the study of language in relation to social factors, that is social class,
educational level and type of education, age, sex, ethnic origin, etc.
Linguists differ as to what they include under sociolinguistics. Many would
include the detailed study of interpersonal communication, sometimes
called micro-sociolinguisties, e.g. speech acts, conversation analysis,
speech events, sequencing1 of utterances, and also those investigations
which relate variation in the language used by a group of people to
social factors (see sociolect). Such areas as the study of language choice
in bilingual or multilingual communities, language planning,
language attitudes, etc., may be included under sociolinguistics and
are sometimes referred to as macro-sociolinguistics, or they are considered
as being part of the sociology of language or the social psychology
of language.
see also ethnography of communication