Sociolinguistics is the study of how language and society interact and influence each other. It looks at how social factors like gender, age, ethnicity, and social class impact language use and how language varieties differ between social groups. It also examines how society influences an individual's language and how language influences social identities and relations. Sociolinguistics studies language variation at both the micro level, focusing on individual and group language use, and at the macro level, looking at larger social and cultural influences on entire languages and language communities.