Intra-Writer Variation in Historical Sociolinguistics

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.

Markus Schiegg works in German Linguistics at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg. He currently leads the junior research group «Flexible Writers in Language History» that is compiling a corpus of historical patient texts from the nineteenth and early twentieth century. His research focuses on historical sociolinguistics, in particular on language variation and change in the history of German.

Judith Huber works in English Historical Linguistics at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU). She holds a PhD from LMU and worked in English Historical Linguistics at FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg and KU Eichstätt-Ingolstadt before returning to Munich. Her research focuses on variation and change in the history of English from a usage-based perspective, including syntax, lexicology, pragmatics and language contact.