Sociolinguistics and Second Language Acquisition

Sociolinguistics and Second Language Acquisition is a comprehensive textbook that bridges the gap between the fields of sociolinguistics and second language acquisition, exploring the variety of ways in which social context influences the acquisition of a second language. It reviews basic principles of sociolinguistics, provides a unified account of the multiple theoretical approaches to social factors in second languages, summarizes the growing body of empirical research, including examples of findings from a wide range of second languages, and discusses the application of sociolinguistics to the second language classroom. Written for an audience that extends beyond specialists in the field, complete with summary tables, additional readings, discussion questions, and application activities throughout, this volume will serve as the ideal textbook for advanced undergraduate or graduate students of second language acquisition and instruction, and will also be of interest to researchers in the fields of second language acquisition, second language instruction and sociolinguistics.

Kimberly L. Geeslin is Professor at Indiana University. She is the editor of The Handbook for Spanish Second Language Acquisition (2013) and has published research articles in Studies in Second Language Acquisition and Language Learning. Avizia Yim Long is a doctoral candidate in Hispanic linguistics at Indiana University. Her research interests include variationist second language acquisition-with particular attention given to Korean-speaking learners of Spanish-and sociolinguistics.

Section I: Principles of sociolinguistic variation and second language acquisition Section II: Approaches to the study of sociolinguistics and second language acquisition Section III: Implications of research on the acquisition of sociolinguistic competence in second languages