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American Sociolinguistics: Theorists and Theory Groups

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The model of why some ideas are developed into "research fronts" and others are not is interesting, but the real importance of this book is its explication of the range of theories and "theory groups" in making sense of how human groups use language. Most of the writing about linguistics and linguists for nonlinguist readers has been about Chomsky and his followers, who have no interest in how language is used by people, only its formal properties. This book covers post-World War II (North) American trends, including rejection of one British line of work (Basil Bernstein's). For wartime and prewar American language studies and for the rise of Chomsky, there is Murray's _Theory Groups_. _American Sociolinguistics_ is a revision of the second half of that book.

This is far and away the best overview of anthropological linguistics and of sociological linguistics as they have emerged in the second half of the 20th century. It focused on the relations among sociolinguists. There's also some material on psychology of language. The author's _Theory Groups in the Study of Language in North America: A Social History_ covers unanthropological (i.e., Chomskyan) linguistics and pre-WWII anthropological linguistics with the same frame of looking at networks. AS has useful tables and a great bibliography.