Routledge Studies in Language Change
About the Book Series
This series provides a venue for quantitative research investigating the social underpinnings of language change. It gives a platform to research that is firmly rooted in the speech community, yet abstracts to a level of generalization, resulting in theoretical insights that advance our understanding of change as it percolates through the community and within the individual. The series showcases studies of longitudinal and shorter term patterns of language change from a wealth of communities. Volumes in the series rely on a multitude of epistemological frameworks, including but not restricted to: social identity theory, network theory, models of language change, child language acquisition, multilingualism, language contact, language diffusion, and language shift. Interdisciplinary work is encouraged, especially that which explores the interfaces of sociolinguistics with neighboring disciplines such as formal linguistics, history, human geography, literature or anthropology. The scope of the series covers classic research monographs as well as edited collections of papers that are integrated around a coherent central theme.
Connecting the Individual and the Community in Sociolinguistic Panel Research
1st Edition
Edited
By Isabelle Buchstaller, Karen V. Beaman
October 31, 2025
This collection engages with key questions in panel study research by exploring more deeply the interrelationship between the individual and the community and the impact on language change across the lifespan. The book is organized around four broad themes, each followed by a forward-looking ...
Language Change in Real- and Apparent-Time: Coherence in the Individual and the Community
1st Edition
By Karen V. Beaman
July 30, 2025
This book makes the case for the value of a combined panel and trend study approach in studying real- and apparent-time language change to reconcile conspicuous disparities between the individual and the community. Through an examination of the Swabian dialect in southwestern Germany in two speech ...
Expanding Variationist Sociolinguistic Research in Varieties of German
1st Edition
Edited
By James M. Stratton, Karen V. Beaman
November 29, 2024
This collection provides a broad account of variationist sociolinguistic research on varieties of German, with the goals to encourage greater geolinguistic diversity in the field and to expand our understanding of language variation and change. This book illustrates that incorporating a wider ...
Urban Contact Dialects and Language Change: Insights from the Global North and South
1st Edition
Edited
By Paul Kerswill, Heike Wiese
January 29, 2024
This volume provides a systematic comparative treatment of urban contact dialects in the Global North and South, examining the emergence and development of these dialects in major cities in sub-Saharan Africa and North-Western Europe. The book’s focus on contemporary urban settings sheds light on...
Language Variation and Language Change Across the Lifespan: Theoretical and Empirical Perspectives from Panel Studies
1st Edition
Edited
By Karen V. Beaman, Isabelle Buchstaller
December 19, 2022
This volume brings together research on panel studies with the aim of providing a coherent empirical and theoretical knowledge-base for examining the impact of maturation and lifespan-specific effects on linguistic malleability in the post-adolescent speaker. Building on the work of Wagner and ...
Panel Studies of Variation and Change
1st Edition
Edited
By Suzanne Evans Wagner, Isabelle Buchstaller
July 12, 2019
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 ...