Sociolinguistics and Language Variation

Map of the united states with different regions classifications

Sociolinguistics and Language Variation involve the study of how language varies among different groups of speakers and the relationship of this variation to social factors. The examination of the reciprocal effects of social organization and social contexts on language use and the exploration of social and linguistic diversity helps us better understand how we use language to construct personal, cultural, and social identities.

 

 

 

Personnel

Joshua Bousquette

Associate Professor

Sociolinguistics, Heritage language communities, Historical linguistics, Germanic languages 

Jon Forrest

Assistant Professor

Sociolinguistics, Language Variation and Change, Southern US Englishes, African American Language, Phonetics, Phonology

Lewis C. (Chad) Howe

Professor

Some Current Projects:

Grammaticalization and language change in Romance Languages Language variation and change in social media Incipient Language Shift in a Southern Latino Community Indigenous Languages in Latin America: Contact, Shift, and Maintenance

William Kretzschmar

Willson Professor in Humanities, Dept. of English

Language variation, Corpus linguistics, American English

Keith Langston

Professor and Department Head

Slavic prosody and the phonology/morphology interface; historical Slavic linguistics and accentology; and sociolinguistics, with a focus on questions of language and identity and language contact in the former Yugoslavia.

Diana Ranson

Professor Emerita, Department of Romance Languages

Language variation and change, Romance languages

Related Events...


Language Variety in the South V & Southeastern Conference of Linguistics XXXII
,
Athens, GA

Language Variety in the South V & Southeastern Conference of Linguistics XXXII
,
Athens, GA

Related Articles...


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A graph showing vowel changes across generations
Collaborative UGA & Georgia Tech Linguistics Study Featured in Columns, Across News Outlets

UGA Linguistics faculty members Dr. Margaret Renwick and Dr. Jon Forrest were featured in this week's Columns article, discussing the rapid decline of the Georgia accent among…


Dr. Jon Forrest Nominated for Spotlight on Inclusive Excellence

This month, the Linguistics department's Spotlight on Inclusive Excellence will feature Dr. Jon Forrest and his course offering for Fall 2023, Language, Race, & Ethnicity in the U.S. 

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