Contents List of figures List of tables Preliminaries and acknowledgements Terminology and Notation conventions Phonetic notation Part I: Questions and method 1 Questions about language and variation, and where we got them Questions about language Where we got the questions: From comparative philology to variationist theories Orderly heterogeneity and constraints on its form 2 The Linguistic Variable Definitions and types Linguistic variables at different linguistic levels Variable rules and their 'quiet demise' Criticisms of the notion of linguistic variable The tyranny of correlation and the problem of atomization 3 Discovering and Describing patterns of variation and change Ethical linguistics Finding language to measure Speech communities and sampling Getting speech: interviews and other talk Recording and managing recordings Coding variables Describing patterns Finding structure in variability Testing statistical significance and modelling variation Part II: Variation and social relationships 4 Social patterns I: Interspeaker variation Stratification Canonical patterns: Accommodation Canonical patterns: Differentiation Challenges to canonical patterns 5 Social patterns II: Intraspeaker variation Intraspeaker patterns, community patterns, and style Speech event, register, genre, frame Stance and identity 6 Meaning and social patterns Indexicality: Meaning in the sociolinguistic variable Experimental evidence for meaning Indexical webs, cycles, and fields Dimensions of social meaning in language 7 Acquisition of variation How is variation learned? Early childhood Older children and adolescents Adulthood Transmission and incrementation of changes Part III: Variation, change and linguistic structure Introduction to Part III 8 Structural patterns I: Phonology and Morphology Phonological variation: Patterns of change, structural effects, and explanation Change in progress Shifts and chain shifts Mergers Regularity vs. lexical diffusion Phonological patterns of variety contact Morphological variation 9 Structural patterns II: Syntax, lexical variables, and suprasegmentals Description: the problem of 'saying the same thing' Syntactic variables Pragmatic and discourse variables Lexicon Suprasegmentals: intonation and rhythm Part V: Conclusions 10 The life and times of linguistic changes Sources and actuation of change Early development and spread of change Propagation, diffusion, transmission, and completion References Index

Kiesling succeeds in beginning most chapters with guiding, thought-provoking questions, outlining topics discussed in previous sections or chapters, presenting what will be discussed subsequently, and linking the previous and forthcoming theories or concepts together. He also explains findings and conclusions in technical and plain language and buttresses complex ideas with helpful examples that are sometimes related to personal hypothetical situations! This book will be particularly fitting as a textbook for introducing graduate students to linguistic variation for the first time. -- Memoria C. James, University of Texas at Austin LINGUIST list Kiesling succeeds in beginning most chapters with guiding, thought-provoking questions, outlining topics discussed in previous sections or chapters, presenting what will be discussed subsequently, and linking the previous and forthcoming theories or concepts together. He also explains findings and conclusions in technical and plain language and buttresses complex ideas with helpful examples that are sometimes related to personal hypothetical situations! This book will be particularly fitting as a textbook for introducing graduate students to linguistic variation for the first time.