J.K. Chambers is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Toronto. He is the co-editor of The Handbook of Language Variation and Change (with Peter Trudgill and Natalie Schilling-Estes, Wiley-Blackwell, 2002) and co-author (with Peter Trudgill) of Dialectology (2nd edition, 1998), as well as other books and scores of articles. He works extensively as a forensic consultant, and maintains a parallel vocation in jazz criticism, including the prizewinning biography Milestones: The Music and Times of Miles Davis (1998).

List of Figures.

List of Tables.

Series Editor's Preface.

Preface.

Preface to the Second Edition.

Preface to the Revised Edition.

Acknowledgements.

Part I: Correlations.

1.The Domain of Sociolinguistics.

2. The Variable as a Structural Unit.

3. Variation and the Tradition of Categoricity.

Part II: Class, Network and Mobility.

4. Social Class and Sociolinguistic Sampling.

5. Indexing Social Class.

6. Class Markers.

7. The Effects of Mobility.

8. Homogenization.

9. Networks.

10. Linguistic Correlates of Network Integration.

11. Interaction of Network and Other Independent Variables.

12. Oddballs and Insiders.

Part III: Expressing Sex and Gender.

13. The Interplay of Biology and Sociology.

14. Sex Patterns with Stable Variables.

15. Language, Gender and Mobility in Two Communities.

16. Sex and Gender Differences in Language.

17. Male and Female Speech Patterns in Other Societies.

18. Linguistic Evidence for Sex and Gender Differences.

Part IV: Accents in Time.

19. Aging.

20. The Acquisition of Sociolects.

21. Family and Friends.

22. Declaration of Adolescence.

23. Young Adults in the Talk Market.

24. Changes in Progress.

Part V: Adaptive Significance of Language Variation.

25. The Babelian Hypothesis.

26. Global Counteradaptivity and Local Adaptivity.

27. Dialects in Lower Animals.

28. The Persistence of the Non-Standard.

29. Traditional Theories of the Sources of Diversity.

30. A Sociolinguistic Theory of the Sources of Diversity.

31. Vernacular Roots.

32. Linguistic Variation and Social Identity.

Notes.

References.

Index.