The statement below in the call for papers may be true in Britain and
some other countries, though I'm sure counterexamples can be presented,
but it is not true for the US, at least in the past. Sociolinguists at
the Center for Applied Linguistics in Washington, D.C., and at various
universities (such as Labov's work in NYC and my own work in Texas) were
very actively involved in using sociolinguistic knowledge to help dispel
myths about African American speech, and to help teachers (especially
white) handle the transition to desegregated schools. Sociolinguists
(again, notably Labov) testified in court cases concerning discrimination.
Subsequently similar efforts were applied in support of bilingual education
programs. Many sociolinguists, from Stewart to Shuy and Labov, have been
actively concerned with pedagogical and policy issues in teaching and
testing reading. As two examples of policy impact, I can cite the work
of Roseann Gonzalez in persuading federal courts in the US to require
certification for court interpreters in several major languages, including
Spanish, Haitian Creole, and Navajo, and my own success in getting the
US Defense Department to hire sociolinguists to help revise the standard
Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, used in placing all recruits
in the armed services, and in persuading the US Census Bureau to revise
the Spanish version of the census questionnaire to include regional and
immigrants variants found in the US. Much of this work flies 'under the
radar', and does not appear in scholarly journals, making it 'invisible'
from an academic perspective. Many other names could be added to the
list in the US, among them such notables as Wolfram, Baugh, Rickford,
Winford, Adamson, and Weldon. (Apologies for many omissions!)
Rudy
Rudy Troike
University of Arizona
Tucson, Arizona
USA
Call for contributions: 'Sociolinguistics: Application and Impact?
Compared to other subfields of linguistics, sociolinguistics has been
relatively outward facing since its inception. In one sense, this
follows naturally when collecting data from people in everyday
situations. Yet few can accuse sociolinguistics of being particularly
meddlesome in the political process. Nor has the discipline as a whole
been overly occupied with improving people?s lives. In fact, despite
significantly furthering our academic understanding of linguistic
variation and change, language policy and planning, language and
identity, language and gender and so on, very few people outside
academia have ever heard of sociolinguistics -- let alone its influence
beyond the groves of academe.
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