Historical Sociolinguistics – serie

Intra-individual variation is an emerging research field in linguistics with a rapidly growing number of studies. In historical sociolinguistics, this trend has been slow, as it is still largely dominated by the macroscopic approaches of earlier sociolinguistics. Microscopic studies focusing on intra-individual variation in writing, i.e. intra-writer variation, however, are able to reveal how writers functionalize social or text-type variation for reasons such as audience design or persona creation. They may also provide insights into how ongoing changes were perceived by speakers and writers. In general, micro-approaches are able to uncover a wide array of possible factors influencing variation, which may not always carry sociolinguistic functions.This volume comprises twenty-two research articles on a wide range of languages and periods, all closely connected by their focus on intra-writer variation in historical texts and by their use of empirical and corpus-based approaches. The studies demonstrate that the challenges that historical material have for research on intra-individual variation can certainly be met and that the insights gleaned from analysing variation in individual writers are considerable.

This book examines the relationship between political identity and variation from a diachronic perspective, and how vernacular features could index political and ideological affiliations. Specifically, it explores the use of written Scots in the correspondence of Scottish politicians active during the Union of the Parliaments debates at the turn of the eighteenth century. Drawing from the frameworks of First, Second and Third Wave perspectives on variation, and combining macro-social statistical modelling with microsocial analysis, broad socio-political factors are empirically investigated alongside plausible stylistic intentions in conditioning observed linguistic behaviour. Detailing the process of building a corpus, identifying relevant Scots features, and presenting analyses across time, sociolinguistic factors, and individual recipients, this volume provides the first in-depth quantitative and sociolinguistic examination of early modern Scots and its expanding indexical roles.

This book combines studies of a broad range of minority and minoritized languages from the past and present to examine the dynamics of changes in the status of language use and language perception. They address two fundamental questions of sociolinguistics, namely,A. How is linguistic variation at speaker and/or community level structured so that certain variants and varieties have a particular indexical value whereas others do not?andB. What language ideologies underpin our perceptions of the linguistic world, i.e. how do we perceive the way we speak, and/or the way other people speak, and what do we do with this perception?Chapters include discussions of a large number of languages, some of which have largely been ignored in much scholarly discussion, such as Californian Spanish, Maritime Sign Language, or Danish and Frisian in the Duchy of Schleswig, as well as marginalized varieties of bigger languages, such as Scots or Nynorsk. The chapters, many of which were presented at the 2022 HiSoN conference in Murcia, offer insights into processes of stigmatization and promotion and offer a comprehensive comparison between seemingly different case studies focused on a core set of research questions.

Standardisation is not a natural form of language change. The aim of such efforts is usually to create a largely uniform standard, often backed by a strong standard language ideology. However, standard languages are sometimes Janus-faced. Additional standard varieties emerge, leading to situations with «double standards» or even «multiple standards».This volume brings together fifteen contributions on «double standards» in twelve languages – and various standard varieties thereof – from three language families, thus providing a novel comparative view on standardisation. Three main aspects of the «double standards» concept are identified: the descriptive vs prescriptive notion of standards, the coexistence of standard varieties in pluricentric or pluriareal settings, and the impact of the cohabitation of several standards in native or foreign language teaching.

This volume examines the use of French in European language communities outside France from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century. The phenomenon of French language usage is explored in a wide variety of communities, namely Bohemian, Dutch, medieval English, German (Prussian), Italian, Piedmontese, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish. Each chapter offers unique insight into the existence of francophonie in a given language community by providing illustrations of language usage and detailed descriptions of various aspects of it. The volume as a whole explores such sociolinguistic matters as bilingualism and multilingualism, the use of French as a lingua franca and prestige language, language choice and code-switching, variations in language usage depending on class or gender, language attitudes and language education. The sociohistorical and sociocultural matters considered include the association of a variety of language with the court, nobility or some other social group; the function of French as a vehicle for the transmission of foreign cultures; and the role of language in the formation of identity of various kinds (national, social and personal).

This book analyses a set of rarely described regional Spanish varieties spoken throughout much of the northern Peruvian Andes (Cajamarca, La Libertad and Ancash) from a sociohistorical and dialectological perspective. What are the main dialectological features of these varieties? Are these features the same ones that shape southern Andean Spanish, a variety formed mainly through contact with Quechua and Aymara? Which of these features are distinctly outcomes of contact with Culle, the main substrate language of the region, which was mentioned in colonial and postcolonial documents but is now extinct? How are these features linked to the postcolonial history of the region, marked by the Catholic evangelization enterprise and an «economy of plundering» based on agriculture, weaving and mining? Thorough consideration of these matters allows the author to critically assess the standard notion in Hispanic linguistics that considers Andean Spanish as a single, homogeneous code. The study sheds new light on how the regional varieties of Spanish in America were shaped over time and proposes ways of delving into language history in postcolonial contexts, where a written European language has been superimposed on a set of native codes previously lacking written traditions.

In what ways has language been central to constructing, challenging and reconfiguring social and political boundaries? This volume traverses space and time to explore the construction of such boundaries. Focusing on the ways that language functions as an inclusive and divisive marker of identity, the volume includes case studies on Scandinavia, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg. It also explores the northern and southern borderlands of present-day Germany as well as the city of Cologne and the surrounding Ruhr area. The chapters critically engage with focused accounts of past and present language situations, practices and policies. Taken as a whole, the volume stresses the importance of studying metalinguistic perspectives as a means of enabling detailed analyses and challenging generalizations.