Jan Blommaert is Professor of Language, Culture and Globalization and Director of Babylon, Center for the Study of Superdiversity at Tilburg University, the Netherlands.

Blommaert's book is a theoretical tour-de-force, entertaining, challenging and immensely enlightening. It encompasses a wide swath of thinking about the relationship between language and society, both in history and now.

• 1. Sociolinguists as sociologists2. Durkheim’s social fact2.1 Norms and concepts2.2 Integration and anomie2.3 Durkheim’s impact and the challenge of 'Rational Choice'3. Sociolinguistics and the social fact: Avec Durkheim3.1 Language as a normative collective system: ordered indexicality3.2 Language variation: dialects, accents & languaging3.3 Inequality, voice, repertoire3.4 Language, the social fact4. What Durkheim could not have known: Après Durkheim4.1 Preliminary: A theory of vernacular globalization4.2 An indexical-polynomic theory of social norms4.3 A genre theory of social action4.4 A microhegemonic theory of identity4.5 A theory of “light” social groups4.6 A polycentric theory of social integration4.7 Constructures4.8 Anachronism as power5. The sociological re-imaginationReferences

Jan Blommaert is Professor of Language, Culture and Globalization and Director of Babylon, Center for the Study of Superdiversity at Tilburg University, the Netherlands.

Blommaert's book is a theoretical tour-de-force, entertaining, challenging and immensely enlightening. It encompasses a wide swath of thinking about the relationship between language and society, both in history and now.

• 1. Sociolinguists as sociologists2. Durkheim’s social fact2.1 Norms and concepts2.2 Integration and anomie2.3 Durkheim’s impact and the challenge of 'Rational Choice'3. Sociolinguistics and the social fact: Avec Durkheim3.1 Language as a normative collective system: ordered indexicality3.2 Language variation: dialects, accents & languaging3.3 Inequality, voice, repertoire3.4 Language, the social fact4. What Durkheim could not have known: Après Durkheim4.1 Preliminary: A theory of vernacular globalization4.2 An indexical-polynomic theory of social norms4.3 A genre theory of social action4.4 A microhegemonic theory of identity4.5 A theory of “light” social groups4.6 A polycentric theory of social integration4.7 Constructures4.8 Anachronism as power5. The sociological re-imaginationReferences

Jan Blommaert is Professor of Language, Culture and Globalization and Director of Babylon, Center for the Study of Superdiversity at Tilburg University, the Netherlands.

Blommaert's book is a theoretical tour-de-force, entertaining, challenging and immensely enlightening. It encompasses a wide swath of thinking about the relationship between language and society, both in history and now.

• 1. Sociolinguists as sociologists2. Durkheim’s social fact2.1 Norms and concepts2.2 Integration and anomie2.3 Durkheim’s impact and the challenge of 'Rational Choice'3. Sociolinguistics and the social fact: Avec Durkheim3.1 Language as a normative collective system: ordered indexicality3.2 Language variation: dialects, accents & languaging3.3 Inequality, voice, repertoire3.4 Language, the social fact4. What Durkheim could not have known: Après Durkheim4.1 Preliminary: A theory of vernacular globalization4.2 An indexical-polynomic theory of social norms4.3 A genre theory of social action4.4 A microhegemonic theory of identity4.5 A theory of “light” social groups4.6 A polycentric theory of social integration4.7 Constructures4.8 Anachronism as power5. The sociological re-imaginationReferences