Every complex society faces the difficult task of placing its members into roles that are necessary for the society to survive. These roles must be filled with as little conflict and confusion as ...

One of the first accounts of social variation in language, this groundbreaking study founded the discipline of sociolinguistics, providing the model on which thousands of studies have been based. In ...

Mathew Ingram at The Torment Nexus] Mathew Ingram on blaming social media for the stratification of society: "In the end, that is too simple an explanation, just as blaming the New York Times' ...