Sociolinguistic parallels between choosing scripts and languages

This article demonstrates that many of the same concepts and tools developed for the sociolinguistic study of how language communities choose spoken languages can also be profitably applied to the study of how they choose scripts. These similarities include the choice of a language or script to either identify with or create distance from another group, borrowing elements from other languages and scripts, the death of languages and scripts, contact induced change in languages and scripts, and the identification of languages and scripts with gender.