Linguistic boundary

Language geography is the branch of human geography that studies the geographic distribution of language(s) or its constituent elements. There are two principal fields of study within the geography of language:

Linguistic geography can also refer to studies of how people talk about the landscape. For example, toponymy is the study of place names. Landscape ethnoecology, also known as ethnophysiography, is the study of landscape ontologies and how they are expressed in language.

Many studies have researched the effect of 'language contact', as the languages or dialects (varieties) of peoples have interacted. This territorial expansion of language groups has usually resulted in the overlaying of languages upon existing speech areas, rather than the replacement of one language by another. An example could be sought in the Norman Conquest of England: Old French became the language of the aristocracy but Middle English remained the language of the majority of the population.

Linguistic geography, as a field, is dominated by linguists rather than geographers.Charles W. J. Withers describes the difference as resulting from a focus on "elements of language, and only then with their geographical or social variation, as opposed to investigation of the processes making for change in the extent of language areas."Peter Trudgill says, "linguistic geography has been geographical only in the sense that it has been concerned with the spatial distribution of linguistic phenomena." Greater emphasis has been laid upon explanation rather than mere description of the patterns of linguistic change. That move has paralleled similar concerns in geography and language studies. Some studies have paid attention to the social use of language and to variations in dialect within languages in regard to social class or occupation. Regarding such variations, lexicographer Robert Burchfield notes that their nature "is a matter of perpetual discussion and disagreement" and notes that "most professional linguistic scholars regard it as axiomatic that all varieties of English have a sufficiently large vocabulary for the expression of all the distinctions that are important in the society using it." He contrasts this with the view of the historian John Vincent, who regards such a view as

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