"It's rare to encounter a textbook that one will want to read cover to cover. But Gerard van Herk has written exactly that, introducing students to the field of sociolinguistics as the best teachers do: with excitement, humor, and deep knowledge. What is Sociolinguistics? is a tour through the major issues that define the field, such as region, status, gender, time, language attitudes, interaction, and style, while also exploring the sociolinguistics of multilingualism, culture and ethnicity, language contact, and education. The companion website offers PowerPoint slides for instructors and sample answers to questions, while providing students with further resources, including sound files and carefully curated links for further study"--
And if I was wherever you are, I could probably tell a lot about your speech community and where you fit into it. The fact that we can do this is one of the things that interest sociolinguists.