sotsiaallingvistika
Sotsiaallingvistika, or sociolinguistics, is the study of how language varies and changes in society. It investigates the relationships between linguistic form and social factors, such as speaker identity, group membership, and social context. The field seeks to understand why speakers alter their speech and how these variations convey social meaning and influence language change over time.
Core concepts include variationist analysis, style-shifting, language attitudes, and indexicality—the way linguistic features signal social meanings.
Subfields encompass dialectology, language contact and multilingualism, diglossia, code-switching, and language policy and planning. Applications span