DIALECT CONTACT - FROM SPEAKER TO COMMUNITY-BASED PERSPECTIVES

"Editors Jennifer Nycz and Victor Fernâandez-Mallat argue that to expand our understanding of language use, we must look at what happens when languages and versions of the same language come in contact with one another. Over time, two perspectives on dialect contact have emerged, changes to individual speakers and changes to a community of speakers. In this book, a set of international contributors from both perspectives examines what happens when speakers of one language variety interact with speakers of another language variety and how each perspective can contribute to the other. In Dialect Contact, language contact in five continents and multiple languages is examined. The research presented both validates existing linguistic understanding and shares dynamics that are unique to particular groups of speakers. Dialect Contact highlights the importance of contact dynamics in larger linguistic studies and shows the importance of disentangling their effects from data sets in order to consider the specific communities and individuals being studied. This book will be a must-have for sociolinguistics scholars and students"--