CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SOCIOLOGY OF LANGUAGE brings to students, researchers and practitioners in all of the social and language-related sciences carefully selected book-length publications dealing with sociolinguistic theory, methods, findings and applications. It approaches the study of language in society in its broadest sense, as a truly international and interdisciplinary field in which various approaches, theoretical and empirical, supplement and complement each other. The series invites the attention of linguists, language teachers of all interests, sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists, historians etc. to the development of the sociology of language.

An American Language is a tour de force that revolutionizes our understanding of U.S. history. It reveals the origins of Spanish as a language binding residents of the Southwest to the politics and culture of an expanding nation in the 1840s. As the West increasingly integrated into the United States over the following century, struggles over power, identity, and citizenship transformed the place of the Spanish language in the nation. An American Language is a history that reimagines what it means to be an American—with profound implications for our own time.

This edited volume focuses on Spanish use in education, public spaces, and social media in five macro-regions of the United States: the Southwest, the West, the Midwest, the Northeast, and the Southeast.

This book introduces readers to basic concepts of sociolinguistics with a focus on Spanish in the US. The coverage goes beyond linguistics to examine the history and politics of Spanish in the US, the relationship of language to Latinx identities, and how language ideologies and policies reflect and shape societal views of Spanish and its speakers. Accessible to those with no linguistic background, this book provides students with a foundation in the study of language and society, and the opportunity to relate theoretical concepts to Spanish in the US in a range of contexts, including everyday speech, contemporary culture, media, education and policy. The book is a substantially revised and expanded 2nd edition of Spanish Speakers in the USA, including new chapters on the history of Spanish in the US, the demographics of Spanish in the US, and language policy; and expanded chapters on language ideologies, race, identity, media, and education. A Spanish-language edition of this book is also available: https://www.multilingual-matters.com/page/detail/?K=9781800413931.

There is growing interest in heritage language learners—individuals who have a personal or familial connection to a nonmajority language. Spanish learners represent the largest segment of this population in the United States. In this comprehensive volume, experts offer an interdisciplinary overview of research on Spanish as a heritage language in the United States. They also address the central role of education within the field. Contributors offer a wealth of resources for teachers while proposing future directions for scholarship.

Delving into the uneasy relationship between English and Spanish in the United States of America, this book approaches specific topics from a variety of perspectives, ranging from the more cultural to the more linguistic. The contributions explore the problems arising in Puerto Rico as a consequence of the unique political status of the island; the linguistic peculiarities of codeswitching, and its use in legal and medical contexts where interpreting is necessary and in educational contexts with heritage language students; the (non)use and the ideological implications of translation in colonial museums; the connections between language, ethnicity and gender identities in the South West; and the role played by the Hispanic press in promoting intercultural dialogue in the New York City area. Engaging with previous publications, the book examines these topics from an interdisciplinary standpoint, offers new insights into the problems of this cultural and linguistic contact, and suggests new areas of research. This book was originally published as a special issue of Language and Intercultural Communication.