ABSTRACT

One of the issues raised rightly by the organizers for discussion at the First Hong Kong Conference on Language and Society was:

To what extent has sociolinguistics been successful in incorporating insights of sociology and anthropology into its theoretical and investigative framework? (italics added)

A meta-objective of mine has always been to promote the sociopsychological dimension of sociolinguistic research. To note its absence from the above would in some sense be churlish as other equally relevant disciplines were not highlighted at the conference and in any case I was invited to present my own views at the round-table discussion. However, it is an issue I would like to pursue as social psychology is implicitly and potentially up there in the very question posed if one can identify with Moscovici's (1984: 984) claim that social psychology should become 'an anthropological and a historical science'. Perhaps the very fact that mainstream (and particularly American) social psychology is hardly ever construed in these terms is partially responsible for the quite meagre contribution we social psychologists have thus far made to sociolinguistic theory.