Language, Writing, and Mobility A Sociological Perspective

This book explores the interaction between three key aspects of everyday life—language, writing, and mobility —with particular focus on their effects on language contact. While the book adopts an established view of language and society that is in keeping with the sociolinguistic paradigm developed in recent decades, it differs from earlier studies in that it assigns writing a central position. Sociolinguistics has long concentrated primarily on speech, but Florian Coulmas shows in this volume that the social importance of writing should not be disregarded: it is the most consequential technology ever invented; it suggests stability; and it defines borders. Linguistic studies have often emphasized that writing is external to language, but the discipline nevertheless owes its analytic categories to writing. Finally, the digital revolution has fundamentally changed communication patterns, transforming the social functions of writing and consequently also of language.

1 - Laying the groundwork: Champagne and algorithms
2 - Trading goods, trading words
3 - Spreading the Word of God
4 - National language and transnationalization
5 - Half-breed, mulatto, creole: Race and language
6 - From Cosmopolis to Ethnopolis
7 - Virtual contacts
8 - Wanderlust

Florian Coulmas is Senior Professor for Japanese Society and Sociolinguistics at the University of Duisburg-Essen. From 2004 to 2014 he served as Director of the German Institute for Japanese Studies in Tokyo, and he has held appointments at the Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin, Georgetown University, the National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics, and Chuo University. He is the author of the OUP volumes Guardians of Language: Twenty Voices Through History (2016), An Introduction to Multilingualism (2017), and Identity: A Very Short Introduction (2019).