ABSTRACT
In the previous chapter we looked at the way in which linguistic variation can be analysed in terms of social classes. Social class can be used to group large swathes of people without the researcher needing to know them very well, whereas social networks are groupings based on frequency and quality of members’ interaction. Communities of practice are defined by shared practices and goals, whose salience and meaning can only be determined through detailed or ingroup knowledge. Because these three levels of social categorisation ask different questions about the social meaning of a linguistic variable, they can be used effectively with different kinds of data to analyse – and, more importantly, – to understand the meaning of linguistic variation.
