James M. Stratton is an assistant professor of German and Linguistics at Pennsylvania State University. He specializes in language variation and change in Germanic languages, both past and present, with a particular emphasis on lexis and discourse-pragmatics.Karen V. Beaman is a lecturer and post-doctoral fellow in sociolinguistics at the University of Tubingen, Germany. Her research interests concern language variation, coherence, and change, with particular focus on how factors of identity, mobility, and social networks affect change.

• List of contributorsForeword - Sali A. TagliamonteAcknowledgements1. Variationist sociolinguistics: theoretical and methodological foundationsJames M. Stratton and Karen V. BeamanPART I: Bridging German dialectology and variationist sociolinguistics2. The social versus the regional: a multivariate analysis of (morpho-)syntactic variation in Austria’s rural dialectsPhilip C. Vergeiner, Lars Bülow, and Stephan Elspaß3. Dialect maintenance in German Alemannic and the role of pro-Alsatian attitudes and orientationsPeter Auer, Martin Pfeiffer, Göz Kaufmann, and Julia Breuninger4. Sociolinguistic variation in a non-native variety of Swiss German: Romansh migrants in the city of BerneAndrin BüchlerPART II : Diving into social-discursive functions5. Fei schee: the social meaning of intensifier use in SwabianJames M. Stratton and Karen V. Beaman6. Subjunctive and diminutive use as politeness strategies in German in Austria: comparative evidence from sociolinguistic interviews and conversations among friendsKatharina Korecky-Kröll and Anja Wittibschlager7. A socio-stylistic analysis of variation in support verb constructions in a corpus of spoken GermanColleen Neary-Sundquist and John D. Sundquist 8. Sociolinguistic variation in German: the case of the modal particles halt and ebenOliver Bunk, Antje Sauermann, and Fynn Raphael DoblerPART III: Merging historical and sociolinguistic perspectives9. Variation in an Austrian winegrower’s 19th-century chronicleAnna D. Havinga and Simon Pickl10. Socio-historical data and the need for representative historical corpora Katrin FuchsAfterwordIndex