Dimensions of Linguistic Variation

In Dimensions of Linguistic Variation, the contributors investigate evidence for the myriad factors which influence language variation and change, and consider how to best account for these factors in data and metadata coding. Given linguists' increasing ability to preserve and share data, questions arise around the possibility of comparing data from different communities: how should a corpus builder model, elicit, encode, analyze, and archive data that have been collected from highly diverse groups of speakers, from situations beyond the sociolinguistic interview, in a way that supports re-use, comparison across collections, and longer-term archiving?

Answering these questions requires a highly nuanced understanding of the social influences on speech variation. Social differences between communities and contexts can permit or encourage comparisons, in some cases, and render comparisons impossible, in others. The current volume builds on a rich foundation of insight from the sociolinguistics community as to how community-specific social distinctions shape variation and change within a given community and presents new, state-of-the-art insights from a diverse range of community and context types.

The editors have compiled a volume which will enable researchers both to expand the established set of variables expected to be considered in any community study, and to categorize data and results in ways that best permit cross-community comparisons. They present the issues involved in research planning, the modeling of the target community, subject selection, the elicitation and coding of demographic, situational and attitudinal factors, and how they all affect analysis and potential reuse.

Chris Cieri was a proud native Philadelphian with a lifelong affinity for his Italian heritage. His PhD examined phonological variation in L'Aquila, Italy. As LDC Executive Director from 1998-2023, he pursued his dual research interests in linguistics (variation, phonetics, phonology, morphology, dialectology) and language-related technologies (databases, annotation, computer-assisted analysis). As it evolved from a data repository and research hub to a prominent global data center, Chris developed the LDC's reputation for tackling complex research and developing high-quality resources. His goal was to provide tools for the development and dissemination of cross-linguistic data to be shared by sociolinguists around the world.

Lauren Hall-Lew is Professor and Personal Chair of Sociolinguistics at the University of Edinburgh. She specializes in phonetic variation and change, with particular interest in the analysis of socioindexical meaning and its potential role in language change.

Katie Drager is Professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Hawai'I at Manoa, specializing in sociophonetics and experimental sociolinguistics. Her research examines the link between linguistic forms and social meanings, especially how expectations about a talker can influence how listeners interpret the forms produced by that talker.

Malcah Yaeger-Dror has carried out research on language variation and change in Canadian French, American English, and Israeli Hebrew communities.