Studies In Language Variation

Language acts are acts of identity, and linguistic variation reflects the multifaceted construction of verbal alternatives for transmitting social meaning, where style-shifting represents our ability to take up different social positions due to its potential for linguistic performance, rhetorical stance-taking and identity projection.Traditional variationist conceptualizations of style-shifting as a primarily responsive phenomenon seem unable to account for all stylistic choices. In contrast, more recent formulations see stylistic variation as initiative, creative and strategic in personal and interpersonal identity construction and projection, making a significant contribution to our understanding of this aspect of sociolinguistic variation. In this volume social constructivist approaches to style-shifting are further developed by bringing together research which suggests that people make stylistic choices aimed at conveying (and achieving) a particular social categorization, sociolinguistic meaning, and/or to project a specific positioning in society. Therefore, there is a need, we collectively argue, to adopt permeable and flexible multidimensional, multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches to speaker agency that take into consideration not only reactive but also proactive motivations for stylistic variation, and where individuals – rather than groups – and their strategies are the main focus when examining style-shifting in public. This book will be of interest to advanced students and academics in the areas of sociolinguistics, dialectology, social psychology, anthropology and sociology.

Methodological know-how has become one of the key qualifications in contemporary linguistics, which has a strong empirical focus. Containing 23 chapters, each devoted to a different research method, this volume brings together the expertise and insight of a range of established practitioners. The chapters are arranged in three parts, devoted to three different stages of empirical research: data collection, analysis and evaluation. In addition to detailed step-by-step introductions and illustrative case studies focusing on variation and change in English, each chapter addresses the strengths and weaknesses of the methodology and concludes with suggestions for further reading. This systematic, state-of-the-art survey is ideal for both novice researchers and professionals interested in extending their methodological repertoires. The book also has a companion website which provides readers with further information, links, resources, demonstrations, exercises and case studies related to each chapter.

Investigates when and how preschool children acquire the vernacular norms of the community they come from.

New perspectives on how and why syntax varies between and within speakers, focusing on explaining theoretical backgrounds and methods.

This volume brings together research on panel studies with the aim of providing a coherent empirical and theoretical knowledge-base for examining the impact of maturation and lifespan-specific effects on linguistic malleability in the post-adolescent speaker. Building on the work of Wagner and Buchstaller (2018), the present collection offers a critical examination of the theoretical implications of panel research across a range of geographic regions and time periods. The volume seeks to offer a way forward in the debates circling about the phenomenon of later-life language change, drawing on contributions from a variety of linguistic disciplines to examine critical topics such as the effect of linguistic architecture, the roles of mobility and identity construction, and the impact of frequency effects. Taken together, this edited collection both informs and pushes forward key questions on the nature of lifespan change, making this key reading for students and researchers in cognitive linguistics, historical linguistics, dialectology, and variationist sociolinguistics.

This collection of eleven essays traces the complex paths of change taken by the English language in its long history, from its Indo-European origins to the present day. Just like any other language, English is a complex system made up of several interconnected sub-systems – lexical, syntactical, phonological, morphological – and all of those sub-systems are subject to change, resulting in constant shifts and readjustments. Additionally, more than some other languages, English has a history marked by strong upheavals, particularly with the influence of Scandinavian and Romance languages in the Middle Ages. The contributions here consider all aspects of that complex history, with four of them taking a particular interest in the issues brought about by language contact with French and Latin.

This volume presents 16 original studies of variation in languages representing the three main European language families, as well as in varieties of Greek and Hungarian. The studies concern variation in or across dialects or dialect groups, in standard varieties or in emerging regional varieties of the standard. Several studies investigate a specific linguistic element or structure, while others focus on areas of tension between variation and prescriptive standard norms, on regional standard varieties and regiolects, on problems of linguistic classification (from folk linguistic or dialect geographical perspectives) and the classification of speakers. Language acquisition plays a main role in three studies. The studies in this volume represent a range of methods, including ethnographic and 'interpretative' approaches, conversation analysis, analyses of the internal and geographical distribution of dialect features, the classification and quantitative analyses of socio-demographic speaker background data, quantitative analyses of both diachronic and synchronic language data, phonetic measurements, as well as (quasi-)experimental perception studies. The volume thus offers a microcosmic reflection of the macrocosmos of world-wide research on variability in (originally) European languages at the beginning of the 21th century and the linguistic expression of cultural diversity.

This volume contains a selection from papers presented at the 9th International Conference on Language Variation in Europe (ICLaVE 9), which was held at the University of Malaga (Spain), from June 6 to 9, 2017. The volume includes plenaries by Manuel Almeida (“Language hybridism: On the origin of interdialectal forms”) and Frans Hinskens (“Of clocks, clouds and sound change”). In addition, the editors have selected 13 papers encompassing different languages and language varieties — not only from large language families, such as Romance and Germanic, but also small language families, like Greek, or smaller languages, like Croatian — and covering a large range of topics on sociolinguistics and linguistic variation. The book displays a contemporary picture of the research currently being conducted on language variation and change in European languages. Readers interested in every field related to language and language use will enjoy a wide variety of theoretical frameworks and methodological perspectives on speech variation, historical sociolinguistics and foreign language acquisition and learning.