Eckert Penelope, Rickford John. Style and Sociolinguistic variation

Cambridge University Press, New York, 2001. — 359 pages.The study of sociolinguistic variation examines the relation between social identity and ways of speaking. The analysis of style in speech is central to this field because it varies not only between speakers, but in individual speakers as they move from one style to another. Studying these variations in language not only reveals a great deal about speakers’ strategies with respect to variables such as social class, gender, ethnicity and age, it also affords us the opportunity to observe linguistic change in progress.Anthropological approaches
Attention paid to speech
Audience design and self-identification
Functionally motivated situational variation