Sociolinguistics emerged as a named field of inquiry in the United States during the 1960s and 1970s. Its antecedents include the early tradition of linguistic anthropology in the United States as well as diverse strands of European scholarship: the surveys by German and French dialectologists, the studies of philologists interested in language contact, the language-philosophical work of scholars in eastern Europe (especially Russia), and the functionalist approaches that were developed in England. What is absent from the canon is scholarship that emerged outside of Euro-America, especially in the global South, that is, those parts of the world that have been the object of European colonialism since the fifteenth century, and that constitute the so-called ‘majority world’. It is the purpose of this panel to explore sociolinguistic theory-building from a decidedly Southern, that is, decolonial-postcolonial perspective. Thus, the global South – the postcolonial world of Africa, South America and Asia – is not simply a site for data collection by Northern scholars, but an intellectual space where existing (Euro-American) theories are critiqued and new theories are formulated. In addressing the idea of Southern theory, and its impact on sociolinguistic theorizing, participants are invited to reflect critically on the following questions: What would a distinctively Southern approach look like (and how does it differ from, and interact with, other approaches such as Black Studies, Feminism, Queer Studies, radical anti-capitalist thought, etc.)? Who are the theorists that Southern scholars draw on in formulating their ideas about the social life of language? What kind of dialogue can we imagine between Southern and Northern scholars and knowledges? Do North and South stand in a relationship of duality, of dialectic or of hybridity? What contribution can Southern theory make to the study of language and communication (including questions of methodology and epistemology)? What is the role of resistance, disruption and ‘disciplinary disobedience’ in the broader project of Southern theories? And how does all this affect sociolinguistic practice (and the ways in which we teach the history of our field)?
