Theoretical and Historical Perspectives on Researching the Sociology of Language and Education
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S O C I O L O G Y O F L A N G U A G E A N D E D U C AT I O N
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THEORETICAL AND HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES ON RESEARCHING THE SOCIOLOGY OF LANGUAGE AND EDUCATION
INTRODUCTION: THE SOCIOLOGY OF LANGUAGE
The designation ‘sociology of language’ is often used in conscious distinction to the designation ‘sociolinguistics’. The intent of this distinction is commonly relevant both to personal disciplinary orientation as well as to the level of data-aggregation preferred by the researcher. From a disciplinary point of view, the designation ‘sociology of language’, rather than ‘sociolinguistics’, implies a greater concern with sociology than with linguistics, on the one hand; and a greater preference for higher levels of behavioral data collection (‘higher’ in the sense of more abstract, i.e., further removed from directly observed phenomena) and for higher levels of data-aggregation on the other hand. This contribution will trace the development of sociology of language and its key research approaches. It will consider the challenges of different research approaches and the relevance of those that focus on verstehende (understanding) and those whose primary goal is erklaerende (explanatory). E A R LY D E V E L O P M E N T S I N T H E S O C I O L O G Y OF LANGUAGE
The sociology of language has developed alongside of sociolinguistics at least since the summer of 1964, when the modern study of language in social contexts was (re)constituted by a specially convened group of primarily U.S. scholars. The linguists (mostly, anthropological linguists) and sociologists (most of them macro-level oriented), spent an 8-week faculty seminar at the Summer Linguistic Institute, held that summer at Indiana University in Bloomington (Tucker and Paulston, 1997). Since linguists were already focused upon language behavior (whereas sociologists were not, by and large), the perspective of ‘sociolinguistics’ had greater momentum from the outset and could look forward to an academic home in departments of linguistics from the very first days onward. While a few of the Bloomington seminar sociologists immediately began to define themselves as ‘sociologists K. A. King and N. H. Hornberger (eds), Encyclopedia of Language and Education, 2nd Edition, Volume 10: Research Methods in Language and Education, 3–14. #2008 Springer Science+Business Media LLC.
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JOSHUA A. FISHMAN
of language’ (indeed, some not present at the Bloomington seminar had already so defined themselves much earlier, viz. Herzler, 1965; Cohen, 1956), they did not form a cohesive interest-group, either then or afterwards, few sociology departments being interested in the new specialty area. Even the designation ‘sociologists’ was somewhat questionable for some of them, since it included the political scientists and the social psychologists among them. Accordingly, although the sociology of language began (and has largely remained) as a recognizable perspective of individual scholars, it never became a well-defined theoretical school nor developed a distinctive research methodology.
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