Have you ever noticed an accent or puzzled over a dialect phrase? Language can be a powerful tool with which one can create a persona; it can be a common ground between people or can be used as a divide between social groups. This Companion is for anyone who is interested in how and why people speak and write with such diversity.

The Routledge Companion to Sociolinguistics includes articles by leading scholars in the field on:

• methods of observation and analysis
• social correlates
• socio-psychological factors
• socio-political...

Identifying and examining political, socio-psychological and symbolic borders, Language, Borders and Identity encompasses a broad, geographically diverse spectrum of border contexts, taking a multi-disciplinary approach by combining sociolinguistics research with human geography, anthropology and social psychology. The book illustrates a representative range of methodological approaches used by researchers in the field and examines regional and local borders alongside the political borders that divide monoglossic and heteroglossic territories.
Using international case studies and examples...