This chapter describes the many methods of Cognitive Neuroscience that are revealing the neural processes underlying complex cognitive processes in the brain. The benefits and limitations of each method are discussed, highlighting how there is no single “best” method and how the choice of method in any experiment should be motivated by the hypothesis being evaluated. Neuropsychology provides novel insights into the neural bases of cognitive processes but is limited because it relies on naturally occurring lesions. Neuroimaging methods (fMRI, PET, fNIRS) provide excellent spatial resolution but cannot assess the temporal order of neural activity across regions. Electroencephalography (EEG) and magnetoencephalography (MEG) can track neural activity in real time, but their spatial precision is limited because they are recorded from outside the head. Neurostimulation methods (TMS, tDCS, tACS) can uniquely assess causality by testing if, and when, a brain area is necessary for a particular function. Methods using non-human animals (e.g., single-unit recordings) can provide the highest levels of spatial and temporal precision, but they are limited to mental processes that the non-human animals can be trained to do. This chapter ends with a comparison of methods that includes portability, spatial precision, and temporal resolution.

In this chapter, we look at sociolinguistic aspects of globalization. The sociolinguistic turn entailed a focus on variation, which became more intricate as social barriers shifted. Recent changes have intensified such trends, and today language variation is no longer seen as static, in a socially stratified and rather rigid system. Rather, it represents a negotiated system and a fluid form of identity construction characterized by ever-widening social networks in an increasingly digital world. We look at superdiversity in the postmodern world and effects of mobility on sociolinguistic repertoires, present theoretical and methodological issues, both geopolitically and geoculturally, and introduce the World Language System, which orders the world’s languages into different layers according to criteria such as usage, function and speaker numbers. Finally, we look at winners and losers of language and globalization (countries, companies and individuals) so as to assess general sociolinguistic trends in a postmodern world.

We will look at attitudes and value judgments which speakers and communities have about English dialects and discuss their social relevance of language in general. We will see that language is not only a means to share information but an essential part of social life which helps us organize ourselves and define our identity. There are different levels of usage (regional, social, ethnic, individual) and that variation has regional, social and individual dimensions. We start with a short discussion of general attitudes about language varieties, look at social prejudice based on language usage, find out why some varieties are stigmatized whereas others have high prestige and get a first glance of perceptions about standard and non-standardized varieties. Looking at examples from English around the world, we take a look at perceptual dialectology to demonstrate how views toward dialects affect our ives – not forgetting their negative side effects.

In this chapter explore language usage and interaction in general and discuss the overlap of sociolinguistics with the fields of pragmatics and discourse analysis. We will investigate the conventional patterns used by speakers when they construct, participate in and evaluate discourse at large. The concept of face is an important one here, namely the self-image of speakers that they wish to maintain and protect via the sociolinguistic resources available to them: speech events in the form of narratives, telephone conversations, weblogs, university lectures, etc. Context effects on sociolinguistic interaction are discussed with examples of turn-taking, power, solidarity and cross-cultural communication, and also with a focus on social hierarchies and language practices in the workplace. We conclude with a discussion of crossing and translanguaging in multilingual contexts.

We take a look at fundamental principles that operate when social and/or regional varieties of English are in contact with each other or with other languages. We take a historical look at English and explore various contact settings which have shaped its development, from contact with Old Norse, Latin and Norman French to the present day. We discuss patterns of bilingualism and multilingualism, that is when speakers use two or more languages in their everyday lives. As the product of migration and colonization, different kinds of English have emerged in different locations around the world. We learn how new dialects emerge as a product of new-dialect formation and how contact-derived varieties such as pidgins and creoles develop under conditions of language contact, with emphasis on different theories of origins. Finally, we discuss the so-called Global Englishes which have emerged as a product of second-language learning around the world.