Widening Horizons: Cross-cultural approaches to linguistic variation

In the context of the NWAV 45 in Vancouver, Canada

Organized by Gregory Guy (New York University) and Aria Adli (University of Cologne)

Despite great advances in variationist sociolinguistics in the last decades, a major limitation is the fact that the great majority of studies are done on relatively few languages; existing work in our discipline also leaves non-Western societies massively underrepresented. Hence the accepted wisdom and prevailing theories and models in sociolinguistics actually rest on a culturally narrow base. The field needs more studies of other languages and societies, but more than that, it needs a framework to compare different languages and different societies. Such a framework would enable comparative studies of sociolinguistic behavior across societies. In a world of increasing mobility and migration, it would allow us to better address cultural and linguistic contact in the highly diverse metropolises around the world, like New York, Cologne, Mumbai, Hong Kong and Toronto.

An essential question is how we can disentangle general principles of sociolinguistic variation from community–specific ones. Do the by-now conventional treatments and findings concerning social stratification, class, age and gender generalize to non-Western societies (and do they generalize to all Western societies)? How do different languages and communities construct ‘stylistic’ variation? How do the specific structures and properties of a language affect what variables are available for social indexation? How do the specifics of social structure in a community affect variation and the mechanisms of language change?

This workshop invites papers that address issues of cross-cultural and cross-language sociolinguistics. We welcome contributions that report empirical research of a cross-cultural nature, or that seek to identify essential methodological steps for developing a cross-cultural sociolinguistic approach, or to advance a cross-cultural perspective in sociolinguistic theory and modeling.