China
The 50 years of the devotion of sociolinguistics under the International Journal of the Sociology of Language have brought us remarkable insights into language in relation to society. For the next half century, for the discipline to engage more effectively with the radically and fast changing human society, i. e. in answer to the provocative questions raised by Wolfgang Klein in Schreiben oder Lesen, aber nicht beides, oder: Vorschlag zur Wiedereinführung der Keilschrift mittels Hammer und Meißel, (1989. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik 74. 116–119 [repr. in this issue]) it may do well to take a culturalist turn, or its seminal sociocultural return, by studying language and society, or rather, language-in-society, as a system of culturally diversified and competing discourses with a view to neutralizing the human cultural chasm on the one hand and to enhancing human cultural harmony and prosperity on the other hand.