Historical Sociolinguistics and Language Change

2008 ◽  
pp. 558-588 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terttu Nevalainen
Keyword(s):  
Language Change ◽  
Historical Sociolinguistics

scholarly journals Comparative sociolinguistic perspectives on the rate of linguistic change

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Terttu Nevalainen ◽  
Tanja Säily ◽  
Turo Vartiainen
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Sociocultural Factors ◽  
Specific Topic ◽  
Linguistic Change ◽  
Comparative Linguistics ◽  
Historical Sociolinguistics ◽  
Contact Linguistics ◽  
Historical Comparative ◽  
Social And Cultural Factors

AbstractThis issue of the Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics aims to contribute to our understanding of language change in real time by presenting a group of articles particularly focused on social and sociocultural factors underlying language diversification and change. By analysing data from a varied set of languages, including Greek, English, and the Finnic and Mongolic language families, and mainly focussing their investigation on the Middle Ages, the authors connect various social and cultural factors with the specific topic of the issue, the rate of linguistic change. The sociolinguistic themes addressed include community and population size, conflict and conquest, migration and mobility, bi- and multilingualism, diglossia and standardization. In this introduction, the field of comparative historical sociolinguistics is considered a cross-disciplinary enterprise with a sociolinguistic agenda at the crossroads of contact linguistics, historical comparative linguistics and linguistic typology.

scholarly journals Using the Eighteenth-Century English Phonology Database (ECEP) as a teaching resource

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 591-606
Author(s):  
CHRISTINE WALLIS
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Historical Linguistics ◽  
Language Attitudes ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Historical Sociolinguistics ◽  
Teaching Resource ◽  
The University ◽  
Late Modern

This article reports on the use of the Eighteenth-Century English Phonology Database (ECEP) as a teaching resource in historical sociolinguistics and historical linguistics courses at the University of Sheffield. Pronouncing dictionaries are an invaluable resource for students learning about processes of standardisation and language attitudes during the Late Modern English period (1700–1900), however they are not easy to use in their original format. Each author uses their own notation system to indicate their recommended pronunciation, while the terminology used to describe the quality of the vowels and consonants differs from that used today, and provides an additional obstacle to the student wishing to interrogate such sources. ECEP thus provides a valuable intermediary between the students and the source material, as it includes IPA equivalents for the recommended pronunciations, as well as any metalinguistic commentary offered by the authors about a particular pronunciation. This article demonstrates a teaching approach that not only uses ECEP as a tool in its own right, but also explores how it can be usefully combined with other materials covering language change in the Late Modern English period to enable students to undertake their own investigations in research-led courses.

scholarly journals Probing linguistic change in Arabic vernaculars: A sociohistorical perspective

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Enam Al-Wer ◽  
Uri Horesh ◽  
Deema Alammar ◽  
Hind Alaodini ◽  
Aziza Al-Essa ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Language Change ◽  
Arab World ◽  
Arabic Language ◽  
Social Constraints ◽  
Historical Sociolinguistics ◽  
Variationist Sociolinguistics ◽  
Social Motivations ◽  
Historical Accounts ◽  
Diverse Data

Abstract It is received wisdom in variationist sociolinguistics that linguistic and social factors go hand in hand in structuring variability in language and any consequent instances of language change. We address the complexity of such factors by exploring data from several Arabic dialects in the eastern Arab world. We demonstrate that language change does not always follow expected phonological trajectories, even in cases where older changes are reconstructed to have operated along so-called universal patterns. In our explanation of recent changes in these dialects, we emphasise the role of social motivations for language change and the interactions between these social constraints and purely linguistic ones. Our analysis of change is supported by historical accounts of variation and change in Arabic. We illustrate how general principles of sociolinguistic theory apply to the Arabic data and provide additional layers of sociolinguistic information that highlight the importance of diverse data for evaluating cross-linguistic generalisations. (Arabic, language change, historical sociolinguistics)

Persona management and identity projection in English Medieval society: Evidence from John Paston II

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juan M. Hernández-Campoy ◽  
Tamara García-Vidal
Keyword(s):  
Interpersonal Communication ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Microscopic Investigation ◽  
Speech Community ◽  
Historical Sociolinguistics ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Linguistic Resources ◽  
Speech Communities ◽  
Late Medieval England ◽  
The Individual

AbstractHistorical sociolinguistics has favoured the interest in tracing heterogeneity and vernacularity in the history of language, reconstructing the sociolinguistic contexts and directions of language change as well as socially based variation patterns in remote speech communities. But this treatment of language variation and change macroscopically, longitudinally, unidimensionally and focused on the speech community as a macro-cosmos can be revealingly complemented with other views microscopically, cross-sectionally, multidimensionally and privileging individuals and their community of practice as a micro-cosmos. This conveys a shift from the study of collectivity and inter-speaker variation to that of individuality, intra-speaker variation and authenticity. The aim of this paper is to show results of the microscopic investigation of intra-speaker variation and the use of stylistic choices as linguistic resources for persona management within the micro-cosmos of late Medieval England, through the application of current multidimensional socio-constructionist models to historical corpora of written correspondence. The study is carried out through the analysis of the behaviour of the orthographic variable (TH) in the letters written by members of the Paston family. In addition to tracing language change, the data obtained from private letters provide us with the possibility of reconstructing the sociolinguistic values in medieval times. Ultimately, this study’s contribution is to account for the social meaning of inter- and intra-speaker variation in the sociolinguistic behaviour of speakers at the individual level as a linguistic resource for identity construction, representation, and even social positioning in interpersonal communication.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document