This collection of articles reflects the present state of the art in Middle English linguistics. Internal processes of linguistic change are assessed in their context in relation to sociohistorical, sociocultural, textual, situational as well as regional and contact-based factors causing variation in language. Many articles combine two or more approaches to analysis and tackle questions of change through the new methodological tools offered by corpora, thesauri, and atlases. A systematic use of these sources for linguistic evidence will add to our knowledge of the variable character of Middle English and enable us to revise our earlier views of the developments at this stage of the English language.