Sociolinguistics - Interdisciplinary Perspectives

Book Abstract

This Book ?Sociolinguistics - Interdisciplinary Perspectives? gives an interdisciplinary perspective on how the language use is shaped by and evolves with human society and how in turn social activities are constructed by the way how language is organized and communicated. With a contribution from multiple neighboring scienti?c disciplines, this book characterizes fundamental mechanisms, represents wide applications, and introduces state-of-the-art approaches in the modern sociolinguistic research. Three unique questions are asked and addressed by eight independent chapters: (1) the diversity and dynamics of the language use in multilingualism, human development, and organizational change; (2) the application of linguistic analysis to society, policy planning, and health education; and (3) the new approaches to sociolinguistics with an emphasis on communicative and cognitive aspects of language use.Unfortunately, the risk of disappearing of Mexican indigenous languages represents a problem for Mexican culture since they are precisely the medium through which cultural knowledge is transmitted. The risk of disappearing is re?ected on a small number of native speakers and their geographical dispersion,the prevalence of adult speakers, and the tendency to abandon transmission strategies to youngest generations. The aim of this chapter is to analyze the impact of idiolect mutations on the evolutionary dynamics of the linguistic group Mixe in Camotl?n, San Sebastian, Puxmetac?n, Mazatlan, and Coatl?n communities. First, we develop a conceptual model of the linguistic group Mixe as complex adaptive system, followed by the implementation of an agent-based simulation model in NetLogo, and ?nally, we analyze the evolutionary dynamics of the Mixe language, depending on the mutation rate of the idiolects. From the simulation analysis, we observe that when themutation rate in idiolects is equal to zero, the Mixe language becomes homogenous. On the contrary, when the rate of mutations is equal to 100, a large number of language variants are generated and the risk of disappearing increases for Mixe language.