Reconstructing Non-Standard Languages: A socially-anchored approach: 52 (IMPACT: Studies in Language, Culture and Society) - Hardcover

Grenoble, Lenore A.; Kantarovich, Jessica

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 9027212570 ISBN 13: 9789027212573

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Co, 2022

Synopsis

Focusing on language contact involving Russian, and the linguistic varieties that emerged from that contact in different social settings, this book analyzes issues and methodologies in reconstructing both the linguistic effects of language contact and the social contexts of usage. In-depth analyses of Odessan Russian, a southern Russian contact variety with Yiddish and Ukrainian elements, and Russian lexifier pidgins illustrate the reconstruction process, which involves making the most of all available documentation, particularly literature and stereotypical descriptions. Historical sociolinguistics of this kind straddles the fields of historical linguistics, sociolinguistics, and contact; this book brings together the methods and theories of these areas to show how they can result in a rich reconstruction of linguistic and socially-conditioned variation. We reconstruct the circumstances and social settings that produced this variation, and demonstrate how to reconstruct which variants were used by different types of speakers under different circumstances, and what kinds of social identities they indexed.

Edition details

• Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Co
• Publication date: 2022
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 9027212570
• ISBN 13: 9789027212573
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 370