Language Loss and the Crisis of Cognition: Between Socio- and Psycholinguistics (Contributions to the Sociology of Language [CSL], 73)

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. A non-structural model is proposed for quantifying and analyzing the dynamics of language attrition, particularly among immigrants in a second language environment, based on examination of disfluencies (hesitations, errors, and repairs). The first chapter discusses limitations of the conventional synchronic textual approach to analyzing language loss, defines first-language competence, looks at the reliability of hesitation phenomena, and outlines details of the proposed model. Methodology of a study is described in the second chapter. Several chapters relate findings related to silent pauses, filled pauses, and rate of speech and verboseness, correlating these with length of stay and educational level and socioeconomic background variables. A chapter examines the relationship between first-language loss and speech guardedness. Subsequent chapters discuss the correlation of hesitation frequency with speech error rates, a time analysis of changes in speech error/repair rate, correlations between social/psychological variables and first-language loss, and implications for language loss theory and other applications of the model. (MSE)

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.

The Contributions to the Sociology of Language series features publications dealing with sociolinguistic theory, methods, findings and applications. It addresses 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 scholars interested in language in society from a broad range of disciplines – anthropology, education, history, linguistics, political science, and sociology. To discuss your book idea or submit a proposal, please contact Natalie Fecher.