Reflecting a multitude of developments in the study of language change and variation over the last ten years, this extensively updated second edition features a number of new chapters and remains the authoritative reference volume on a core research area in linguistics.

J.K. Chambers is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Toronto. He is the author ofSociolinguistic Theory: Linguistic Variation and its Social Significance, Revised Edition(Wiley-Blackwell, 2009) andDialectology, Second Edition (with P. Trudgill, 1998), as well as numerous other books and scores of articles. He works extensively as a forensic consultant and maintains a parallel vocation in jazz criticism, including a volume on the bebop pianist Richard Twardzik (2008) and a prize-winning biography of Miles Davis,Milestones: The Music and Times of Miles Davis (1998).

Natalie Schilling is Professor of Linguistics at Georgetown University. She is the author ofAmerican English: Dialects and Variation, Third Edition (with W. Wolfram, Wiley-Blackwell, 2016) andSociolinguistic Fieldwork (2013). An expert in language variation and change in American English, she conducts workshops on sociolinguistics and forensic linguistics for an array of audiences within and beyond academia, and is a noted consultant in both these fields. Among her works for general audiences isEnglish in America: A Linguistic History, an audio-video lecture series forThe Great Courses (2016).

List of Illustrations ix

List of Contributors xiii

Preface to the Second Edition xv

Studying Language Variation: An Informal Epistemology 1J.K. Chambers

Part I Data Collection 17

1 Entering the Community: Fieldwork 19Crawford Feagin

2 Data in the Study of Variation and Change 38Tyler Kendall

3 Investigating Historical Variation and Change in Written Documents: New Perspectives 57Edgar W. Schneider

Part II Evaluation 83

4 The Quantitative Paradigm 85Robert Bayley

5 Sociophonetics 108Erik R. Thomas

6 Comparative Sociolinguistics 128Sali A. Tagliamonte

7 Language with an Attitude 157Dennis R. Preston

Part III Linguistic Structure 183

8 Variation and Syntactic Theory 185Ralph W. Fasold

9 Investigating Chain Shifts and Mergers 203Matthew J. Gordon

10 Discourse Variation 220Ronald Macaulay

Part IV Language and Time 237

11 Real Time and Apparent Time 239Patricia Cukor-Avila and Guy Bailey

12 Child Language Variation 263Julie Roberts

13 Adolescence 277Sam Kirkham and Emma Moore

14 Patterns of Variation including Change 297J.K. Chambers

Part V Social Differentiation 325

15 Investigating Stylistic Variation 327Natalie Schilling

16 Social Class 350Sharon Ash

17 Gender, Sex, Sexuality, and Sexual Identities 368Robin Queen

18 Ethnicity 388Carmen Fought

Part VI Domains 407

19 Social Networks 409Lesley Milroy and Carmen Llamas

20 Communities of Practice 428Miriam Meyerhoff and Anna Strycharz

21 Constructing Identity 448Scott F. Kiesling

Part VII Contact 469

22 Space, Diffusion and Mobility 471David Britain

23 Linguistic Outcomes of Bilingualism 501Gillian Sankoff

24 Koineization 519Paul Kerswill

25 Supraregionalisation and Dissociation 537Raymond Hickey

Part VIII Sociolinguists and Their Communities 555

26 Community Commitment and Responsibility 557Walt Wolfram

Postscript 577Natalie Schilling and Jack Chambers

Index 579