Panel Studies of Language Variation and Change

The relationship between the individual and the community is at the core of sociolinguistic theorizing. To date, most longitudinal research has been conducted on the basis of trend studies, such as replications of cross-sectional studies, or comparisons between present-day cross-sectional data and ‘legacy’ data. While the past few years have seen an increasing interest in panel research, much of this work has been published in a variety of formats and languages and is thus not easily accessible. This edited volume brings together the major researchers in the field of panel research, highlighting connections and convergences across and between chapters, methods and findings with the aim of initiating a dialogue about best practices and ways forward in sociolinguistic panel studies. By providing, for the first time, a platform for key research on panel data in one coherent edition, this volume aims to shape the agenda in this increasingly vibrant field of research.

Suzanne Evans Wagner is assistant professor of Linguistics at Michigan State University. Her research interests include variationist sociolinguistics of age, gender and ethnicity, and longitudinal studies of language change and age-grading. She is especially interested in the period from adolescence to young adulthood. At present she is co-principal investigator (with William Labov and Anita Henderson) on a project funded by the US National Science Foundation to examine the effect of higher education on language change. Wagner has published articles in Language Variation and Change, Language in Society and Language and Communication.

Isabelle Buchstaller is professor of varieties of English at Leipzig University. Her research interests include language variation and change across time as well as across the life span of the individual, including the typological and socio-ideological processes that underpin linguistic variability. She is the author of Quotatives: New Trends and Sociolinguistic Implications. She is has co-edited two volumes on aspects related to langue change and language contact: Quotatives: Cross Linguistic and Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives (with Ingrid van Alphen) and Pidgins and Creoles beyond Africa-Europe Encounters (with Anders Holmberg and Mohammad Almoaily). Buchstaller currently holds a European framework 4-year project that investigates the role of the individual in on-going longitudinal language change.