Sociolinguistics in Japanese Contexts

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A collection of 24 papers, most selected from Sibata's 1978 () along with a few recent ones. An introduction characterizes him as the founder of the field in Japan and describes his methods. The sections cover the study of sociolinguistics, honorifics, language change, sociolect and ideolect, and norms of language. Among the topics are individual differences between investigators of linguistic geography, learning to say , the rise and fall of dialects, group language and its emergence, and discriminatory words and linguistic taboos. The bibliography of his work spans from 1937 to 1996. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)