ABSTRACT
The first chapter of this book provided an introduction to communicative competence and the concept of sociolinguistic competence. We saw that to be fully competent users of a language we must be able to properly interpret and produce the elements in language that vary from one speaker to another, one context to another, and one geographic region to another. Likewise, Chapters Two and Three provided an overview of the field of sociolinguistics and the types of inquiry undertaken in that field. We saw that languages vary at all levels of the grammar and that the manner in which we produce language is influenced by a host of individual and group factors. In fact, the very group with whom we identify and how this group is defined has been the focus of extensive research and theory building. What is clear from work conducted in the field of sociolinguistics is the unifying focus on social aspects of language. In other words, sociolinguistics views language use as a social activity that allows speakers to relate to one another in a variety of ways and accomplish a range of communicative tasks. For the remainder of this volume we turn our attention back to second language learners and the many ways in which knowledge of sociolinguistics may improve our understanding of second language acquisition.
