This groundbreaking collection showcases Jenny Cheshire’s influential work in bringing greater attention to quantitative analysis of socio-grammatical variation and builds upon her contributions with new lines of inquiry pushing sociolinguistic research forward. Featuring contributions from leading experts in the field, the volume is structured in six parts with a particular focus on syntactic, morpho-syntactic, and discourse-pragmatic variation and change, each section turning a lens on a different aspect of socio-grammatical variation. The first sections of the volume focus on the role of structure, its relevance for sociolinguistic production and perception and the impact of social structure on formal structure. Two sections look at the interface of variationist research with other aspects of linguistic research, including generative syntax and discourse-pragmatic features. The final sections consider the importance of integrating broader external factors in socio-grammatical variation, exploring the impact of interactional pressures in the sociolinguistic environment and the role of multi-ethnic contact varieties. Taken together, this volume demonstrates the critical role of socio-grammatical variation in our understanding of language change as a holistic process.

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.

The book highlights the expansion of discourse-pragmatic variation and change, especially under-studied variables and languages.

This collection provides a broad account of variationist sociolinguistic research on varieties of German, with the goals to encourage greater geolinguistic diversity in the field and to expand our understanding of language variation and change. This book illustrates that incorporating a wider variety of language data in sociolinguistic studies provides a broader, more holistic picture of variation and change. On the one hand, this book examines how variationist methods can contribute to the study of varieties of German, with each chapter following the principles of variationist sociolinguistics. On the other hand, the chapters examine how both intra- and extra-linguistic factors can influence variation and change. The volume also seeks to provide a broader understanding of German variation and change across time and space. This book highlights how the study of varieties of German through a variationist lens can offer new insights into language change more broadly, with applications for further research into other languages. This volume will be of most interest to scholars in language change, sociolinguistics, dialectology, and historical linguistics.

This book makes the case for the value of a combined panel and trend study approach in studying real- and apparent-time language change to reconcile conspicuous disparities between the individual and the community. Through an examination of the Swabian dialect in southwestern Germany in two speech communities over four decades, this volume resolves critical methodological challenges in investigating lifespan and community change. This work affirms the importance of the speech community in shaping change and demonstrating how speakers’ notions of local identity and community belonging inform their choice of linguistic variants. Drawing on a comprehensive, integrated methodology, this research brings together diverse approaches for measuring changing social constructs and analyzing linguistic structures using state-of-the-art statistical methods bolstered by participant-observer and ethnographic observations. Beaman explores indexicalities of identity, accommodation, and geographic mobility to investigate how predictable sociolinguistic patterns promote variation and influence language change. Empirically, this volume documents processes of dialect leveling and supraregionalization and the emergence of a “Swabian Renaissance” among younger, well-educated urban speakers who leverage the social indexical status of certain linguistic variables to convey social meanings of local prestige and community belonging. Methodologically, this book offers best practices from a combined panel and trend study, demonstrating the compatibility and complementarity of real- and apparent-time analyses in uncovering the nature, rate, and dispersion of linguistic change. Theoretically, this work links intraspeaker lifespan change and interspeaker community change into a holistic approach, pushing forward our understanding of the role that “orderly heterogeneity” plays in language variation and change. This book will be of interest to students and scholars in sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, dialectology, and historical linguistics.

'Germanic Philology: Perspectives in Linguistics and Literature' offers new, compelling, and thought-provoking contributions to the field of Germanic Linguistics. Nine authors from three different continents (North America, Europe, and South America) present in this edited volume their latest research on such diverse topics as Old High German, Old Saxon and Early New High German poetry, Yiddish, German Heritage speakers in the U.S., Germanic language periodization, paleography, and gender issues in Modern Standard German. 'Germanic Philology: Perspectives in Linguistics and Literature' strives to rekindle dialogue and discourse about topics in Germanic Linguistics while at the same time providing innovative and interesting talking points to the discipline in an international, trans-Atlantic framework. The articles featured in this volume will appeal to students and instructors of Germanic Linguistics alike as well as to anyone interested in this subject.

Taking an interdisciplinary stance, this pioneering book shows what we can learn about the grammatical choices that people make based on both observational and experimental data. It conducts detailed state-of-the-art analyses, and discusses the findings within the context of current theoretical models of grammatical variation in World Englishes.