The Social Life of Words

A new approach to sociolinguistics, introducing the study of the social meaning of English words over time, and offering an engaging and entertaining demonstration of lexical sociolinguistic analysis The Social Life of Words: A Historical Approach explores the rise and fall of the social properties of words, charting ways in which they take on new social connotations. Written in an engaging narrative style, this entertaining text matches up sociolinguistic theory with social history and biograph