Language in its social context

Abstract

The study of language in its social environment has grown significantly over the past forty years, and now covers most languages and areas of the world. Sociolinguistics examines the relation between language and society, between the uses of language and the social structures in which the users of language live. Sociolinguists employ a variety of different approaches in collecting their data, but all try to answer some part of the fundamental question: who speaks what language, to whom, when, how, and why? This preface examines the development and main facets of sociolinguistics as a discipline, and locates the Baltic case within a broader comparative perspective.⟨/p⟩