Language Variation and Language Change Across the Lifespan

Karen V. Beaman received her Ph.D in sociolinguistics at Queen Mary, University of London and is currently a postdoctoral researcher at Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen. Her research interests concern language variation, coherence and change, with particular focus on how factors of identity, mobility and social networks drive or inhibit change. Isabelle Buchstaller is professor of English Linguistics at the University of Duisburg-Essen. Her research interests include language variation and change across time. She is the author of Quotatives: New trends and sociolinguistic implications (2014) and has co-edited four volumes, most recently, panel research in language variation and change (with Suzanne Evans Wagner).

List of Figures

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List of Contributors

Acknowledgements

Panel studies of language variation and change: Theoretical and methodological implications

PART I: REVELATIONS FROM PAST TREND AND PANEL STUDIES

Chapter 1.

The beginnings of panel research: Individual language variation, change and stability in Eskilstuna

Chapter 2.

Alignment of individuals with community trends: Subjects from the Portuguese

Chapter 3.

Stylistic Variation in Panel Studies of Language Change: Challenge and Opportunity

PART II: INSIGHTS IN THE ANALYSIS OF INTRA-SPEAKER (IN)STABILITY

Chapter 4.

Individual and group trajectories across adulthood in a sample of Utah English speakers

Chapter 5.

Accent reversion in older adults: evidence from the Queen’s Christmas broadcasts

PART III: A GLIMPSE OF THE PAST: PANEL RESEARCH FROM ARCHIVAL MATERIAL

Chapter 6.

Exploiting convention: Lifespan change and generational incrementation in the development of cleft constructions

Chapter 7.

Corpus-based lifespan change in Late Middle English

PART IV: NEW METHODOLOGICAL APPROACHES FOR LIFESPAN STUDIES

Chapter 8.

Exploring the effect of linguistic architecture and heuristic method in panel analysis

Chapter 9.

Loss of historical phonetic contrast across the lifespan: Articulatory, lexical, and social effects on sound change in Swabian

Chapter 10.

Deconfounding the effects of competition and attrition on dialect across the lifespan: A panel study of Swabian

PART V: FUTURE DIRECTIONS FOR PANEL RESERACH

Chapter 11.

What’s the point of panel studies?

Index