ABSTRACT
The Caribbean’s location, history, socio-political context, and culture all combine to produce a sociolinguistically diverse space. The region is a prime laboratory for the study of language contact, birth and death, and of Creole languages in interaction with European, heritage, or indigenous languages. The sociolinguistic study of the region has benefited from or contributed to several methodological approaches and over the decades, variationist studies have shifted from pure quantitative treatment to approaches which take in qualitative and mixed methods, especially in the context of third wave sociolinguistics. There is a growing body of work on standards and standardisation, the implications of particular language ideologies, and the negotiation of identity in a variety of sociolinguistic configurations. There is growing interest in Caribbean varieties of European languages and the bi-/multilingualism that typifies many communities in the region. The work of language planners and activists has supported language(-related) resources for communities with languages that have traditionally been marginalised, and current digital technology is creating opportunities for these with regard to corpora, machine learning and lexicography.
