社会语言学述评

An Introductory Survey of Sociolinguistics

一、社会语言学产生的时代背景 把语言当作社会现象来研究,可以说由来已久,但社会语言学作为一门学科的兴起,是本世纪六十年代的事,而首先发生在美、英、西德等国家。 第二次世界大战后,民族解放运动高涨,

This article falls into 3 parts. It begins with a general survey of the historical backgroundof the development of the discipline of sociolinguistics. In the second part, the author discussesthe methodology and contributions of the best known scholars in this field: Labov, Trudgill,Hymes, Milroy, Brown, etc. In the concluding part, the author attempts to delimit the natureof sociolinguistic studies, arguing that while Chomsky and his associates attempt to study thehighly abstract linguistic system of the idealized speaker-hearer, sociolinguists endeavour to ana-lyse the variability of language and its probablistic system.