* Social stratification and power: How language variations reflect and reinforce social hierarchies (e.g., prestige dialects, class-based language use, language and discrimination).
* Social institutions: The role of language in institutions like education, government, media, and law (e.g., language policies, official languages, language standardization).
* Social change and globalization: How language evolves and changes in response to societal transformations, technological advancements, and migration (e.g., language shift, language revitalization, multilingualism).
* Culture and identity: The connections between language and cultural identity, including national identity, ethnic identity, and regional identity (e.g., language ideologies, language as a symbol of group membership).
* Language contact and language families: The historical development of languages, the processes of language contact and borrowing, and the classification of languages into families and groups (e.g., historical linguistics, language evolution, language typology).
Key concepts in macro-sociolinguistics:
* Language ideology: Beliefs and attitudes about languages and their speakers.
* Language policy: Official regulations and decisions regarding language use.
* Language shift: The process of language change where one language replaces another.
* Language revitalization: Efforts to revive or maintain endangered languages.
* Diglossia: The use of two distinct varieties of a language in different social situations.
In essence, macro-sociolinguistics seeks to understand how language interacts with the broader social world and how these interactions shape both language and society. It aims to explain language patterns, variation, and change in a broader societal context, focusing on the interplay between language and social structures, power relations, and cultural identities.