Sociolinguistics is the descriptive study of how language and society are interconnected. It explores how language shapes, and is shaped by, social factors such as culture, ethnicity, gender, class, and regional differences. Sociolinguists analyze language variation and change in different communities, examining how people use language in various social contexts and how social factors influence language patterns and behaviors. Sociolinguistics overlaps considerably with pragmatics and is closely related to linguistic anthropology.