Sociolinguistic Approaches to Lexical Variation in English

This collection presents the state of the art in the fast-developing area of the study of lexical variation from sociolinguistic perspectives, drawing on a range of examples in the English language to redress the gap around lexis-focused research within sociolinguistics. The volume is structured around three sections, each examining different approaches to the study of lexical variation in English. The first part centres on dialectology in the 21st century, reflective of the prevailing approaches to the topic. The second section examines emergent perspectives drawing on corpus linguistics while the final part features chapters looking at lexical variation from the lens of social meaning and work from third-wave variationist sociolinguistics. The book makes the case for an in-depth look at the growing range of approaches to studying lexis-oriented sociolinguistics both to contribute to our understandings of the mechanisms of language variation as well as lexis as a window into social life. This book will be of interest to students and scholars in sociolinguistics, language variation and change, dialectology, and corpus linguistics.