socially realistic linguistics; socially constituted linguistics. Let me characterize each of these in relation to linguistic theory.

The social as well as the linguistic . Here may be placed ventures into social problems involving language and the use of language, which are not seen as involving a challenge to existing linguistics. American linguistics does have a tradition of practical concerns—one can mention Sapir’s semantic research for an international auxiliary language, Bloomfield’s work in the teaching of reading, Swadesh’s literacy work, the “Army method” of teaching foreign languages. The salient examples today involve American cities and developing nations and concern problems of education, minority groups, and language policies. For the most part this work is conceived as application, lacking theoretical content, or else as pursuing theoretical concerns that are in addition to those of normal linguistics, or perhaps even wholly unrelated to them. When sociolinguistics serves as a legitimizing label for such activity, it is, as said, not conceived as a challenge to normal linguistics; linguists who perceive such a challenge in the label tend to eschew it.

Socially realistic linguistics . [1] This term is apt for work that extends and challenges existing linguistics with data from the speech community. The challenge, and indeed the accomplishment, might be summed up in the two words, variation and validity. An outstanding example is the work of William Labov, whose orientation toward linguistics is represented in his recently published papers. The expressed theoretical concerns are not distinct from those of normal linguistics, e. g., the nature of linguistic rules and of sound change, but the method of work and the findings differ sharply. Here might also be classified work in which dependence of the analysis of meaning and speech acts on social context is recognized.

Socially constituted linguistics . This orientation is less developed than the first two but represents, I think, the fundamental challenge to which sociolinguists have come. The phrase “socially constituted” is intended to express the view that social function gives form to the ways in which linguistic features are encountered in actual life. With this assumption, an adequate approach must begin by identifying social functions and discover the ways in which linguistic features are selected and grouped together to serve them. Such a point of view cannot leave normal linguistic theory unchallenged (as does the first orientation), nor limit its challenge to reform, because its own goals are not allowed for by normal theory and cannot be achieved by “working within the system.” A socially constituted linguistics shares the practical concerns of other orientations; it shares concern for social realism and validity; but even if it could wait for the perfection of a “linguistic theory” of the normal sort, it could not then use such a theory. Many of the features and relationships with which a socially constituted linguistics must deal would never have been taken up in that kind of theory. (That is why, indeed, “linguistic theory” of the normal sort is not a “theory of language,” but only a theory of grammar.) A socially constituted linguistics is concerned with social as well as referential meaning, and with language as part of communicative conduct and social action. Its task is the thoroughgoing critique of received notions and practices, from the standpoint of social meaning, that is, from a functional perspective. Such a conception reverses the structuralist tendency of most of the twentieth century, toward the isolation of referential structure, and the posing of questions about social functions from that standpoint. The goals of social relevance and social realism can be fully accomplished only from the standpoint of the new conception, for much of what must be taken into account, much of what is there—organized and used—in actual speech can only be seen, let alone understood, when one starts from function and looks for the structure that serves it.

I have given examples to support this thesis in earlier papers. Here let me merely mention the following instances:

From a comprehensive functional standpoint, a phonetic feature such as aspiration appears to be a true phonological universal, specialized to referential function in some languages, and to stylistic function in others (hence not of indifference to general theory in its role in English).

Recognition of a social-identifying function motivates an independently controllable articulation otherwise left unintelligible.

The status of a sentence as a speech act depends upon the rights and obligations, roles and statuses, of the participants.

Unless one extends the rules governing a verbal summons in English to include nonverbal acts (a knock, a telephone ring), a significant generalization is lost; similarly, the function of deixis in San Blas Cuna is served by a set of forms that includes lip pointing.

Speech probably serves to mark sex-role status in every community, but linguists hitherto have discovered it only when intrusive in a normal grammatical description.

Some consistent ways of speaking make use of the resources of more than one language (e. g., the Dutch of Surinam blacks, who impose a norm that is grammatically and lexically standard, but phonologically creole).

In some communities, distinct languages can be described as lexically distinct with a common grammar and phonology (Kupwar approaches this).

The semantic structure represented by a choice of pronoun in one community may be expressed by a choice of dialect in another, and choice of language in still a third, so that analysis of the function from a universal standpoint cannot stay with one part of language, or even within the category language.

In sum, if our concern is social relevance and social realism, we must recognize that there is more to the relationship between sound and meaning than is dreamt of in normal linguistic theory. In sound there are stylistic as well as referential features and contrasts; in meaning there is social as well as referential import; in between there are relationships not given in ordinary grammar but there for the finding in social life.

It is not that phenomena pointing to a more general conception of the relationship between sound and meaning have not long been noted, and often enough studied with insight and care. Expressive language, speech levels, social dialects, registers, functional varieties, code- and style-switching are familiar and essential concepts; and the interlocked subjects of stylistics, poetics, and rhetoric have flourished in recent years. Anything that can be accomplished in theory and method for a socially constituted linguistics must incorporate and build on that work, which has done much to shape what I write here. But the tendency has been to treat such phenomena and such studies as marginal or as supplementary to grammar. The hegemony of grammar as a genre and that of the referential function as its organizing basis have been preserved. The essence of a functional approach is to take function as problematic, not for granted; to assume as part of a universal theory of language that a plurality of functions are served by linguistic features in any act and community; to require validation of the relationships between features and functions, and of their organization into varieties, registers, ways of speaking, ethnographically within the community; and to take functional questions—a functional perspective—as having priority, that is, as being fundamental, both in general theory and in specific accounts, to whatever can be validly said as to structure, competence, universals, etc.

Such a perspective was present in the structuralism of the period before World War II and has never been wholly lost. In Anglo-American circles it has begun to come to the fore in work under the aegis of sociolinguistics in recent years. Salient examples include the work of Labov on “sociolinguistic structure,” of John Gumperz on verbal repertoire, of Basil Bernstein on codes, of Joshua Fishman on domains, of Norman Denison and R. B. Le Page on multilingualism, and of Susan Ervin-Tripp on sociolinguistic rules. What is important here is the element in each work that contributes to a general methodological perspective. Such work goes beyond the recognition and analysis of particular cases to suggest a mode of organization of linguistic features other than that of a grammar . The common implication which I want to emphasize and elaborate is, in its weaker form, that such alternative modes of organization exist; and, in its stronger form, that one or more such alternative modes of organization may be fundamental.

The speech community

There is a second point, linked to the first, and owing its full recognition to much the same body of work: a conception of the speech community not in terms of language alone (especially not just one language, and a fortiori not just one homogeneous language).

Many linguists, although they would find the wording odd, might accept a definition of the object of linguistic description as the organization of features within a community . From the present standpoint the wording is not odd, but vital. The two points just stated in negative terms can now be put positively:

The organization of linguistic features within a speech community is in terms of ways of speaking within a verbal repertoire .

Membership in a speech community consists in sharing one (or more) ways of speaking .

The often stated foundation of linguistic theory, that in a speech community some utterances are the same, differing only in “free” variation, and that the goal of theory is to explain what counts as contrast and what does not, has perhaps served the development of linguistics well in its purely “referential” interpretation. One bird of function in the hand, so to speak, may have been preferable to entering the bush to cope with two. But, to elaborate the figure, it appears that neither bird will fly without the other, even that neither is itself a whole bird. To pursue the figure no doubt too far, the bird in the hand proves to be a featherless monopteron, to be restored only out of the ashes of conventional grammar. The true foundation of theory and method is that in a speech community some ways of speaking are the same, that some of the persons talk the same way.

A community, then, is to be characterized in terms of a repertoire of ways of speaking. Ways of speaking are to be characterized in terms of a relationship between styles, on the one hand, and contexts of discourse, on the other. The formal concept underlying speech styles is what Ervin-Tripp has called rules of co-occurrence . The formal concept of relating speech styles to contexts of discourse is called by her rules of alternation . The speech styles defined by rules of co-occurrence draw on the linguistic varieties present in a community, from whose resources they select and group features in sometimes complex ways. The relationships dubbed rules of alternation are in the first instance considerations of appropriateness, and of marked and unmarked usage.

The recognition of Ervin-Tripp of speech styles themselves as the elements of a further system of rules is comparable in nature and importance to the earlier recognition of grammatical transformations (as rules operating on rules). The study of the structure of relationships among speech styles opens up the possibility of a generative approach; and it makes the study of social meaning as embodied in roles, activities, and situations integral to the explanation of the meanings of the speech styles themselves.

Linguistics of course does not itself command analysis of social role, activities, and situations. Of this, two things can be said. First, such analysis is necessary. There really is no way that linguistic theory can become a theory of language without encompassing social meaning, and that signifies becoming a part of the general study of communicative conduct and social action. Second, this step is dictated by the development of linguistics itself. Having begun its structural course at the far side of meaning, with a focus on phonology, linguistics has proceeded through successive foci on morphology, syntax, semantics, and now performative and speech acts. There is no way to analyze speech acts adequately without ethnography; no language is a perfect metalanguage for the acts that can be performed with it. The study of speech acts can indeed be a center of a socially constituted linguistics, but its own logic broaches the general study of the vocabulary of action, in communities and in social science. Again, if we take seriously Chomsky’s implicit call for linguistics to concern itself with the “creative aspect” of language use, and with the basis of the ability to generate novel yet appropriate sentences, we again are forced into analysis of setting as well as syntax. For appropriateness is not a property of sentences, but of a relationship between sentences and contexts, especially with regard to the property of “creativity”—whether that is saying something new in a familiar setting or something familiar in a setting that is new. At every turn, it almost would seem, linguistics is wrestling with phenomena and concepts that turn out to entail relationships, only one pole of which is within linguistics’ usual domain. The true generalizations can never be captured except from a perspective that encompasses both poles.

To bring out this point one may say that a socially constituted linguistics has as a goal a kind of explanatory adequacy complementary to that proposed by Chomsky. Chomsky’s type of explanatory adequacy leads away from speech, and from languages, to relationships possibly universal to all languages and possibly inherent in human nature. It is an exciting and worthwhile prospect. The complementary type of adequacy leads away from what is common to all human beings and all languages toward what particular communities and persons have made of their means of speech. It is comparative and evolutionary in a sociocultural, rather than biological, sense. It sees as in need of explanation the differential elaboration of means of speech, and of speech itself. At a surface level it notices gross contrasts in speech activity, from great volubility to great taciturnity; gross contrasts in elaboration of message form; gross contrasts in the predominance of traditional and of spontaneously encoded utterance; gross contrasts in the complication, or simplification, of the obligatory surface structure of languages themselves. These contrasts, and the typologies to which they point, no doubt find their explanation at a deeper level. Rules of conduct in relation to roles and settings; the role of a language variety in socialization or in boundary maintenance; values, conceptions of the self, and beliefs as to the rights and duties one owes to others as fellow members of a community—all will be found to have a place. The general problem, then, is to identify the means of speech and ways of speaking of communities; to find, indeed, where are the real communities, for language boundaries do not give them, and a person or a group may belong to more than one; to characterize communities in terms of their repertoires of these; and through ethnography, comparative ethnology, historical and evolutionary considerations, to explain something of the origin, development, maintenance, obsolescence, and loss of ways of speaking and types of speech community—of the face speech wears for human beings before they learn that it is language, a thing apart, and the property of linguists.

This complementary goal of explanatory adequacy comes not, it must be admitted, from the internal logic of linguistics, but from an external aspiration. Chomsky’s type of explanatory adequacy, to be sure, would seem to owe much to his own concern to understand the human mind and to revitalize rationalist philosophy. He has made his concern an effective goal for many in linguistics, philosophy, and psychology. The concern that motivates explanation directed toward ways of speaking and speech communities may or may not find a similar response. This concern, put simply, is with human liberation.

If linguistic research is to help as it could in transcending the many inequalities in language and competence in the world today, it must be able to analyze inequalities. In particular, a practical linguistics so motivated would have to go beyond means of speech and types of speech community to a concern with persons and social structure. If competence is to mean anything useful (we do not really need a synonym for grammar), it must refer to the abilities actually possessed by persons. A salient fact about a speech community, realistically viewed, is the unequal distribution of abilities, on the one hand, and of opportunities for their use, on the other. This appears to be an old story in mankind, e. g., a cursory look at the globe discloses that definition of women as communicatively second-class citizens is widespread. When, where and what they may speak, the conceptions of themselves as speakers with which they are socialized, show again and again that from the community point of view they at least are not “ideal speakers,” though they may on occasion be ideal hearers.

The goal of explanatory adequacy with regard to speech communities as comprising ways of speaking will be quite enough, I suppose, for most linguists to consider, let alone to accept. Yet, I believe, if linguistics is to realize its potential for the well-being of mankind, it must go even further and consider speech communities as comprising not only rules, but also sometimes oppression, sometimes freedom, in the relation between personal abilities and their occasions of use.

What, then, is the scope of sociolinguistics? Not all I have just described but, rather, that part of it which linguists and social scientists leave unattended. The final “goal” of sociolinguistics, I think, must be to preside over its own liquidation. The flourishing of a hybrid term such as sociolinguistics reflects a gap in the disposition of established disciplines with respect to reality. Sometimes new disciplines do grow from such a state of affairs, but the recent history of the study of language has seen the disciplines adjacent to a gap grow themselves to encompass it. Some can recall a generation ago when proper American linguists did not study meaning, and ethnographers had little linguistic method. A study of meaning in another language or culture (say, grammatical categories or kinship terms) could qualify as “ethnolinguistic” then. Today of course semantics is pursued in both linguistics and ethnography, and a mediating interdisciplinary label is unnecessary; “semantics” itself will usually suffice.

Let us hope for a similar history for sociolinguistics. In one sense the issue again is the study of meaning, only now, social meaning.

In 1934, Sapir wrote: “The social psychology into which the conventional cultural and psychological disciplines must eventually be resolved is related to these paradigmatic studies as an investigation into living speech is related to grammar. I think few cultural disciplines are as exact, as rigorously configurated, as self-contained as grammar, but if it is desired to have grammar contribute a significant share to our understanding of human behavior, its definitions, meanings, and classifications must be capable of a significant restatement in terms of a social psychology which…boldly essays to bring every cultural pattern back to the living context from which it has been abstracted in the first place…back to its social matrix.” [2]

Sapir had begun to rethink the nature of language, culture, and society from a standpoint he sometimes called “psychiatric,” or “social psychology,” and which today we might more readily label the standpoint of social interaction, or communicative conduct: the standpoint, as I would see it, of sociolinguistics. Obviously, Sapir’s intellectual lead did not prevail after his death in 1939, although its influence can be traced in many quarters. Such a fact must humble expectation. But a decade ago I did venture to predict:

“It may be that the development of these foci of interest [semantic description, sociolinguistic variation] will lead historians of twentieth-century linguistics to say that whereas the first half of the century was distinguished by a drive for the autonomy of language as an object of study and a focus upon description of structure, the second half was distinguished by a concern for the integration of language in sociocultural context and a focus upon the analysis of function.” [3]

Item Editor’s note : The author is Professor of Folklore and Linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania, a member of the board of directors of the Social Science Research Council, and the chairman of its Committee on Sociolinguistics, which, with support provided by the National Science Foundation, cosponsored with Georgetown University its 23rd Annual Round Table on Languages and Linguistics, March 16–18, 1972. This article is a condensed version of the paper Dell Hymes presented at the meeting. The full version will be published in Roger W. Shuy, ed., Sociolinguistics: Current Trends and Prospects (Georgetown University Monograph Series on Languages and Linguistics, No. 25, 1972), by Georgetown University Press, with whose permission this version is printed here. The other members of the Committee on Sociolinguistics are Charles A. Ferguson, Stanford University; Allen D. Grimshaw, Indiana University; John J. Gumperz, University of California, Berkeley; William D. Labov, University of Pennsylvania; staff , David Jenness. The idea of a conference on the state of the field of sociolinguistics was conceived by Charles Ferguson, chairman of the committee 1963–70.

Article note

This archival document has been reproduced the way it was initially published, with no further editing nor formatting of the bibliography.

© 2020 Hymes, published by De Gruyter

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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• Published: 08 March 2023

Changing perceptions of language in sociolinguistics

• Jiayu Wang 1 ,
• Guangyu Jin 1 , 2 &
• Wenhua Li 1  

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications volume  10 , Article number:  91 ( 2023 ) Cite this article

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• Language and linguistics

This paper traces the changing perceptions of language in sociolinguistics. These perceptions of language are reviewed in terms of language in its verbal forms, and language in vis-à-vis as a multimodal construct. In reviewing these changing perceptions, this paper examines different concepts or approaches in sociolinguistics. By reviewing these trends of thoughts and applications, this article intends to shed light on ontological issues such as what constitutes language, and where its place is in multimodal practices in sociolinguistics. Expanding the ontology of language from verbal resources toward various multimodal constructs has enabled sociolinguists to pursue meaning-making, indexicalities and social variations in its most authentic state. Language in a multimodal construct entails the boundaries and distinctions between various modes, while language as a multimodal construct sees language itself as multimodal; it focuses on the social constructs, social meaning and language as a force in social change rather than the combination or orchestration of various modes in communication. Language as a multimodal construct has become the dominant trend in contemporary sociolinguistic studies.

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Introduction.

This article will review a range of sociolinguistic concepts and their applications in multimodal studies, in relation to how language has been conceptualized in sociolinguistics. While there are reviews of specific areas of research in sociolinguistics, including prosody and sociolinguistic variation (Holliday, 2021 ), language and masculinities (Lawson, 2020 ), and Language change across the lifespan (Sankoff, 2018 ), there have been few reviews works set out to delineate the most fundamental ontological questions in sociolinguistic studies; that is, what is and what constitutes language? How do sociolinguists perceive language in relation to other semiotic resources that are part and parcel of social meaning-making and social interaction? Relevant discussions are scattered in passing mainly in the introductory sections of various sociolinguistic works, such as Blommaert ( 1999 ), García and Li ( 2014 ) and Makoni and Pennycook ( 2005 ). However, there have not been review articles systematically dealing with the changing perceptions of language in sociolinguistic studies.

These issues are worthwhile to pursue in the sense that though sociolinguistics studies language, yet no reviews were done regarding what on earth constitutes language, especially in relation to a wider range of semiotic resources. What even makes the review more imperative is that in an increasingly globalized and high-tech world, linguistic practices are complicated by the super-diversity of ethnic fluidity, communications technologies, and globalized cross-cultural art.

Centring on the ontological perception of language in sociolinguistics, this article consists of five sections. After the “Introduction” section, the next section will review traditional (socio)linguistic perceptions of language as written or spoken signs or symbols that people use to communicate or interact with each other. The next section will review representative sociolinguistic approaches that place language in multimodal settings which involve the relationship between language and other semiotic resources. They are categorized as the conceptualizations of “language in multimodal construct” and “language as multimodal construct”. These conceptualizations share the common feature that language is not researched merely in terms of written and spoken signs and symbols, but it is probed (1) in relation to its multimodal contexts and (re)contextualization (regarding language in multimodal construct), (2) in terms of its own materiality and spatiality, and linguistic representations of multimodality, for instance, social (inter)action and “smellscapes” (Pennycook and Otsuji, 2015a ) which are in turn conflated with linguistic features (regarding language as multimodal construct). The penultimate section and the last section will present a critical reflection and a conclusion of the review, respectively.

Language as written and spoken signs and symbols

What constitutes language(s)? Saussure ( 1916 ) distinguishes between langue and parole. The former refers to the abstract, systematic rules and conventions of the signifying system, while the latter represents language in daily use. Chomsky ( 1965 ) refers to them as competence (corresponding to langue) and performance (corresponding to parole). Chomsky ( 1965 ) assumes that performance is bound up with “grammatically irrelevant conditions as memory limitations, distractions, shifts of attention and interest, and errors (random or characteristic) in applying his knowledge of this language in actual performance” (Chomsky, 1965 , pp. 3–4). He advocates that the agenda of linguistics should be the study of competence of “an ideal speaker-listener, in a completely homogeneous speech-community, who knows its (the speech community’s) language perfectly” (in brackets original). His conception of the ideal language rules out the “imperfections” arising from the influences of social or pragmatic dimensions in real language use. This can be seen as the conception of language as innate human competence. By contrast, constructionists have argued that language cannot be separated from the societal and social domain; social reality is constructed through languages (Berger and Luckmann, 1966 ), and linguistics should take social dimensions into account, as shown by Systemic Functional Linguistics developed by Halliday. These approaches to language studies, nevertheless, do not pay much attention to the ontological issues of language or linguistics concerning what constitutes language, whether languages can be separated from each other, and whether there are different conceptions of language(s).

Sociolinguistics, taking as its departure an interdisciplinary attempt to be the sociology regarding linguistic issues or linguistics regarding sociological issues, faces the ambivalent positioning of whether it should be sociologically oriented (that is, more explanatory) or linguistically oriented (that is, more descriptive) (Cameron, 1990 ). Also, there are contentions regarding whether more attention should be paid to epistemically linguistic minutiae (as in conversation analysis or CA), or to the macro-social interpretation of ideology not necessarily dependent on the evident orientation of the participants (as in critical discourse analysis, or CDA), as debated in Blommaert ( 2005 ) and Schegloff ( 1992 , 1998a / 1998b , 1999 ). As such, more sociolinguists than linguists in other disciplines are concerned with the ontology of language regarding its nature and its relation with broader social structures. In other words, such concerns can, firstly, justify the identity of sociolinguistics being either a branch of sociology, or linguistics, or even more broadly, anthropology. They can also delineate the contour of the macro vis-à-vis micro research subjects: are languages seen as separate systems, or inseparable but relatively fixed systems or an integrated construction in relation to their social dimensions of power, ideology and hegemony?

Such ontological concerns are important, because different approaches to research may be engendered accordingly. For instance, variational sociolinguistics is concerned with the linguistic differences within a language (standard language vis-à-vis its variations in dialects) and examines how these differences are linked to social aspects of linguistic practices, such as gender and social status. These differences within a certain category of language may be placed in the changing situations of various language communities or areas (e.g., Labov, 1963 , 1966 ), or in contextualized pragmatic situations (Agha, 2003 ; Eckert, 2008 ). Assumptions of separable or separate languages may be well-encapsulated in the works regarding language ideology and linguistic differentiation, such as the studies by Kroskrity ( 1998 ), Irvine and Gal ( 2000 ), as well as considerable other works on bilingualism or multilingualism. These works treat language as belonging to different standard systems (e.g., English, French, German, and so on) and can be pursued by “enumerating” these categories. In other words, these standard language systems are seen as having clear boundaries between them, and language can be researched by attributing different linguistic resources to (one of) these systems. The stance of the inseparability of language problematizes the enumeration of languages, by discrediting their explanatory potential in linguistic practices. In pedagogical contexts, transnational students are found using language features beyond the boundaries of language systems (Creese and Blackledge, 2010 ; Lewis et al., 2012 ). In the context of youth or urban culture, there are loosely fixed assumptions between language and ethnicity (Maher, 2005 ; Woolard, 1999 ). In some globalized contexts, new communications technologies as well as globalization itself are changing the traditional power structure in linguistic practices (Jacquemet, 2005 ; Jørgensen, 2008 ; Jørgensen et al., 2011 ). Furthermore, Makoni and Pennycook ( 2005 ), by advocating the disinvention of languages, problematize the process of “historical amnesia” (Makoni and Pennycook, 2005 , p. 149) of bi- and multilingualism, and their tradition of enumerating languages which reduces sociolinguistics to at best a “pluralization of monolingualism” (Makoni and Pennycook, 2005 , p. 148). However, this does mean that languages cannot be probed as standard categories. It holds a more intricate stance: on the one hand, it problematizes the separation of languages, as language is characterized by fluidity in multi-ethnic settings; on the other hand, it assumes the fixity of the relationship between a given (standard) language and its corresponding identity, ethnicity, and other societal factors (Otsuji and Pennycook, 2010 ); fluidity and fixity, however, are not binary attributes that exclude each other; they coexist, mutually influence each other in real-life linguistic practices. By the same token, Blackledge and Creese ( 2010 ) and Martin-Jones et al. ( 2012 ) also hold a dynamic view on language and identity: while language functions as “heritage” (see Blackledge and Creese, 2010 , pp. 164–180) and the positioning or maintenance of national identity, the bondage, however, frequently loosens as it is always contested, resisted and “disinvented” (Makoni and Pennycook, 2005 ). Table 1 illustrates three kinds of sociolinguistic conceptualizations of language.

The above discussion briefly delineates how contemporary sociolinguistic studies attempt to capture the complex ways in which the notion of language is construed, resisted or reinvented in and through practices. Most of these approaches are based on the traditional assumption of language as written signs and symbols in its verbal forms. Other forms of resources are generally seen as contexts where these verbal signs and symbols take place. They are contextual facets that contribute to the ideological and sociological corollary of language use, but they are not seen as ontological components in linguistics. Later developments, which integrate multimodal studies into sociolinguistics, show differing stances regarding the ontology of language, as shown in the next section.

Language in vis-à-vis as multimodal construct

Jewitt ( 2013 , p. 141) defines multimodality as “an inter-disciplinary approach that understands communication and representation to be more than about language”. This should be seen as a definition oriented toward social semiotics, in which different semiotic resources are seen as various modes of representation or communication through semiosis. For a sociolinguistic version of the definition, we prefer to interpret it as language in vis-à-vis as a multimodal construct. By using the word “construct”, we would like to point out that multimodality or multimodal conventions enter into sociolinguistic studies because they are socially constructed; that is, sociolinguists research these multimodal dimensions because they are semiotic resources and practices which are constructed by social subjects with power, manipulation and ideology. They are not neutral resources by which people communicate information or by which the process of meaning-making, or semiosis, is realized. Instead, they are a social construct that constitutes the type of Foucauldian knowledge in which sociological power and ideology lie at the core. In this sense, the notions, frameworks, and approaches that we discuss as follows are socially critical in nature and are predominantly related to socially constructed ideologies such as hegemony, power, and identity. As Makoni and Pennycook ( 2005 ) note, languages are “invented” by the dominant (colonial) groups through classification and naming in history; they are not neutral practices and they are constructed and invested with ideologies, power and inequality. Sociolinguistics thus needs a historically critical perspective. In fact, since its birth, sociolinguistics has been a discipline focusing on language use in relation to socially critical issues, such as gender, race, class and politics. This focus can date back as early as Labov’s ( 1963 , 1966 ) ethnographical research on variations of English on the island of Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts and in New York City. The sound change or phonetic features are studied in relation to ethnicity, social stratification and class. Agha ( 2003 ) and Eckert ( 2008 ) also probe the phonetic features or regional change of variations in relation to ethnicity and social and economic status.

In fact, the above-mentioned concerns of sociolinguistics are also consistent with CDA (see Wang and Jin, 2022 ; Wang and Yang, 2022 ), especially multimodal critical discourse analysis (MCDA), which also contributes to the research trend in terms of language in multimodality. Kress and van Leeuwen ( 1996 ) postulates a set of visual grammar based on systemic functional grammar. Machin ( 2016 ) and Machin and Mayr ( 2012 ) and other scholars have also adopted MCDA in various types of discourse. Semiotic resources other than language are analysed to reveal the social construct of power, ideology, and inequality in relation to verbal resources (Wang, 2014 , 2016a , 2016b ). Language in the multimodal construct in sociolinguistics is quite similar to the social semiotic and critical discourse approach to multimodality: language is seen as one type of resource, amongst other non-language resources (visual, aural, embodied, and spatial) in the meaning-making process. The difference lies in that sociolinguistic approaches toward language in multimodality have much more focus on social interaction, power and ideology and their research frequently includes ethnographical data and observations. Language as a multimodal construct, by contrast, sees language as a more integral part of multimodal resources, and vice versa; less distinct boundaries are seen as existing between languages and non-languages. These two trends of conceptions are discussed below.

Language in multimodal construct

To place language studies in the multimodal construct is not a new practice in sociolinguistics. Agha ( 2003 , p. 29) analyses the Bainbridge cartoon, treating accent not as “object of metasemiotic scrutiny”, but as an integral element in “the social perils of improper demeanour in many sign modalities” such as dress, posture, gait and gesture. His discussion demonstrates how language studies can be embedded in a larger multimodal scope. Language is contextualized by its peripheral multimodal paralinguistic sign systems. In Eckert ( 2008 , p. 25), the process of “bricolage” (Hebdige, 1984 ), in which “individual resources can be interpreted and combined with other resources to construct a more complex meaningful entity”, is linked to the style and language variations which reflect social meaning. She gives examples of how the clothing of students at Palo Alto High School affords them certain types of styles to convey social meaning. Eckert ( 2001 ), Coupland ( 2003 , 2007 ) and other scholars’ research represent the “third-wave” sociolinguistic studies, which see the use of variation in terms of personal and social styles (Eckert, 2012 ). Language and other semiotic resources constitute a stylistic complex that makes social meaning and constructs social styles and identities together. Goodwin ( 2007 ) extensively encompasses multimodal interaction in the examination of participation, stance and affect in a “homework” interaction between a father and his daughter, where gaze, gesture, and the spatial environment are taken into account. Goodwin’s research is partly premised on Bourdieu’s ( 1991 , pp. 81–89) associating bodily hexis with habitus , which is also a notion that is multimodal in itself. The deployment of different bodily modes in different contexts of participation (such as homework, archaeology, and surgery) depends on conventions of various social practices or their respective habitus .

Research regarding language in multimodal construct shares some common ground with the social semiotic approach towards multimodality. First, in communication, there are different modes of resources or semiotic types that convey social meaning and embed ideology. Second, these resources consist of language and “non-language”: the former being written or spoken signs and symbols that social actors use to communicate, and the latter being visual, aural, or embodied ones in that language are situated. Third, meaning-making is done through the orchestration of these resources.

In contrast to social semiotic approaches, with an anthropology-oriented concern, language in the multimodal construct as a sociological and sociolinguistic approach usually bases itself on ethnographical observations of social interaction. Language is seen as a component in social interactional discourse; other semiotic modes or resources are also important resources through which language use is contextualized. To be more specific, language in multimodal construct shows concerns with language as one type of semiotic resource that is placed in multimodal contexts in the following aspects:

First, meaning-making through other resources is seen as “add-ons” to that of language. In other words, language indexes social meaning and ideology in collaboration with other types of resources. An example is Agha’s ( 2003 ) analysis of the Bainbridge cartoon in which clothes, demeanour, and even body shape work in collaboration with accent in conveying register and social status. Second, language as one type of social meaning-making resource can be conceptualized in relation to the meaning-making process of other resources. For example, the process of “bricolage” is probed in relation to variations with their indexed styles and social categorization in terms of “gender and adolescence” (Eckert, 2008 , p. 458). This concept is used to offer clues regarding how “the differential use of variables constituted distinct styles associated with different communities of practice” (Eckert, 2008 , p. 458). Third, language is one of the communicative modes in social interactional discourse. It does not necessarily take the central role, because other types of resources, such as gestures, gaze, and the environment where these actions take place, jointly constitute the social meaning-making process. This can be best encapsulated in Goodwin’s ( 2007 ) analysis of the “homework” interaction between a father and his daughter. In this quite mundane interactional discourse, the father uses different embodied actions to negotiate different moral and affective stances through the “homework interaction” with his daughter. Conversation as a linguistic resource plays a role in the interaction, while embodied actions are key factors in affecting these stances.

Language as a multimodal construct

A slightly different approach to studies of language in multimodal contexts is to view it as a multimodal construct: either in the way that language is considered as autonomously constituting the semiotic texture (e.g., in the art form of the “text art” where text is also seen as picture) or in the way that some traditionally assumed extra-linguistic modes are considered as special forms or dimensions of language. This trend of research includes recent studies on language in space, social interactional multimodal discourse analysis, and new concepts or conceptualizations of language in society, as discussed below.

Language in space: semiotic landscape, place semiotics, and discourse geography

Jaworski and Thurlow ( 2010 ) review the notion of spatialization , that is, the semiotics and discursivity of space (Jaworski and Thurlow, 2010 ), and the extension of the notion of the linguistic landscape. By so doing, they frame the concept of semiotic landscape as encapsulating how written discourse interacts with other multimodal discursive resources with blurring boundaries in between.

In their opinion, space is “not only physically but also socially constructed, which necessarily shifts absolutist notions of space towards more communicative or discursive conceptualizations” (Jaworski and Thurlow, 2010 , p. 7). Sociological research on space thus is more oriented toward spatialization, “the different processes by which space comes to be represented, organized and experienced” (Jaworski and Thurlow, 2010 , p. 6). This spatialization—as represented discursively—is intrinsically multimodal:

Echoing the sentiments of Kress and van Leeuwen quoted at the start of this chapter, Markus and Cameron argue that ‘[b]uildings themselves are not representations’ (p. 15), but ways of organizing space for their users; in other words, the way buildings are used and the way people using them relate to one another, is largely dependent on the spoken, written and pictorial texts about these buildings… Architecture and language (spoken and written) may then form an even more complex, multi-layered landscape (or cityscape) combining built environment, writing, images, as well as other semiotic modes, such as speech, music, photography, and movement…(Jaworski and Thurlow, 2010 , pp. 19–20)

The “spatial turn” (Jaworski and Thurlow, 2010 , p. 6) in sociolinguistics thus adds the analytical dimensions of multimodal resources to the traditional concept of the linguistic landscape. Written language itself does convey social meaning and ideologies, while it is situated in materiality (the materials it is written on) and spatiality (the places where it appears). The concept of the semiotic landscape blurs the traditional boundary between language and non-language.

Different from social semiotic approaches towards multimodality, researchers of semiotic landscape pay predominant attention to the “metalinguistic or metadiscursive nature of ideologies” (Jaworski and Thurlow, 2010 , p. 11). In Kallen’s words, the concept of semiotic landscape starts from the assumption that “sinage is indexical of more than the ostensive message of the sign”. (Kallen, 2010 , p. 41); signage indexes ideologies that are embedded in, or indicated by, different types of space or spatiality: city centre, tourist places, districts and so on. Less interest is invested in the process of semiosis regarding how different modes of signs are orchestrated to communicate information, which is one of the primary endeavours of social semiotics (Li and Wang, 2022 ; Wang, 2014 , 2019 ; Wang and Li, 2022 ). As such, in ethnographical studies or data analysis, language, materiality, and spatiality are usually seen as interwoven with each other, with no distinct boundaries in between; or at least, boundary-marking is not the primary concern of semiotic landscape.

In the same vein, Scollon and Scollon ( 2003 , p. 2) coin the term “geosemiotics” (or “place semiotics”) which is “the study of the social meaning of signs and discourses and of our actions in the material world”. Their research objects are signs in public places. The conceptual framework of “geosemiotics” sees language as a multimodal construct in terms of the following aspects. First, verbal language is analysed by using social semiotic approaches to visuals. Code preference (regarding which language is seen as “primary” language) shown on signs or buildings is analysed by using Kress and van Leeuwen’s ( 1996 , p. 208) conception of compositional meaning indexed by different positions in pictures. Second, language is seen as multimodal itself. Language on signs or buildings is analysed in terms of the multimodal inscription (see Scollon and Scollon, 2003 , pp. 129–142) that includes fonts, letter form, material quality, layering and state changes. Third, the emplacement (referring to meaning-making through positioning signs in different places) in geosemiotics, similar to Jaworski and Thurlow’s ( 2010 ) approach towards the semiotic landscape, is predominantly concerned with spatiality and metalinguistic or metadiscursive ideology, rather than the interaction and orchestration of different modes (language vis-à-vis non-language) in semiosis.

Similar to the concepts of semiotic landscape and place semiotics, Gu ( 2009 , 2012 ) postulates the framework of four-borne discourse and discourse geography. Based on Blommaert’s ( 2005 , p. 2) view of discourse as “language-in-action”, Gu analyses the language and activities in social actors’ trajectories of time and space in the land-borne situated discourse (LBSD): a type of discourse categorized by Gu ( 2009 ) according to different types of spatiality as carriers and places where the discourses take place. In Gu’s ( 2012 ) conceptualizations, language and discourse are metaphorically spatialized: language is seen in terms of the place where it takes place. Multimodality is evaluated based on space (Gu, 2009 ). Though it is arguable to what extent language is seen as a conflation of modes or semiotic attributes in Gu ( 2009 ), his work demarcates an ambivalent boundary between language and the “non-language”. Also, in “spatializing” language as discourse geography, it represents language and discourse as a PLACE or SPACE metaphor that is multimodal itself. In addition, it analyses the translation between different modes, for instance, the “modalization” of written language into visuals and sounds; visuals are also seen as forms of “modalized” language and vice versa. As such, Gu ( 2009 ) also represents the “spatial turn” of sociolinguistics which can be seen as the research trend that regards language as multimodal construct.

In general, the trend to spatialize language and discourse (or the “spatial turn”), with the concepts or frameworks such as semiotic landscape, place semiotics, and discourse geography, treats language as multimodal construct in the following two aspects. First, it focuses on metalinguistic or metadiscursive ideologies that are embedded in different modes of signs or symbols; also, Gu’s research metaphorically theorizes social interaction through multimodality. In other words, it posits that language itself is multimodal or modalizable in meaning-making. Written language has its multimodal dimensions such as facets of its inscription including fonts, letterform, material quality, layering and state changes (Scollon and Scollon, 2003 ). Different forms of language are multimodal in terms of spatiality: they can be naturally multimodal and aural-visual for instance in televised discourse; written language can also be “modalized” (Gu, 2009 , p. 11) into visuals (Gu, 2009 ). Overall, language is either considered as signs in the spatialized system or actions in trajectories of activities. It is an integral part of multimodal construct, where other modes (visual, gesture, action, and so on) are not peripheral or auxiliary, but frequently they also belong to linguistic resources, for instance, the visual resources in text arts.

Multimodal studies from the social interactional perspective

There are sociolinguistic approaches towards multimodality that combine social interactional sociolinguistics (Goffman, 1959 , 1963 , 1974 ), social semiotic approach towards multimodality (Kress and van Leeuwen, 1996 ), and intercultural communication (Wertsch, 1998 ). We summarize these approaches as multimodal studies from the social interactional perspective, which include mediated discourse analysis (Scollon and Scollon, 2003 ) and multimodal interaction analysis (Norris, 2004 ); the latter grew out of the former.

Multimodal studies from the social interactional perspective focus on people’s daily actions and interactions, and the environment and technologies with(in) which they take place. This trend of research sees discourse as (embedded in) social interaction and sets out to investigate social action through multimodal resources used in daily interaction, such as gestures, postures, and language (see Jones and Norris, 2005 ). In Norris’s ( 2004 ) framework for multimodal interaction analysis, units of analysis are a system of layered and hierarchical actions including the lower-level actions such as an utterance of spoken language, a gesture, or a posture, and the higher-level actions consisting of chains of higher-level actions. Norris ( 2004 ) also coins the term “modal density” to refer to the complexity of modes a social actor uses to produce higher-level actions.

The focus on hierarchical levels of actions and the concept of “modal density” entail reflections on the question with regard to what constitute(s) mode and language. Language in multimodal interaction analysis is seen as a type of lower-level action amongst other different embodied resources that are at interactants’ disposal. These embodied resources are seen as different modes such as gesture, gaze, and proxemics. But arguably gestures and gazes in Norris ( 2004 ) are also seen as forms of language in interaction as well. Furthermore, regarding the mode of spoken language, Norris ( 2004 ) and her other works methodologically treat it as a multimodal construct where the pitches and intonation are visualized through various fonts in the wave-shaped annotation, along with the policeman’s gestures, as shown in Fig. 1 .

The policeman’s spoken language is treated as a multimodal construct where the pitches and intonation are visualized through various fonts in the wave-shaped annotation, along with his gestures.

Multimodal studies from the social interactional perspective, similar to other sociolinguistic approaches to multimodality, target the meta-modal or metadiscursive facets of ideology. This is done through a bottom-up approach, that is, examining the general social categories of such as power, dominance and ideology from people’s daily (inter)action. This trend of research focuses on basic units of actions in people’s daily interaction; the conception of mode and language is oriented toward seeing language as multimodal; the methodological treatment of languages also shows this orientation. Multimodal studies from the social interactional perspective are intended to reveal the ideology and power embedded in language as action. Overall, they perceive language as a multimodal construct in social (inter)action.

Metrolingualism, heteroglossia, polylanguaging and multimodality

In the second section of the paper, we mentioned the works on some similar notions such as metrolingualism and polylanguaging. In this section, we will review the latest application of the notion of metrolingualism in multimodal analysis and discuss why other related notions or approaches also encapsulate the conceptualization regarding language as a multimodal construct.

Metrolingualism is a concept postulated by Otsuji and Pennycook ( 2010 ) originally referring to “creative linguistic conditions across space and borders of culture, history and politics, as a way to move beyond current terms such as multilingualism and multiculturalism” (Otsuji and Pennycook, 2010 , p. 244). Their later works (Pennycook and Otsuji, 2014 , 2015a , 2015b ) develop the concept and reformulate it as a broader notion encompassing the everyday language use in the city and linguistic landscapes in urban settings.

In Pennycook and Otsuji ( 2014 , 2015b ), metrolingualism involves the practice of “metrolingual multitasking” (Pennycook and Otsuji, 2015b , p. 15), in which “linguistic resources, everyday tasks and social space are intertwined” (Pennycook and Otsuji, 2015b , p. 15). Metrolingualism thus is not only concerned with the mixed use of linguistic resources (from different languages), but it involves how language use is involved in broader multimodal practices such as (embodied) actions accompanying or included in the metrolingual process, (changing) space or places where these actions and language use take place, and the objects in the environment. Pennycook and Otsuji ( 2015b ) include an olfactory mode in their analysis of the metrolingual practices in cities. Smell is represented through linguistic or pictorial signs in the city and suburb to constitute “smellscapes” in relation to social activities, ethnicities, gender and races. Metrolingual smellscapes are represented through the conflation of written and visual signs and symbols (e.g., street signs), social activities (e.g., buying and selling, and riding a bus), objects (e.g., spices), and places or spaces (e.g., suburb markets, coffee shops, buses and trains). The conventional distinction between language and the non-language is less important, or not at issue here, as smells have to be represented through language or visuals, and more resources are conceptualized as metrolingual other than languages.

Language in Pennycook and Otsuji’s ( 2014 , 2015a , 2015b ) conception of metrolingualism, in this regard, is seen as being integrated into different types of activities and actions; it is also spatialized in the sense that metrolingual practice is seen as involving the organization of space, the relationship between “locution and location” (Pennycook and Otsuji, 2015b , p. 84), (historical) layers of cities (Pennycook and Otsuji, 2015b , p. 140). The spatialization is intrinsically multimodal, which we have discussed in earlier sections.

In relation to metrolingualism, Jaworski ( 2014 ) briefly reviews the history of arts and writing, from which he chose the art form of “text art” as his research subject. Referring to the notion of metrolingualism, he sees these art forms as “metrolingual art”, where language interacts with other modes or is seen as part of the visual mode. He suggests that it be useful to “extend the range of semiotic features amenable to metrolingual usage to include whole multimodal resources” (Jaworski, 2014 , p. 151). The multimodal representations in text art are realized by mixing, meshing and queering of the linguistic features, as well as by its relation to a “melange of styles, genres, content, and materiality” (Jaworski, 2014 , p. 151). In this regard, the multimodal affordances (Kress, 2010 ; Jewitt, 2009 ) realized by materiality (e.g., papers, cloths, walls where the language is written), media (e.g., soundtrack, video, moving images, etc.), and styles (e.g., fonts, letterform, layering like add-ons or decorations) are an integral part of the metrolingualism. Subsequently, he postulates that it would be useful to align the concept of heteroglossia with metrolingualism, so as “to extend the idea of metrolingualism beyond ‘hybrid and multilingual’ speaker practices (Otsuji and Pennycook, 2010 , p. 244) and move towards a more ‘generic’ view of metrolingualism as a form of heteroglossia” (Jaworski, 2014 , p. 152). In this way, it relates the subject position taken by the producers of the text arts to their social orientation or alignment as regards power, domination, hegemony, and ideology in a broader social realm. This is also in line with Bailey’s discussion about heterogliossia: “(a) heteroglossia can encompass socially meaningful forms in both bilingual and monolingual talk; (b) it can account for the multiple meanings and readings of forms that are possible, depending on one’s subject position, and (c) it can connect historical power hierarchies to the meanings and valences of particular forms in the here-and-now” (Bailey, 2007 , pp. 266–267; also quoted in Jaworski, 2014 , p. 153). Overall, Jaworski ( 2014 ) shows how metrolingualism and heteroglossia can be used to analyse features of language and their place in multimodal construct. He also discusses how other notions which are similar to metrolingualism may bear a relationship with multimodality in that they stress “the importance of linguistic features (rather than discrete languages) as resources for speakers to achieve their communicative aims” (Jaworski, 2014 , p. 138).

Apart from the concepts of metrolingualism and heteroglossia, Jaworski ( 2014 ) touches upon the relationship between polylanguaging and multimodality, but he does not elaborate on it. Jørgensen ( 2008 ) demonstrates how polylanguaging is concerned with the use of language features in language practice among adolescents in superdiverse societies. Some of these language features “would be difficult to categorize in any given language” (Jørgensen et al., 2011 , p. 25); that is, they do not belong to any standard language system (e.g., English, Chinese, German). In addition, emoticons are frequently used in communication via social networking software. If some of these language features do not belong to any given language, it is difficult to say whether they can be seen as languages. The attention on features of language hence blurs the boundary between language and other semiotic resources. Of course, these features can be seen as a type of linguistic (lexical, morphemic or phonemic) units which still belong to language, but they are frequently used in multimodal meaning-making. Below I use Jørgensen et al.’s ( 2011 , p. 26) example (Fig. 2 ) to illustrate this.

The “majority boy” makes use of resources from the minority’s language (the word “shark”).

Jørgensen et al.’s analysis of this example focuses on the “majority boy” using the word “shark”, which is a loan word from Arabic. As a majority member, he is using the minority’s language to which he is not entitled. Judging by the interaction, it can be seen that “both interlocutors are aware of the norm and react accordingly” (Jørgensen et al., 2011 , p. 25). As such he noted that one feature of polylanguaging is “the use of resources associated with different ‘languages’ even when the speaker knows very little of these” (Jørgensen et al., 2011 , p. 25).

What also needs attention but is not discussed by Jørgensen et al. ( 2011 ), is the interlocutors’ creative way to use these features in polylanguaging: the word “shark” is written as a prolonged “shaarkkk” in terms of its phonetic and visual effects. The creative configuration of the language feature “shark” functions to draw other interlocutors’ attention toward the polylanguaging practice. The emoticon “:D” following it is to demonstrate that the speaker knows that he is using language features by violating the “normal” rules; that is, he is using the minority language features to which he is not entitled. The repeated words “cough, cough”, followed by the emoticon “:D”, also demonstrate this.

Polylanguaging, as formulated by Jørgensen et al. ( 2011 ), deviates from the tradition of multilingualism to enumerate languages, but focuses on language features that may not belong to any given language. In this sense, the emoticons or creative configuration of words can also be seen as language features—the language features that are creatively used by a virtual community of (young) netizens in communication. These features are multimodal in the following aspects. First, they visualize the polylanguaging practice by creating new forms of words, for instance, the prolonged word “shaarkkk”. This creation itself is in fact also a process of polylanguaging, in the sense that it uses the features of common language, or language in people’s daily life (that is, non-cyber language) to create new cyber-language that is used by members of a virtual community. Second, these language features utilize the multimodal resources of embodiment in polylanguaging. For example, emoticons use different letters or punctuations (as language features from people’s daily written language) to represent different facial expressions and emotions. The repetition of the words “cough, cough”, as “a reference to a cliché way of expressing doubt or scepticism” (Jørgensen et al., 2011 , p. 27) also takes on an embodied stance. It shows that the interlocutors are aware that the majority boy is using the minority’s language to which he is not entitled. Hence, this embodied stance indexes the polylanguaging practice. To summarize what is discussed above, polylanguaging entails seeing language as a multimodal construct, as interlocutors creatively adapt language features in daily communication (face-to-face or written communication not involving the internet) or utilize embodied language features when polylanguaging in online communication.

Discussion and a critical reflection

In the sections “Language as written and spoken signs and symbols” and “Language in vis-à-vis as multimodal construct” above, we delineated the ontological perceptions of language in sociolinguistics, including language as spoken and written signs and symbols, language in vis-à-vis as a multimodal construct. In teasing out various trends of approaches, language in sociolinguistics is found to have undergone several stages of development. Language as spoken and written signs and symbols have been pursued in variational sociolinguistics, bi- and multilingualism, and the latest theoretical and conceptual trends of research that do not see language as separate and separable systems or codes. Language in sociolinguistics, however, has been predominantly placed in nuanced and complicated relationships with other semiotic resources. Research regarding language in multimodal constructs sees language and non-language resources as different modes, or types of resources. These different modes have boundaries, and efforts are made to see how each mode combines with each other in meaning-making; language itself is a distinctive type of mode, interdependent with but different from other modes. Research regarding language as a multimodal construct sees language itself as multimodal, language is spatialized (that is, probed in relation to various spatiality and materiality where they appear); in the social interactional approach to multimodality, it is embodied and seen as embedded in a layered and hierarchical system of modes (including gesture, posture, and intonation) in social interaction; in the latest concepts built on languaging, language is regarded as “inventions” (Makoni and Pennycook, 2005 ), as cross- and trans-cultural practice, instead of separable and enumerable codes, or system. Language is entangled and integrated with objects (for instance, signage, and the materiality where it appears) and multitasking with embodied resources (gestures, talking, and simultaneously doing other things).

Expanding the ontology of language from verbal resources toward various multimodal constructs has enabled sociolinguists to pursue meaning-making, indexicalities and social variations in its most authentic state. Language itself is multimodal, though it cannot be denied that language and other modes do have boundaries and distinctions (yet not always being so). Whenever a language is spoken, the stresses, intonations, and paralinguistic resources are all integrated into it. Focusing on language per se has generated fruitful outcomes in sociolinguistic studies, but placing language in the multi-semiotic resources has innovated the field and it has become the dominant trend in contemporary sociolinguistics. Both languages in or as multimodal constructs have captured the complex ways in which language interacts with multi-subjects, materiality, objects and spatiality. But it may be found that the latest research in sociolinguistics comes to increasingly see language itself as an intricate multimodal construct, as encapsulated by various new concepts and theories including translanguaging, metrolingualism, and polylanguaing, in the contexts of globalization, migration, multi-ethnicity, and new communication technologies. Language is not only seen as separable codes and systems spoken or written by a different group of people, but it entails a wider range of communicative repertoires including embodied meaning-making, objects and the environment where the written or spoken signs are placed. It hence may be speculated that sociolinguistics will be increasingly less concerned with the boundaries of language and non-language resources, but will focus more on the social constructs, social meaning, and language as a force in social change. The enumerating and separating way of studying language and multimodality—that is, delineating inter-semiotic boundaries and focusing on how modes of communication are combined in meaning-making—has generated various outcomes, especially in the field of grammar-oriented social semiotic research and MCDA. However, contemporary sociolinguistic studies have immensely expanded their scope toward a wider range of areas other than discursive, grammatical, and communicative. The three research paradigms regarding language as a multimodal construct reviewed in “Language as multimodal construct” have proved themselves as a feasible approach toward language in social interaction, geo-semiotics, and language use in ethnographical and multi-ethnic settings. The ontology of language in sociolinguistics, in this regard, may be perceived in terms of the sociology and societal facets of multimodal construct, rather than language placed in a multitude of semiotic types or the verbal resources per se. A critical reflection on the ontology of language is one of the prerequisites of innovations in contemporary linguistics, which is also the objective of this comprehensive review.

As can be seen through the above discussion, there are several versions of the perception of language in sociolinguistics. First, perceptions of language as a written or verbal system are moving from, or have moved from, the enumerating traditions bi- or multi-lingualism towards seeing language as an inseparable entity with fixity and fluidity. In other words, new approaches in sociolinguistics come to see languages as comprising different features, repertories, or resources, rather than different or discrete standard languages such as English, French, German and so on. The negotiation, construction, or attribution of ethnicity, identity, power and ideologies through language also has taken on a more dynamic and diverse look. Second, there is sociolinguistic research that places language with in the multimodal construct. Language is seen as being contextualized by other multimodal semiotics that is seen as “non-language”. However, more research comes to see language as multimodal construct; that is, language, be it written or spoken, is multimodal in itself as it comprises multimodal elements such as type, font, materiality, intonation, embodied representations and so on. It is also activated (seen as actions or activities) or spatialized in different approaches such as mediated discourse analysis, multimodal interaction analysis, geosemiotics, semiotic landscape, and metrolingualism discussed earlier. Third, these changing perceptions of languages in sociolinguistics result from researchers’ innovative efforts to view language from different perspectives. More importantly, they arise from the fact that language itself is also changing as society changes. As mentioned in the beginning, the world has been increasingly globalized and communications technologies have fundamentally changed the ways people interact with each other. Linguistic practices are complicated by the super-diversity of ethnic fluidity (e.g., the diversity of ethnic groups and the ever-present changes in ethnic structure), communications technologies, and globalized cross-cultural art.

In sum, it can be argued that contemporary sociolinguistics has become increasingly concerned with languaging (trans-, poly-, metro-, and pluri- and so on), rather than languages as a type of (static and fixed) verbal resource with demarcated boundaries separating them from other multimodal resources. Language is multimodal; it is embedded in or represents social activities, places or spaces, objects, and smells. Language in society belongs to and constitutes the “semiotic assemblage” (Pennycook, 2017 ) that can be better analysed holistically so as to reach an understanding of “how different trajectories of people, semiotic resources and objects meet at particular moments and places” (Pennycook, 2017 , p. 269). At a fundamental level of sociolinguistic ontology, this trend of research reflects the changing ways in which sociolinguists come to understand what language is and how it should be understood as part of a more general range of semiotic practices.

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Acknowledgements

Our thanks are extended to Dr. William Dezheng Feng for his constructive advice on the earlier drafts of the paper. This work is supported by the National Social Science Foundation of China (Project No. 18CYY050); the Foreign Language Education Foundation of China (Project No. ZGWYJYJJ11A030); and the Self-Determined Research Funds of CCNU from MOE for basic research and operation (Project No. CCNU20TD008).

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All three authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. JW mainly participated in drafting the work. GJ revised it critically for important intellectual content. WL participated in major intellectual contributions to the Chinese versions of the paper (unpublished); her ideas and points are integrated into the final version of this paper. All three authors are corresponding authors responsible for the final approval of the version to be published.

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Wang, J., Jin, G. & Li, W. Changing perceptions of language in sociolinguistics. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 10 , 91 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-023-01574-5

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Home » Blog » Dissertation » Topics » Sociolinguistics » Sociolinguistics Dissertation Topics (26) For Research

Sociolinguistics Dissertation Topics (26) For Research

Mark Aug 14, 2021 Aug 16, 2021 Sociolinguistics No Comments

Sociolinguistics is the study of language within its social context and focuses on language and its social interactions.  The field of sociolinguistics is wide and offers great opportunities for research and learning. The list of sociolinguistics dissertation topics would likely span the intersection of sociology and linguistics. We have presented many sociolinguistics dissertation topics, which […]

Sociolinguistics is the study of language within its social context and focuses on language and its social interactions. The field of sociolinguistics is wide and offers great opportunities for research and learning. The list of sociolinguistic dissertation topics would likely span the intersection of sociology and linguistics. We have presented many sociolinguistic dissertation topics, which can help in studying different aspects of language, culture, history, and sociology.

The list of sociolinguistic dissertation topics, research topics on sociolinguistics, and project topics on sociolinguistic can help students at different levels. We can also offer briefs and proposals on the selected topics to help you out in your research..

A list Of Sociolinguistics Dissertaton Topics

An analysis of the perceptions of phonological variation in the York vowel system

Evaluating the exposure, attitude, and pronunciation of Dutch learners.

Exploring the benefits of learning the second language in elementary school.

To study the ethics of language taking the example of three different languages.

Evaluating the power of language to capitalise on emotions.

To investigate how people communicate when there is no shared language.

Analysing the effectiveness of verbal communication for displaying feelings.

A literature review on effective communication – a comparison of verbal and non-verbal communication.

Studying the effectiveness of non-verbal communication for displaying emotions..

A qualitative analysis of the dynamics of citizen sociolinguistics.

Exploring the variation in sociolinguistics and cognitive science.

Conducting a sociolinguistic study of advertisement hoardings.

Evaluating language education in Nigeria.

Investigating the challenges and opportunities for variationist sociolinguistics.

Analysing the relationship between social class, language and cognition – a correlational study.

The study of the survival of interactional sociolinguistics in the 21st Century.

A literature review on learners and variationist theory.

A sociolinguistic analysis of slangy expressions in the United States.

An analysis of how students acquire languages at different stages of life.

To study the importance of balancing communication equation based on the engagement model for using sociolinguistics.

Exploring the relationship between sociolinguistics and security – a literature review.

An interdisciplinary approach toward LSA statement on race taking in view linguistics and race.

A study of the variation in the eastern cape considering linguistic and sociolinguistic.

An analysis of the relevance and accountability of dialect: conversation analysis.

Exploring the transgender voices: insights on identity and the gender of the voice.

A study on the blended learning experience among the language learners of the 21st century.

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211 Research Topics in Linguistics To Get Top Grades

Many people find it hard to decide on their linguistics research topics because of the assumed complexities involved. They struggle to choose easy research paper topics for English language too because they think it could be too simple for a university or college level certificate.

All that you need to learn about Linguistics and English is sprawled across syntax, phonetics, morphology, phonology, semantics, grammar, vocabulary, and a few others. To easily create a top-notch essay or conduct a research study, you can consider this list of research topics in English language below for your university or college use. Note that you can fine-tune these to suit your interests.

Linguistics Research Paper Topics

If you want to study how language is applied and its importance in the world, you can consider these Linguistics topics for your research paper. They are:

• An analysis of romantic ideas and their expression amongst French people
• An overview of the hate language in the course against religion
• Identify the determinants of hate language and the means of propagation
• Evaluate a literature and examine how Linguistics is applied to the understanding of minor languages
• Consider the impact of social media in the development of slangs
• An overview of political slang and its use amongst New York teenagers
• Examine the relevance of Linguistics in a digitalized world
• Analyze foul language and how it’s used to oppress minors
• Identify the role of language in the national identity of a socially dynamic society
• Attempt an explanation to how the language barrier could affect the social life of an individual in a new society
• Discuss the means through which language can enrich cultural identities
• Examine the concept of bilingualism and how it applies in the real world
• Analyze the possible strategies for teaching a foreign language
• Discuss the priority of teachers in the teaching of grammar to non-native speakers
• Choose a school of your choice and observe the slang used by its students: analyze how it affects their social lives
• Attempt a critical overview of racist languages
• What does endangered language means and how does it apply in the real world?
• A critical overview of your second language and why it is a second language
• What are the motivators of speech and why are they relevant?
• Analyze the difference between the different types of communications and their significance to specially-abled persons
• Give a critical overview of five literature on sign language
• Evaluate the distinction between the means of language comprehension between an adult and a teenager
• Consider a native American group and evaluate how cultural diversity has influenced their language
• Analyze the complexities involved in code-switching and code-mixing
• Give a critical overview of the importance of language to a teenager
• Attempt a forensic overview of language accessibility and what it means
• What do you believe are the means of communications and what are their uniqueness?
• Attempt a study of Islamic poetry and its role in language development
• Attempt a study on the role of Literature in language development
• Evaluate the Influence of metaphors and other literary devices in the depth of each sentence
• Identify the role of literary devices in the development of proverbs in any African country
• Cognitive Linguistics: analyze two pieces of Literature that offers a critical view of perception
• Identify and analyze the complexities in unspoken words
• Expression is another kind of language: discuss
• Identify the significance of symbols in the evolution of language
• Discuss how learning more than a single language promote cross-cultural developments
• Analyze how the loss of a mother tongue affect the language Efficiency of a community
• Critically examine how sign language works
• Using literature from the medieval era, attempt a study of the evolution of language
• Identify how wars have led to the reduction in the popularity of a language of your choice across any country of the world
• Critically examine five Literature on why accent changes based on environment
• What are the forces that compel the comprehension of language in a child
• Identify and explain the difference between the listening and speaking skills and their significance in the understanding of language
• Give a critical overview of how natural language is processed
• Examine the influence of language on culture and vice versa
• It is possible to understand a language even without living in that society: discuss
• Identify the arguments regarding speech defects
• Discuss how the familiarity of language informs the creation of slangs
• Explain the significance of religious phrases and sacred languages
• Explore the roots and evolution of incantations in Africa

Sociolinguistic Research Topics

You may as well need interesting Linguistics topics based on sociolinguistic purposes for your research. Sociolinguistics is the study and recording of natural speech. It’s primarily the casual status of most informal conversations. You can consider the following Sociolinguistic research topics for your research:

• What makes language exceptional to a particular person?
• How does language form a unique means of expression to writers?
• Examine the kind of speech used in health and emergencies
• Analyze the language theory explored by family members during dinner
• Evaluate the possible variation of language based on class
• Evaluate the language of racism, social tension, and sexism
• Discuss how Language promotes social and cultural familiarities
• Give an overview of identity and language
• Examine why some language speakers enjoy listening to foreigners who speak their native language
• Give a forensic analysis of his the language of entertainment is different to the language in professional settings
• Give an understanding of how Language changes
• Examine the Sociolinguistics of the Caribbeans
• Consider an overview of metaphor in France
• Explain why the direct translation of written words is incomprehensible in Linguistics
• Discuss the use of language in marginalizing a community
• Analyze the history of Arabic and the culture that enhanced it
• Discuss the growth of French and the influences of other languages
• Examine how the English language developed and its interdependence on other languages
• Give an overview of cultural diversity and Linguistics in teaching
• Challenge the attachment of speech defect with disability of language listening and speaking abilities
• Explore the uniqueness of language between siblings
• Explore the means of making requests between a teenager and his parents
• Observe and comment on how students relate with their teachers through language
• Observe and comment on the communication of strategy of parents and teachers
• Examine the connection of understanding first language with academic excellence

Language Research Topics

Numerous languages exist in different societies. This is why you may seek to understand the motivations behind language through these Linguistics project ideas. You can consider the following interesting Linguistics topics and their application to language:

• What does language shift mean?
• Discuss the stages of English language development?
• Examine the position of ambiguity in a romantic Language of your choice
• Why are some languages called romantic languages?
• Observe the strategies of persuasion through Language
• Discuss the connection between symbols and words
• Identify the language of political speeches
• Discuss the effectiveness of language in an indigenous cultural revolution
• Trace the motivators for spoken language
• What does language acquisition mean to you?
• Examine three pieces of literature on language translation and its role in multilingual accessibility
• Identify the science involved in language reception
• Interrogate with the context of language disorders
• Examine how psychotherapy applies to victims of language disorders
• Study the growth of Hindi despite colonialism
• Critically appraise the term, language erasure
• Examine how colonialism and war is responsible for the loss of language
• Give an overview of the difference between sounds and letters and how they apply to the German language
• Explain why the placement of verb and preposition is different in German and English languages
• Choose two languages of your choice and examine their historical relationship
• Discuss the strategies employed by people while learning new languages
• Discuss the role of all the figures of speech in the advancement of language
• Analyze the complexities of autism and its victims
• Offer a linguist approach to language uniqueness between a Down Syndrome child and an autist
• Express dance as a language
• Express music as a language
• Express language as a form of language
• Evaluate the role of cultural diversity in the decline of languages in South Africa
• Discuss the development of the Greek language
• Critically review two literary texts, one from the medieval era and another published a decade ago, and examine the language shifts

Linguistics Essay Topics

You may also need Linguistics research topics for your Linguistics essays. As a linguist in the making, these can help you consider controversies in Linguistics as a discipline and address them through your study. You can consider:

• The connection of sociolinguistics in comprehending interests in multilingualism
• Write on your belief of how language encourages sexism
• What do you understand about the differences between British and American English?
• Discuss how slangs grew and how they started
• Consider how age leads to loss of language
• Review how language is used in formal and informal conversation
• Discuss what you understand by polite language
• Discuss what you know by hate language
• Evaluate how language has remained flexible throughout history
• Mimicking a teacher is a form of exercising hate Language: discuss
• Body Language and verbal speech are different things: discuss
• Language can be exploitative: discuss
• Do you think language is responsible for inciting aggression against the state?
• Can you justify the structural representation of any symbol of your choice?
• Religious symbols are not ordinary Language: what are your perspective on day-to-day languages and sacred ones?
• Consider the usage of language by an English man and someone of another culture
• Discuss the essence of code-mixing and code-switching
• Attempt a psychological assessment on the role of language in academic development
• How does language pose a challenge to studying?
• Choose a multicultural society of your choice and explain the problem they face
• What forms does Language use in expression?
• Identify the reasons behind unspoken words and actions
• Why do universal languages exist as a means of easy communication?
• Examine the role of the English language in the world
• Examine the role of Arabic in the world
• Examine the role of romantic languages in the world
• Evaluate the significance of each teaching Resources in a language classroom
• Consider an assessment of language analysis
• Why do people comprehend beyond what is written or expressed?
• What is the impact of hate speech on a woman?
• Do you believe that grammatical errors are how everyone’s comprehension of language is determined?
• Observe the Influence of technology in language learning and development
• Which parts of the body are responsible for understanding new languages
• How has language informed development?
• Would you say language has improved human relations or worsened it considering it as a tool for violence?
• Would you say language in a black populous state is different from its social culture in white populous states?
• Give an overview of the English language in Nigeria
• Give an overview of the English language in Uganda
• Give an overview of the English language in India
• Give an overview of Russian in Europe
• Give a conceptual analysis on stress and how it works
• Consider the means of vocabulary development and its role in cultural relationships
• Examine the effects of Linguistics in language
• Present your understanding of sign language
• What do you understand about descriptive language and prescriptive Language?

List of Research Topics in English Language

You may need English research topics for your next research. These are topics that are socially crafted for you as a student of language in any institution. You can consider the following for in-depth analysis:

• Examine the travail of women in any feminist text of your choice
• Examine the movement of feminist literature in the Industrial period
• Give an overview of five Gothic literature and what you understand from them
• Examine rock music and how it emerged as a genre
• Evaluate the cultural association with Nina Simone’s music
• What is the relevance of Shakespeare in English literature?
• How has literature promoted the English language?
• Identify the effect of spelling errors in the academic performance of students in an institution of your choice
• Critically survey a university and give rationalize the literary texts offered as Significant
• Examine the use of feminist literature in advancing the course against patriarchy
• Give an overview of the themes in William Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar”
• Express the significance of Ernest Hemingway’s diction in contemporary literature
• Examine the predominant devices in the works of William Shakespeare
• Explain the predominant devices in the works of Christopher Marlowe
• Charles Dickens and his works: express the dominating themes in his Literature
• Why is Literature described as the mirror of society?
• Examine the issues of feminism in Sefi Atta’s “Everything Good Will Come” and Bernadine Evaristos’s “Girl, Woman, Other”
• Give an overview of the stylistics employed in the writing of “Girl, Woman, Other” by Bernadine Evaristo
• Describe the language of advertisement in social media and newspapers
• Describe what poetic Language means
• Examine the use of code-switching and code-mixing on Mexican Americans
• Examine the use of code-switching and code-mixing in Indian Americans
• Discuss the influence of George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” on satirical literature
• Examine the Linguistics features of “Native Son” by Richard Wright
• What is the role of indigenous literature in promoting cultural identities
• How has literature informed cultural consciousness?
• Analyze five literature on semantics and their Influence on the study
• Assess the role of grammar in day to day communications
• Observe the role of multidisciplinary approaches in understanding the English language
• What does stylistics mean while analyzing medieval literary texts?
• Analyze the views of philosophers on language, society, and culture

English Research Paper Topics for College Students

For your college work, you may need to undergo a study of any phenomenon in the world. Note that they could be Linguistics essay topics or mainly a research study of an idea of your choice. Thus, you can choose your research ideas from any of the following:

• The concept of fairness in a democratic Government
• The capacity of a leader isn’t in his or her academic degrees
• The concept of discrimination in education
• The theory of discrimination in Islamic states
• The idea of school policing
• A study on grade inflation and its consequences
• A study of taxation and Its importance to the economy from a citizen’s perspectives
• A study on how eloquence lead to discrimination amongst high school students
• A study of the influence of the music industry in teens
• An Evaluation of pornography and its impacts on College students
• A descriptive study of how the FBI works according to Hollywood
• A critical consideration of the cons and pros of vaccination
• The health effect of sleep disorders
• An overview of three literary texts across three genres of Literature and how they connect to you
• A critical overview of “King Oedipus”: the role of the supernatural in day to day life
• Examine the novel “12 Years a Slave” as a reflection of servitude and brutality exerted by white slave owners
• Rationalize the emergence of racist Literature with concrete examples
• A study of the limits of literature in accessing rural readers
• Analyze the perspectives of modern authors on the Influence of medieval Literature on their craft
• What do you understand by the mortality of a literary text?
• A study of controversial Literature and its role in shaping the discussion
• A critical overview of three literary texts that dealt with domestic abuse and their role in changing the narratives about domestic violence
• Choose three contemporary poets and analyze the themes of their works
• Do you believe that contemporary American literature is the repetition of unnecessary themes already treated in the past?
• A study of the evolution of Literature and its styles
• The use of sexual innuendos in literature
• The use of sexist languages in literature and its effect on the public
• The disaster associated with media reports of fake news
• Conduct a study on how language is used as a tool for manipulation
• Attempt a criticism of a controversial Literary text and why it shouldn’t be studied or sold in the first place

Finding Linguistics Hard To Write About?

With these topics, you can commence your research with ease. However, if you need professional writing help for any part of the research, you can scout here online for the best research paper writing service.

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100+ Linguistic Topics for Excellent Research Papers

13 December, 2021

12 minutes read

Author:  Donna Moores

Linguistics is an English language category that deals with logical dialectal analysis and interpretation. It seeks to reveal the form, meaning, and context of language. While most college students may perceive linguistics as a simple subject, it is pretty complex. English tutors might issue topics in linguistics in various disciplines like phonology or semantics, which leaves many learners grappling to tackle the research papers.

When analyzing language, you should write a paper that clarifies the nature, classification, and proper identification tools. Therefore, your linguistics topics must be relevant and within the research purpose. It is essential to pick an appropriate topic to allow the audience to understand the fundamental research.

With numerous dialects across the globe, identifying a worthy topic should be a simple task. We have compiled lists of engaging topic ideas to help you craft an outstanding research paper and inspire your academic projects.

Linguistics Research Paper: Definition, Explanation, Examples

Any linguistics paper should comprise an in-depth analysis of language development and acquisition. The subject explores various aspects of different dialects and their meanings. It also covers style and form to develop comprehensive arguments under various contexts.

That is why English professors test students with various academic projects to measure their comprehension levels. Thus, learners should ensure they select good linguistics research paper topics. Here is an overview example of the paper structure.

Introduction

• Background information.
• Hypothesis.
• Literature review.

Methodology

• Data sources.
• Data organization.
• Analysis/Findings.
• Paraphrase hypothesis.
• Significance of the study.
• Recommendations.

Therefore, ensure your paper meets the specified academic standards. You must read the requirements keenly to craft an outstanding paper that meets the tutor’s expectations. If you encounter challenges, you can research further online or seek clarification from your professor to know how you will approach the research question.

Choosing A Good Linguistic Topic Isn’t Hard – Here’s How To Do It

Struggling to pick a relevant topic for your research paper? Fret not. We will help you understand the steps to identify an appropriate topic. Most students often underestimate the significance of the pre-writing stages, which entails topic selection. It is a vital phase where you need to choose relevant linguistics topics for your research paper. Hence, ensure you read the research question carefully to understand its requirements.

Carry out an extensive brainstorming session to identify relatable themes within the subject area. Avoid selecting a broad theme, but if you do, break it into minor sub-topics. This will help you during the research phase to get adequate information. Use different websites to get verifiable academic sources and published papers from reputable scholars.

Don’t forget to make your linguistics research paper topics catchy and exciting to capture your readers’ attention. No one wants to read a dull paper.

Finally, follow all the academic requirements for research paper writing – proper grammar, style, correct citation, etc. College tutors often award well-written, original papers.

However, if you still find it challenging to move beyond topic selection, you can reach out to one of our subject-oriented experts for assistance.

We are here to offer the following:

• Quality-approved papers.
• 100% authentic papers.
• One-on-one personalized learning.
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Therefore, do not endure the academic pressure alone. Talk to us we will help you select unique linguistic research topics.

Top 15 Brilliant Psycholinguistics Topics

Psycholinguistics deals with language development and acquisition. Below is a compilation of brilliant linguistics paper topics to inspire your essay compositions.

• The significance of learning many languages as a young child.
• The importance of music in language development.
• An analysis of how language forms cross-cultural ties.
• Why you should learn the art of body language.
• What is hate speech? Is it self-taught:
• The impact of speech on human character.
• Linguistic patterns: A study of tracking migration routes.
• The impact of technology on linguistics.
• A comparative analysis of non-verbal communication.
• Discuss how children get impressive language skills.
• Compare and contrast verbal and non-verbal communication.
• Discuss the different stages in dialect acquisition.
• The influence of linguistic ethics in evoking mass emotions.
• Effective language use improves an individual’s personality: Discuss.
• An analysis of learning mechanisms in a foreign dialect.

15 Interesting Sociolinguistics Topic Ideas

Need help with your sociolinguistics research paper? Here are interesting topics in linguistics to jumpstart your writing.

• An in-depth theoretical analysis of language development.
• Explore dialect as a communication tool.
• How brain injuries influence language and speech.
• Language is a symbolic system: Discuss.
• Examine the different linguistic disorders and challenges.
• The impact of mother tongue on effective communication.
• The importance of learning more than one dialect.
• Evaluate mother tongue pronunciation and language fluency.
• Compare and contrast the English and French languages.
• Why do people communicate in different languages?
• The role of Greek philosophers in language formation.
• Language origination as an unfathomable issue.
• Discuss language as a national identity in a multicultural nation.
• Is there a difference between adult and child language acquisition?
• Discuss the challenges in language development.

15 Good Applied Linguistics Topics

Applied linguistics is an essential discipline that allows learners to comprehend effective communication. Below are interesting linguistics topics to help you during writing.

• What is applied linguistics?
• Evaluate applied linguistics in a technological environment.
• Discuss the intricacies of spoken and written language.
• Explore bilingualism and multilingualism.
• An analysis of communication barriers in delivering health services.
• The influence of identity in a multicultural society.
• Discuss dialect barriers in social media networks.
• An in-depth analysis of hate speech.
• The importance of applied linguistics development.
• The adverse effects of social media on effective communication.
• The impact of culture on multilingualism.
• An in-depth evaluation of applied linguistics.
• The influence of politics on linguistic media.
• An analysis of practical research methods on linguistics.
• How bilingualism enhances human personality.

15 Computational Linguistics Research Paper Topics

Computational linguistics involves technology in translation and other language-enhancing tools. Below are compelling linguistics thesis topics for your research compositions.

• What is computational linguistics?
• The impact of technology in speech recognition.
• The evolution of the translation industry in enhancing communication.
• Does translation cause communication barriers?
• An analysis of audiovisual translation.
• Discuss the effectiveness of supervised learning.
• An analysis of effective programs for phonetic comparison of dialects.
• Speech recognition: description of dialect performance.
• An analysis of linguistic dimensions using technology.
• Effective methods of text extraction.
• Discuss the reasons for learning computational linguistics.
• The influence of modern communication on computational linguistics.
• Discuss the different approaches to effective learning.
• An analysis of speech synthesis.
• Discuss the benefits of machine translation.

15 Engaging Comparative Linguistics Research Paper Topics

Looking for winning research topics in linguistics? Search no more. Here are impressive comparative topic ideas for your research compositions:

• Compare and contrast English and Latin.
• A comparative study of speech physiology and anatomy.
• An evaluation of the Ape language.
• What is folk speech?
• An analysis of historical linguistics.
• An in-depth study of ethnographic semantics.
• The connection between culture and linguistics.
• A comparative analysis of phonetics in linguistics.
• The influence of computers on dialect development.
• Analyze communication in a paralinguistic dialect.
• English popularity: A comparative study of the world.
• Does accent fluency boost effective communication?
• Neologism: An analysis of UK English.
• Discuss the idioms of Australian English compared to American.
• A comparative study of the Anglo-Saxon dialects.

15 Interesting Historical Linguistics Topic Ideas

Let us explore historical linguistics essay topics that will translate into remarkable papers with impressive literary arguments.

• Discuss the significance of the Greek philosophers in language development.
• An analysis of the preserved cuneiform writings.
• Evaluate the origin of language theories.
• Discuss the history of language in mythology.
• An analysis of language translation.
• A critical analysis of language development.
• How speech impacts human interaction.
• An analysis of modern communication evolution.
• Discuss the history of written communication.
• Analyze the different linguistics theories.
• Why some dialects are challenging to learn.
• What is structuralism in linguistics?
• The effectiveness of mother tongue in linguistics.
• The ancient relationship between French and English.
• Is English considered indigenous?

15 Compelling Stylistics Linguistics Research Paper Topics

The following are interesting linguistics topics to help in crafting unique research papers. Peruse and pick one that suits your paper’s requirements.

• Analyze the stylistic features of a business letter.
• A comparative study of newspaper advertisement style.
• An analysis of public speeches style
• The forms and function of legal documents.
• Discuss the functions of different newspaper genres.
• The influence of ethnicity on linguistics.
• Explore the effectiveness of spoken vs. written communication.
• How effective is language translation?
• Persuasive linguistics: An analysis of different strategies in politics.
• The pros and cons of colonialism and the effects on African languages.
• Discuss practical strategies for language acquisition.
• Evaluate the social factors impacting language variation.
• Discuss the various attitudes in society to language.
• The impact of language on cultural identity.
• The role of linguistics in different communities.

Having Problems with Your Paper? Our Experts Are Available 24/7

Research paper writing requires dedication in terms of time and effort. Most learners get stuck because of a lack of time and complex topics to handle. But with the correct strategy, you can simplify the entire composition. Let us look at some of the tips and tricks to help you compose an exceptional paper.

Read the essay prompt carefully

Take adequate time to acquaint yourself with the research prompt. What does your tutor expect from you? Read the assignment carefully before moving ahead with the research writing.

Choose a topic

Identify an appropriate topic through an extensive brainstorming exercise. It is pretty simple once you have the required themes in place.

Conduct comprehensive research

Carry out intense research on the topic you have selecting taking careful consideration about the relevant information. Use multiple trusted sources to extract adequate research content regarding the theme.

Develop a thesis

Organize your research and develop a powerful thesis statement. It gives your target audience an idea of the paper’s direction.

Design an outline

As per your paper requirements, design an appropriate outline that captures your entire research logically. Include an introduction, main body, and conclusion.

Writing process

Finally, start writing and make sure your arguments flow logically and clearly without any vague explanation in each paragraph.

Thorough editing and proofreading

Edit your work thoroughly and proofread for errors. Make sure it follows all the academic standard rules before turning in the paper to your tutor.

Need help with your research paper? Relax and let our qualified experts assist you in getting top-notch results. There is no need to struggle alone when our writers are available 24/7, ready to provide professional writing help. We have a team of skilled experts who are highly knowledgeable in diverse disciplines. Moreover, you will enjoy a personalized learning experience with our pro essay writers .

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Therefore, contact us with detailed information about the writing service you need. Talk to us and improve your academic performance within no time.

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Sociolinguistics: A Very Short Introduction

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Sociolinguistics: A Very Short Introduction deals with the social life of language: language in its sociocultural context. It draws from sociolinguistics, the sociology of language, and psycholinguistics. It explains the differential social evaluations of languages and dialects, how names (and naming) are much more than simple designations, and why some languages come to dominate others. It also explores the relationship between language and gender, sexist language, the language of poverty, the intertwining of language and religion, and politically driven language planning and policy. It demonstrates the connections and continuities that exist within the language arena in which we all participate.

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Top 50+ linguistics research topics for your paper.

Are you a student or a graduate of linguistics? If yes, there is no doubting the fact that research topics in linguistics are your bread and butter. You can escape them in school. Write within the confines of the topics in linguistics and get your grade without stress. However, linguistics is a wide field and it can be hard to pick one of the many linguistic topics for your research. Sometimes, the problem is not in picking a topic. The problem is that despite the wide scope of linguistics, you don’t know how to form linguistics research topics.

We noticed these problems with students and decided to help. Our solution is to compile a list of 50 linguistic research topics for linguistics students. These topics could form the basis of your linguistics research paper topics. You don’t have to worry anymore about topics for master thesis in linguistics. We have you covered for all English linguistics research topics. Let’s dive in!

Check Our 50 Linguistics Research Topics

There are linguistics research topics in abundance. If you search online, you would find more than a few examples. However, you need to know the aspect of linguistics you want to use for your linguistics paper topics. It would make no sense to have a list of thesis topics in applied linguistics and want to write on topics in cognitive linguistics. While they are all under the broad body of linguistics, they are quite different from each other.

So, the first step in finding the perfect linguistics essay topics is to choose the aspect of linguistics you want. After you have made a choice you can now look into linguistics topics in that aspect. We have made finding interesting linguistics topics in any aspect you chose easier by grouping our 50 linguistics research topics. All you have to do is search under the aspect of your choice.

Interesting Linguistics Research Topics

If you don’t only want to write a research paper but you want to find every minute of it intriguing, these interesting topics in linguistics are the ones for you.

• What makes written communication more precise compared to spoken communication?
• How to spot language disorders and deal with them
• What contributes to the prevalent language shift and death in our society today?
• The language of feminism: How formalized is it and how does it affect society?
• Why is it impossible to claim to know a language entirely?
• What salient factors cause ambiguity in language translation?
• An in-depth analysis of feminism in Africa
• Language vs Society: Which one influences the other? How does it affect the members?
• How effective are subject teaching and language support?
• What factors affect language choice in multilingual societies? (Study of selected communities)
• The real functions of language

Linguistics Topics on Translation

If you want the latest research topics in applied linguistics, the topics under the following subheadings would help you. You just have to look for the aspect that you have an interest in and look at linguistics in that light.

• How has technology affected translation at this age and time?
• Is translation the cause of misunderstandings between speakers of different languages?
• How effective is an audiovisual translation in revolutionizing the translation industry?
• Does literal translation do more harm than good?
• How has the translator training and pedagogy faired in the production of efficient translators?
• How does translation relate to popular culture?

Translation is essential in this century with people of different languages communicating and coming together in a global economy. These topics look into the issues that translation encounter at this time.

Linguistics Topics on Politics

Politics is an ever-present phenomenon in any society. These dissertation topics in linguistics examine the issues surrounding language in the field of politics. We have explained samples of Ph.D. thesis topics in linguistics in this field.

• The reality of hate speech in selected communities
• The use of persuasive language strategies and tools in political speech
• How colonial rule affected African politics and language
• Why do politicians use indigenous languages to address communities?
• A critical analysis of the changing political communication landscape
• Effective political communication: A case study of selected politicians
• How tag lines and buzz words are used to enhance political speeches

Sociolinguistics Research Topics

This aspect of linguistics examines how issues surrounding how language works in society. These research topics for English linguistics focus on how people in society use language and its effects on society.

• What are the social factors that necessitate language varieties?
• How does language affect identity?
• An in-depth analysis of language attrition common to most English speakers
• A critical evaluation of the difference in attitudes towards language in different societies
• The differences in language functions in selected communities
• How ethnicity affect language and vice versa

Argumentative Linguistics Research Topics

These topics in linguistics for research papers argue on issues surrounding language. You can use these topics if you want to show different sides of an argument in your research.

• Is language the best way to communicate?
• Can we say that language is merely a system of symbols
• Do language disorders cause difficulties in the study of language?
• Does brain injury lead to issues in language capacities?
• Do mother tongue inflection and accent impact efficient communication?
• Is it advisable to learn more than one language?

Linguistics Research Topics on History

Language was not a concept that started a few years ago. People have been communicating for centuries and centuries. These topics look at the history of language, sometimes about this age.

• How Greek philosophy contributes to language
• What are the early speculations scientists had about the origin of language?
• Analysis of the history of language as explained in mythology
• How do the 3,000 preserved cuneiform writings affect language?
• A critical evaluation of different theories on the origin and development of language
• Why has the question of language origin remained unanswerable?

Linguistics Research Topics on Semantics

Language is nothing without meaning. These interesting linguistic topics show how meaning and language mix and relate. You can research any one of these topics to understand how this field.

• How does meaning affect language analysis and interpretation?
• What is the major cause of language ambiguity?
• How do sentences relate to one another?
• How do speakers of different languages acquire a sense of meaning in conversation?
• How can the meaning of words relate?
• An in-depth analysis into how language is used and acquired in different communities

Tough Linguistics Research Topics

Do all the topics above seem too easy for you? Do you want something more challenging? We have a few topics for you. These topics would give you that challenge you want. Ensure that you do enough research on topics before you embark on them.

• Why do people speak different languages?
• What makes language translation possible?
• What makes some languages harder to learn than others?
• Why are English and French words similar?
• Why does the mother tongue always affect pronunciation?
• Does sign language only involve the hands?

How to Choose A Perfect Linguistics Topic for You

There are different aspects of linguistics. If you check online, you would find linguistic anthropology research topics, computational linguistics research topics, and much more. However, not all these aspects of linguistics would be perfect for your dissertation or thesis.

In selecting or creating the perfect linguistic topic for you, here are some of the tips from our experts in paper writing you should take into consideration.

• Pick an aspect that interest you . Linguistics apply to different walks of life. Therefore, there are varied topics for your linguistics research. It can make choosing a topic quite stressful. What you do is find what interests you and find topics in that aspect. Start by looking for a broad aspect then narrow it down to a part of the field. For instance, you can start with applied linguistics and move on to linguistics in politics.
• Brainstorm with friends . After you have chosen the aspect you like, you can pick a list of topics in linguistics for research papers and bounce off ideas from the topics with your friends. You can even write out your ideas from your brainstorming and ask your friends what they think about them. The topic that you notice that you and your friends keep going back to is possibly the best one for you. If you find a lot of things to talk about it, you would possibly find a lot of things to write about it.
• Research the topics . Talk is cheap though. If you want to write on a topic, ensure that there are enough materials to support your claims. After you and your friends decide on a topic, research the topic before you start writing. Once you find that there are enough materials, you can start.

Linguistics has different aspects. If you check online and on our list, you would find different topics in these aspects, including topics related to linguistic diversity. Follow our guide and list to find the best linguistic topic for you!