The Sociolinguistics of Place and Belonging

“Place has always been a popular topic in sociolinguistics, operating in variousways within different analytical approaches. The present collection enriches this body of work, highlighting a wide range of linguistic data in various national contexts, as well as creative and—in some case—novel methodological approaches. As such, it showcases promising directions for future sociolinguistic research in this area.”

“The volume has many merits, first of all, the ability to put in dialogue theoretical topics and fieldwork in a profitable and consistent manner; secondly the new formulations of notion of belonging and identity.[...] In addition, the practical-theoretical approach to the pair belonging/place is fundamentally coherent with the emergent nature of the concept of identity/belonging and with the reality of the contemporary world characterized by increasingly frequent displacements and the existence of a virtual but pervasive space such as the internet.[...] The text is remarkable and relevant for the disciplines to which it is addressed because it succeeds in dealing from a contemporary and ethnographic perspective with several of the topics that define sociolinguistic and dialectological studies.The volume has also the merit of transforming the notion of place-making in a veritable theory that is capable of containing the large majority of the key concepts of sociolinguistics, and thanks to the various field work, demonstrates the possible applications. [...] The volume is an excellent example of work that successfully connects theoretical knowledge and the practice of the disciplinary area to which it is addressed.”