ABSTRACT
Chapter 8 explores the ways in which individuals index their ethnicity through the way they speak, as well as the influence on speech from social pressure by the people in an individual’s social networks. A number of specific examples illustrate these processes, including features of African American Language (AAL) in the USA, British Black English, and Maori English in New Zealand. The debate around the varieties which have been labelled “New Englishes” is briefly discussed. Concepts introduced by social network analysis are then defined, including network density and degrees of plexity, and the relationship between social networks and the concept of community of practice is described. The influence of coronavirus COVID-19 on communication between members of social networks is considered. The method section discusses further ways of collecting good quality social dialect data, and illustrates with ethnographic approaches used by two prominent sociolinguists.
