Sociocultural linguistics

Sociocultural linguistics is a term used to encompass a broad range of theories and methods for the study of language in its sociocultural context. Its growing use is a response to the increasingly narrow association of the term sociolinguistics with specific types of research involving the quantitative analysis of linguistic features and their correlation to sociological variables. The term as it is currently used not only clarifies this distinction, but highlights an awareness of the necessity for transdisciplinary approaches to language, culture and society.^[1]

The scope of sociocultural linguistics, as described by researchers such as Kira Hall and Mary Bucholtz, is potentially vast, though often includes work drawing from disciplines such as sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, discourse analysis, and sociology of language, as well as certain streams of social psychology, folklore studies, media studies, social and literary theory, and the philosophy of language.