The time-honoured study of dialects took a new turn some forty years ago, giving centre stage to social factors and the quantitative analysis of language variation and change. It has become a discipline that no scholar of language can afford to ignore. This collection identifies the main theoretical and methodological issues currently preoccupying researchers in social dialectology, drawing not only on variation in English in the UK, USA, New Zealand, Europe and elsewhere but also in Arabic, Greek, Norwegian and Spanish dialects. The volume brings together previously unpublished work by the world's most prolific and well-respected social dialectologists as well as by some younger, dynamic researchers. Together the authors provide new perspectives on both the traditional areas of sociolinguistic variation and change and the newer fields of dialect formation, dialect diffusion and dialect levelling. They provide a snapshot of some of the burning issues currently preoccupying researchers in the field and give signposts to the future direction of the discipline.

Table of contents

Acknowledgements ix Introduction David Britain and Jenny Cheshire 1–8 Pursuing the cascade model William Labov 9–22 Complementary approaches to the diffusion of standard features in a local community Juan Manuel Hernández-Campoy 23–37 Systemic accomodation Dennis R. Preston 39–58 New dialect formation: The focusing of -kum in Amman Enam Al-Wer 59–67 Variation and sound change in New Zealand English Margaret MacLagan and Elizabeth Gordon 69–80 An East Anglian in the South Atlantic? Interpreting morphosyntactic resemblances in terms of direct input, parallel development, and linguistic contact Daniel Schreier 81–96 Sociolinguistics of immigration J.K. Chambers 97–113 Why fuude is not 'food' and tschëgge is not 'check': A new look at the actuation problem Richard J. Watts 115–129 Parallel development and alternative restructuring: The case of weren't intensification Walt Wolfram and Natalie Schilling-Estes 133–153 Social and linguistic dimensions of phonological change: Fitting the pieces of the puzzle together Lesley Milroy 155–171 Changing mental maps and morphology: Divergence caused by international border changes Miklós Kontra 173–190 Exploring the importance of the outlier in sociolinguistic dialectology David Britain 191–208 When is a sound change? On the role of external factors in language change James Milroy 209–221 Dialect levelling and geographical diffusion in British English Paul Kerswill 223–243 Social dimensions of syntactic variation: The case of when clauses Jenny Cheshire 245–261 Language variation in Greece Maria Sifianou 263–273 A Norwegian adult language game, anti-language or secret code: The Smoi of Mandal Ernst Håkon Jahr 275–286 Children and linguistic normativity Sharon Millar 287–297 The virtue of the vernacular: On intervention in linguistic affairs Henry G. Widdowson and Barbara Seidlhofer 299–309 The Nynorsk standard language and Norwegian dialect varieties Jan Terje Faarlund 311–325 Peter Trudgill's publications 327–338 Index 339–343