Sociology of language

Sociology of language is the study of the relations between language on society. It is closely related to the field of sociolinguistics, which focuses on the effect of society on language. One of its longest and most prolific proponents was Joshua Fishman, who among other major contributions, was founding editor the International Journal of the Sociology of Language. Sociology of language studies society in relation to language whereas Sociolinguistics studies language in relation to society. For the former, society is the object of study, whereas, for the latter, language is the object of study. The basic idea is that language reflects, among several other things, attitudes that speakers want to exchange or that just get reflected through language use. These attitudes of the speakers is the sociologist's information.