Historical sociolinguistics

J. Camilo Conde-Silvestre
Table of contents

Historical sociolinguistics developed as a new approach to diachronic linguistic research in the last third of the twentieth century, at the intersection of historical linguistics and sociolinguistics with other interrelated fields like social history and corpus linguistics, among others. It derived from the basic “underlying premise that linguistic and social factors are clearly interrelated in language change” and the need to study them “in their mutual interaction” (Roberge 2006: 2308). The genesis of the new discipline did not take place in a vacuum. In fact, from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries some linguists had already called attention to the role that social factors play in various aspects of language development, history and change. Early dialectologists (Georg Wenker, Louis Gauchat, Raven I. McDavid or Ramón Menéndez-Pidal) as well as researchers on linguistic anthropology or on the study of languages in contact (William D. Whitney, Uriel Weinreich, Einar Haugen), even proponents of the functionalist approah (Eugeniu Coseriu), had developed methods that transcended the principles and models of their time, which, implicitly, tended to downplay the social nature of human language in their application: the comparatist organic view of languages or the structuralist quest for systemic balance (Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg 2012: 28). In this context, the well-known distinction between the internal and the external history of the language was also established as an attempt to counteract the disdain for the social dimension in historical linguistics. Scholars who studied the social and cultural aspects of change (external history), instead of change in linguistic structure (internal history), can be considered, in a sense, proper predecessors of the historical sociolinguistic approach. This could be the case, in the English-speaking world, of Albert C. Baugh and Thomas Cable (1951), Dick Leith (1983) or Joey Lee Dillard (1985).

Full-text access is restricted to subscribers. Log in to obtain additional credentials. For subscription information see Subscription & Price.

References

Adams, James N
2013Social Variation and the Latin Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ammon, Ulrich, Klaus J. Mattheier and Peter H. Nelde
(eds.) 1999Historische Soziolinguistik / Historical sociolinguistics / La linguistique historique (Sociolinguistica 13). Tubingen: Niemeyer.Google Scholar
Auer, Anita, Catharina Peersman, Simon Pickl, Gijsbert Rutten and Rik Vosters
2015 “Historical sociolinguistics: the field and its future.” Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics 1(1): 1–12. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Auer, Anita, Daniel Schreier and Richard J. Watts
(eds.) 2015Letter Writing and Language Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ayres-Bennett, Wendy
2001 “Socio-historical linguistics and the history of French.” Journal of French Language Studies, 11: 159–177. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ayres-Bennet, Wendy
2004Sociolinguistic Variation in Seventeenth-Century France. Methodology and Case Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Baker, Paul
2010Sociolinguistics and Corpus Linguistics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Barton, David and Nigel Hall
(eds.) 2000Letter Writing as Social Practice. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Baugh, Albert C. and Thomas Cable
1951A History of the English Language. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Bell, Allan
2013The Guidebook to Sociolinguistics. Malden, MA and Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Bergs, Alexander T
2005Social Networks and Historical Sociolinguistics. Studies in Morphosyntactic Variation in the Paston Letters (1421-1503). Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2012 “The Uniformitarian Principle and the Risk of Anachronism in Language and Social History.” In The Handbook of Historical Sociolinguistics, ed. by Juan M. Hernández-Campoy and J. Camilo Conde-Silvestre, 80–98. Malden, MA and Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Braunmüller, Kurt and Gisella Ferraresi
(eds.) 2003Aspects of Multilingualism in European Language History. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Burke, Peter
1980Sociology and History. London: Allen and Unwin.Google Scholar
1992History and Social Theory. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
2004Languages and Communities in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2005Toward a Social History of Early Modern Dutch. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cantos, Pascual
2012 “The Use of Linguistic Corpora for the Study of Language Variation and Change: Types and Computational Applications.” In The Handbook of Historical Sociolinguistics, ed. by Juan M. Hernández-Campoy and J. Camilo Conde-Silvestre, 99–122. Malden, MA and Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Conde-Silvestre, J. Camilo
2007Sociolingüística histórica. Madrid: Gredos.Google Scholar
2012 “Diachronic corpora as sources for the study of variation in the history of languages: strengths and weaknesses.” In Creation and Use of Historical English Corpora in Spain, ed. by Nila Vázquez González, 179–203. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars.Google Scholar
Christy, Craig
1983Uniformitarianism in Linguistics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Culpeper, Jonathan and Merja Kytö
2010Early Modern English Dialogues. Spoken Interaction as Writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
del Valle, José
(ed.) 2013A Political History of Spanish. The Making of a Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
del Valle, José and Luis Gabriel-Stheeman
(eds.) 2002The Battle over Spanish between 1800 and 2000. Language Ideologies and Spanish Intellectuals. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Deumert, Ana
2004Language Standardization and Language Change. The Dynamics of Cape Dutch. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Deumert, Ana and Wim Vandenbussche
(eds.) 2003Germanic Standardizations. Past to Present. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dillard, Joey Lee
1985Toward a Social History of American English. Berlin and New York: Mouton. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dossena, Marina and Susan Fitzmaurice
(eds.) 2006Business and Official Correspondence: Historical Investigations. Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Dossena, Marina and Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade
(eds.) 2008Studies in Late Modern English Correspondence. Methodology and Data. Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Eckert, Penelope
2000Linguistic Variation as Social Practice. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
2012 “Three waves of variation study: the emergence of meaning in the study of variation.” Annual Review of Anthropology 41: 87–100. Also available online at https://​web​.stanford​.edu​/~eckert​/PDF​/ThreeWaves​.pdf [Accessed on September, 1, 2015]. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Echenique Elizondo, Mª Teresa and Juan Sánchez Méndez
2005Las lenguas de un reino. Historia lingüística hispánica. Madrid: Gredos.Google Scholar
Elspass, Stephan
2005Sprachgeschichte von unten. Untersuchungen zum geschriebenen Alltagsdeutsch im 19. Jahrhundert. Tübingen: Niemeyer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Elspass, Stephan, Nils Langer, Joachim Sharloth and Wim Vandenbussche
(eds.) 2007Germanic Language Histories ‘from Below’ (1700–2000). Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Evans, Mel
2013The Language of Queen Elizabeth I: A Sociolinguistic Perspective on Royal Style and Identity. Malden, MA and Oxford: Wiley.Google Scholar
Fitzmaurice, Susan
2002The Familiar Letter in Early Modern English. A Pragmatic Approach. Amsterdam. John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gimeno, Francisco
1995Sociolingüística histórica. Siglos X-XII. Madrid: Visor.Google Scholar
Goossens, Louis
1995 “Historical Linguistics.” In Handbook of Pragmatics, Manual, ed. by J. Verschueren, J.-O. Östman and J. Blommaert, 323–329. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logo [Accessed online on February, 23, 2016]Google Scholar
Hernández-Campoy, Juan M. and Natalie Schilling
2012 “The Application of the Quantitative Paradigm to Historical Sociolinguistics: Problems with the Generalizability Principle.” In The Handbook of Historical Sociolinguistics, ed. by Juan M. Hernández-Campoy and J. Camilo Conde-Silvestre, 63–79. Malden, MA and Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hernández-Campoy, Juan M. and J. Camilo Conde-Silvestre
(eds.) 2012The Handbook of Historical Sociolinguistics. Malden, MA and Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hüning, Matthias, Ulrike Vogl and Olivier Moliner
(eds.) 2012Standard Languages and Multilingualism in European History. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jahr, Ernst Håkon
(ed.) 1999Language Change. Advances in Historical Sociolinguistics. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Janda, Richard D. and Brian D. Joseph
2003 “On Language, Change, and Language Change – Or, Of History, Linguistics, and Historical Linguistics.” In The Handbook of Historical Linguistics, ed. by Brian D. Joseph and Richard D. Janda, 3–180. Malden, MA and Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Joseph, Brian D
2012 “Historical Linguistics and Sociolinguistics: Strange Bedfellows or Natural Friends.” In Language and History, Linguistics and Historiography: Interdisciplinary Approaches, ed. by Nils Langer, Steffan Davies and Vim Wandenbussche, 67–88. Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Joseph, John Earl
1987Eloquence and Power. The Rise of Language Standards and Standard Languages. London: Pinter.Google Scholar
Jucker, Andreas H
2006 “Historical Pragmatics.” In Handbook of Pragmatics, ed. by J.-O. Östman and J. Verschueren, 1–14. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logo. [Accessed online on February, 23, 2016]Google Scholar
Jucker, Andreas H., Gerd Fritz and Franz Lebsanft
(eds.) 1999Historical Dialogue Analysis. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kastovsky, Dieter and Arthur Mettinger
(eds.) 2000The History of English in a Social Context. Essays in Historical Sociolinguistics. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kiełkiewicz-Janowiak, Agnieszka
2002‘Women’s Language?’ A Socio-Historical View. Private Writings in Early New England. Poznan: Motivex.Google Scholar
Kopaczyk, Joanna and Andreas H. Jucker
(eds.) 2013Communities of Practice in the History of English. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kytö, Merja
1991Variation and Diachrony, with Early American English in Focus. Studies on can/may and shall/will. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Labov, William
1972Sociolinguistic Patterns. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
1994Principles of Linguistic Change. Vol. 1: Internal Factors. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Langer, Nils and Winifred V. Davies
(eds.) 2005Linguistic Purism in the Germanic Languages. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Leith, Dick
1983A Social History of English. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Lippi-Green, Rosina L
1994Language Ideology and Language Change in Early Modern German. A Sociolinguistic Study of the Consonantal System of Nuremberg. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lodge, Anthony
2004A Sociolinguistic History of Parisian French. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Machan, Tim William and Charles T. Scott
(eds.) 1992English in Its Social Context. Essays in Historical Sociolinguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Mazzon, Gabriella and Luisanna Fodde
(eds.) 2012Historical Perspectives on Forms of English Dialogues. Milano: Franco Angeli.Google Scholar
Meyerhoff, Miriam
2002 “Communities of practice.” In The Handbook of Language Variation and Change, ed. by Jack K. Chambers, Peter Trudgill and Natalie Schilling-Estes, 526–548. Malden, MA and Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Millar, Robert McColl
2010Authority and Identity: A Sociolinguistic History of Europe before the Modern Age. London: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2012aEnglish Historical Sociolinguistics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
2012b “Social History and the Sociology of Language.” In The Handbook of Historical Sociolinguistics, ed. by Juan M. Hernández-Campoy and J. Camilo Conde-Silvestre, 41–59. Malden, MA and Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Milroy, James
1992Linguistic Variation and Change. On the Historical Sociolinguistics of English. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Milroy, James and Lesley Milory
[1985]2012Authority in Language. Investigating Standard English. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Moreno Fernández, Francisco
2005Historia social de las lenguas de España. Barcelona: Ariel.Google Scholar
Nevala, Minna
2004Address in Early English Correspondence. Its Forms and Sociopragmatic Functions. Helsinki: Société Néophilologique.Google Scholar
Nevalainen, Terttu
2006 “Historical sociolinguistics and language change.” In The Handbook of the History of English, ed. by Ans van Kemenade and Bettelou Los, 558–588. Malden, MA and Oxford: Wiley Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2011 “Historical sociolinguistics.” In The Sage Handbook of Sociolinguistics, ed. by Ruth Wodak, Barbara Johnstone and Paul Kerswill, 279–295. London: Sage. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2015 “What are historical sociolinguistics?Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics 1(2): 243–269. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nevalainen, Terttu and Gijsbert Rutten
(eds.) 2012 Comparative Historical Sociolinguistics . Special issue of Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 113(3).Google Scholar
Nevalainen, Terttu and Helena Raumolin-Brunberg
1996Sociolinguistics and Language History. Studies Based on the Corpus of Early English Correspondence. Amsterdam: Rodopi.Google Scholar
2003Historical Sociolinguistics. Language Change in Tudor and Stuart England. London: Longman/Pearson Education.Google Scholar
Nevalainen, Terttu and Helena Raumoling-Brunberg
2012 “Historical Sociolinguistics: Origins, Motivations, and Paradigms.” In The Handbook of Historical Sociolinguistics, ed. by Juan M. Hernández-Campoy and J. Camilo Conde-Silvestre, 22–40. Malden, MA and Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nevalainen, Terttu, Helena Raumolin-Brunberg, Jukka Keränen, Minna Nevala, Arja Nurmi and Minna Palander-Collin, with additional annotation by Ann Taylor
2006Parsed Corpus of Early English Correspondence. Helsinki: University of Helsinki and York: University of York. Distributed through the Oxford Text Archive.Google Scholar
Nevalainen, Terttu and Sanna-Kaisa Tanskanen
(eds.) 2007Letter Writing. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nurmi, Arja
1999A Social History of Periphrastic Do. Helsinki: Société Néophilologique.Google Scholar
Nurmi, Arja, Minna Nevala and Minna Palander-Collin
(eds.) 2009The Language of Daily Life in England (1400–1800). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pahta, Päivi, Minna Nevala, Arja Nurmi and Minna Palander-Collin
(eds.) 2010Social Roles and Language Practice in Late Modern English. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Palander-Collin, Minna
1999Grammaticalization and Social Embedding: I think and Methinks in Middle and Early Modern English. Helsinki: Société Néophilologique.Google Scholar
Palander-Collin, Minna and Minna Nevala
(eds.) 2005Letters and Letter Writing. Special issue of European Journal of English Studies 9(1).Google Scholar
Penny, Ralph
2000Variation and Change in Spanish. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Richter, Michael
1985 “Towards a Methodology of Historical Sociolinguistics.” Folia Linguistica Historica 6(1): 41–61.Google Scholar
Rindler Schjerve, Rosita
2003Diglossia and Power: Language Policies and Practice in the 19th Century Hasburg Empire. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rjéoutski, Vladislav, Gesine Argent and Derek Offord
(eds.) 2014European Francophonie: The Social, Political and Cultural History of an International Prestige Language. Bern: Peter Lang. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Roberge, Paul
2006 “Language history and historical sociolinguistics / Sprachegeschichte und historische soziolinguistik.” In Sociolinguistics: An International Handbook of the Science of Language and Society, ed. by Unlrich Ammon, Norbert Dittmar, Klaus J. Mattheier and Peter Trudgill, vol. 3, 2307–2315. Berlin and New York: Mouton De GruyterGoogle Scholar
Romaine, Suzanne
1982Socio-Historical Linguistics. Its Status and Methodology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1988 “Historical sociolinguistics: Problems and Methodology.” In Sociolinguistics. An International Handbook of the Science of Language and Society (2 vols.), ed. by Ulrich Ammon, Norbert Dittmar and Klaus L. Mattheier, vol. 2, 1452–1469. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
1995Sociolinguistics.” In Handbook of Pragmatics, Manual, ed. by J. Verschueren, J.-O. Östman and J. Blommaert, 489–495. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logo [Accessed online on February, 23, 2016]Google Scholar
2005 “Historical sociolinguistics / Historische soziolinguistik.” In Sociolinguistics/Soziolinguistik: An International Handbook of the Science of Language and Society, ed. by Ulrich Ammon, Norbert Dittmar, Klaus J. Mattheier and Peter Trudgill, vol. 2, 1696–1703. Berlin and New York: De Gruyter.Google Scholar
Rutten, Gijsbert, Rik Vosters and Wim Vandenbussche
(eds.) 2014Norms and Usage in Language History, 1600-1900. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rutten, Gijsbert and Marijke J. van der Wal
(eds.) 2014Letters as Loot. A Sociolinguistic Approach to Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century Dutch. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sairio, Anni
2009Language and Letters of the Bluestocking Network. Sociolinguistic Issues in Eighteenth-Century Epistolary English. Helsinki: Societé NeophilologiquéGoogle Scholar
Schendl, Herbert and Laura Wright
(eds.) 2012Code-Switching in Early English. Berlin and Boston: Walter de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Schneider, Edgar
2002 “Investigating Variation and Change in Written Documents.” In The Handbook of Language Variation and Change, ed. by Jack K. Chambers, Peter Trudgill and Natalie Schilling-Estes, 67–96. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Stenroos, Merja, Martti Mäkinen and Inge Særheim
(eds.) 2012Language Contact and Development around the North Sea Area. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Taavitsainen, Irma, Gunnel Melchers and Päivi Pahta
(eds.) 1999Writing in Nonstandard English. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Taavitsainen, Irma and Andreas H. Jucker
(eds.) 2003Diachronic Perspectives on Address Term Systems. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Ingrid
1987The Auxiliary Do in Eighteenth Century English. A Sociohistorical Linguistic Approach. Dordrecht: Foris. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(ed.) 2000Social Network Analysis and the History of English. Special issue of European Journal of English Studies, 4(3).Google Scholar
(ed.) 2008 Grammar, Grammarians and Grammar Writing in Eighteenth-Century Britain. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Trotter, David A
(ed.) 2000Multilingualism in Later Medieval Britain. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer.Google Scholar
Trudgill, Peter
2010Investigations in Sociohistorical Linguistics. Stories of Colonisation and Contact. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tuten, Donald N
2003Koineization in Medieval Spanish. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tuten, Donald N. and Fernando Tejedo-Herrero
2011 “The relationship between Historical Linguistics and Sociolinguistics.” In The Handbook of Hispanic Sociolinguistics, ed. by Manuel Díaz Campos, 283–302. Malden, MA and Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
van der Wal, Marijke J. and Gijsbert Rutten
(eds.) 2013Touching the Past. Studies in the Historical Sociolinguistics of Ego-Documents. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vandenbussche, Wim and Stephan Elspass
(eds.) 2007Lower Class Language Use in the 19th Century. Special issue of Multilingua . Journal of Cross-Cultural and Interlanguage Communication 26(2/3).Google Scholar
Walker, Terry
2007Thou and You in Early Modern English Dialogues. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wenzel, S
1994Macarronic Sermons. Bilingualism and Preaching in Late Medieval England. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Weinreich, Uriel, William Labov and Marvin I. Herzog
1968 “Empirical Foundations for a Theory of Language Change.” In Directions for Historical Linguistics, ed. by Winfred P. Lehmann and Yakov Malkiel, 95–195. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Willemyns, Roland and Wim Vandenbussche
2006“Historical sociolinguistics: Coming of age?Sociolinguistica. International Yearbook of European Sociolinguistics 20: 146–165.Google Scholar