Despite its monolingual self-image, Japan is multilingual and growing more so due to indigenous minority language revitalization and as an effect of migration. Besides Japan's autochthonous languages such as the Ainu and Ryukyuan languages, there are more than 75,000 immigrant children in the Japanese public education system alone who came to Japan in the 1980s and who speak more than a hundred different languages. Added to this growing linguistic diversity, the importance of English as the language of international communication in business and science especially is hotly debated.

This book challenges the predominance of mainstream sociolinguistic theories by focusing on lesser known sociolinguistic systems, from regions of Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, South America, the European Mediterranean, and Slavic regions as well as specific speech communities such as those speaking Nivkh, Jamaican Creole, North Saami, and Central Yup'ik.

In nineteen chapters, the specialist authors look at key sociolinguistic aspects of each region or speech community, such as gender, politeness strategies,　speech patterns　and the effects of social hierarchy on...

This book challenges the predominance of mainstream sociolinguistic theories by focusing on lesser known sociolinguistic systems, from regions of Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, South America, the European Mediterranean, and Slavic regions as well as specific speech communities such as those speaking Nivkh, Jamaican Creole, North Saami, and Central Yup'ik.

In nineteen chapters, the specialist authors look at key sociolinguistic aspects of each region or speech community, such as gender, politeness strategies,　speech patterns　and the effects of social hierarchy on...

This book focuses on what people are doing with language in urban settings around the world. In studying situated language life in fourteen cities, from New York to Shanghai, the authors present these cities as sociolinguistic systems in their own rights, show how they are changing, reveal differences and congruencies and what can be learned for theory. Providing new perspectives on crucial themes such as language choice and language contact, code-switching and mixing, language and identity, language policy and planning and social networks, this is key reading for all in the area of...

This book focuses on what people are doing with language in urban settings around the world. In studying situated language life in fourteen cities, from New York to Shanghai, the authors present these cities as sociolinguistic systems in their own rights, show how they are changing, reveal differences and congruencies and what can be learned for theory. Providing new perspectives on crucial themes such as language choice and language contact, code-switching and mixing, language and identity, language policy and planning and social networks, this is key reading for all in the area of...