Intra-Writer Variation in Historical Sociolinguistics

Markus Schiegg works in German Linguistics at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg. He currently leads the junior research group «Flexible Writers in Language History» that is compiling a corpus of historical patient texts from the nineteenth and early twentieth century. His research focuses on historical sociolinguistics, in particular on language variation and change in the history of German.Judith Huber works in English Historical Linguistics at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU). She holds a PhD from LMU and worked in English Historical Linguistics at FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg and KU Eichstätt-Ingolstadt before returning to Munich. Her research focuses on variation and change in the history of English from a usage-based perspective, including syntax, lexicology, pragmatics and language contact.

• Contents: Intra-writer variation in historical sociolinguistics: The emergence of a new research field – A qualitative approach to intra-writer variation in late Babylonian letters: Two near-duplicate letters from the Eanna archive (528 BCE) – The use of discourse-ending formulae: Exploring intra-writer variation in Michelangelo Buonarroti’s correspondence – Intra- writer variation and the real world of epistolary interaction in historical sociolinguistics: John Paston I’s use of the orthographic variable (TH) – Patterns of stylistic variation in the use of synthetic and analytic comparative adjectives: Evidence from private letters in sixteenth- to eighteenth- century England – Patterns of linguistic variation in Late Modern English pauper petitions from Berkshire and Dorset – Petitioning for the education of the poor: Self-corrections as stylistic choices in a Late Modern English draft letter – Intra-writer variation in the requestive behaviour of two Early Modern Scottish letter-writers – Between societal constraints and linguistic self-awareness: Stylistic variation in the letters of Prince Ludwig von Anhalt-Köthen (1638–1646) – Intra-writer variation in clitics in German patient letters from the nineteenth and the early twentieth century – Intra-writer variation and linguistic accommodation in the letters of the Milanese merchant Giovanni da Pessano to the Datini network (1397–1402) – Eighteenth-century Scots in correspondence during the Union Debates: An intra-writer perspective – Variation in verbal inflection in the private writings of the Scottish emigrant Mary Ann Wodrow Archbald (1762–1841) – Assessing Dutch-French language choice in nineteenth-century private family correspondence: From intra-writer variation to the bigger picture – Intra-writer variation in the multilingual Diary of Vytautas Civinskis (1887–1910) – Picnick and Sauerkraut: German–English intra-writer variation in script and language (1867–1900) – Intra-writer variation in Early Modern Greek notary acts: Morphosyntactic patterns of accommodation – What shall we do with the ‘writing’ sailor?: Style-shifting and individual language use in a French navigation journal from the eighteenth century – The linguistic choices of an early nineteenth-century Basque writer – Linguistic repertoires and intra-writer variation in Old English: Hemming of Worcester – Intra-text variation as a case of intra-writer variation: Middle English scribal behaviours, with a focus on the spelling variation of woman in MS Pepys 2125 – Intra-writer variation in Old High German and Old Swedish: The impact of social role relationship on constructing instructions – On the indexical meaning of literary style shifting: The case of word order variation in the sixteenth-century Welsh Bible translations.