1. INTRODUCTION

1.1 Sociolinguistics

1.2 Sociolinguistic phenomena

1.3 Speakers and communities

2. VARIETIES OF LANGUAGE

2.1 Introduction

2.2 Languages

2.3 Dialects

2.4 Registers

2.5 Mixture of varieties

3. LANGUAGE, CULTURE AND THOUGHT

3.1 Introduction

3.2 Linguistic and cultural relativity

3.3 Language, speech and thought

4 SPEECH AS SOCIAL INTERACTION

4.1 The social nature of speech

4.2 speech as a signal of social identity

4.3 The structure of speech

4.4 Verbal and non verbal behaviour

5. THE QUANTITATIVE STUDY OF SPEECH

5.1 Introduction

5.2 Methodology

5.3 Linguistic variables

5.4 Influences on linguistic variables

5.5 Interpreting the results

6. LINGUISTIC AND SOCIAL INEQUALITY

6.1 Linguistic inequality

6.2 Linguistic prejudice

6.3 linguistic incompetence

6.4 Communicative incompetence