Founders of Sociolinguistics

SociolinguisticsFounding Scholars

1880'sGeorg Winker

He is considered the founder of linguistic geography. He produced the first linguistic atlas in the world: In the 1930s The Linguistic Atlas of the United States was published and was the first dialect studies to include social factors as well as regional.

1890's Joseph Wright

Wright produced a six volume dictionary about English dialects. The English Dialect Dictionary (EDD, 1896–1905) was a lexicographic milestone for English dialect terms and phrases of the 18th and 19th centuries.

1950’sJohn Gumperz

1950’sUriel Weinreich

A pioneer in the field of sociolinguistics. He was one of the best-known linguistic and anthropologists of his generation. He developed fundamental concepts such as code-switching and contextualization cues.

His major publication Languages in contact in 1953 was a seminal work that is still regularly cited as the basis for understanding language contact. His research papers ranged from a cultural history of Yiddish rhyme through fields such as phonology, grammatical theory, bilingualism, language standardization, dialectology, semantics, and lexicology.

1960’sJoshua Fishman

1960’sCharles Ferguson

He was credited for founding the field of the sociology of language. His ideas on the use of language in society influenced others in the areas of bilingualism and multilingualism, bilingual and minority education, the sociology and history of Yiddish, language policy and planning, language and ethnicity, and reversing language shift.

He was considered a pioneer in socio and applied linguistics, including areas of English as a global language, child language acquisition, and bilingualism. He made fundamental contributions to language universals, language use in society, and language change. Diglossia is a linguistic term coined by Ferguson, as a result of his study on language and society.

1960’sDell Hymes

1960’sWilliam Labov

He was one of the first to call the fourth subfield of anthropology "linguistic anthropology." As one of the first sociolinguists, Hymes helped to pioneer the connection between speech and human relations and human understandings of the world. He was interested in how different language patterns shape different patterns of thought.

He is a leading scholar in the field of sociolinguistics. He is known for the study of language variation and change. The research paradigm that he pioneered is known as variationist sociolinguistics. His influence has also been felt in disciplines such as anthropology, sociology, and education.

1950's, 60's, 70's and so on Noam Chomsky

1970’sBasil Bernstein

Considered the founder of modern linguistics. He introduced the Chomsky hierarchy, generative grammar and the concept of a universal grammar, in which underlies all human speech and is based in the innate structure of the mind/brain. Chomsky has not only transformed the field of linguistics, his work has influenced fields such as cognitive science, philosophy, psychology, computer science, mathematics, childhood education, and anthropology.

He made a significant contribution to the study of communication with his sociolinguistic theory of language codes. His theory showed how the language people use in everyday conversation both reflects and shapes the assumptions of a certain social group.

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