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Amsterdam Center for Language and Communication ACLC

Historical sociolinguistics

Historical sociolinguistics studies how language and society have interacted in the past, combining the fields of sociolinguistics and historical linguistics. This research group will focus on language contact and change in its socio-historical context. Language contact happens when speakers of different varieties of a language, or of different languages, interact with each other, causing the languages to influence each other. 

Key objectives  

  • study processes of language change from a historical sociolinguistic perspective
  • investigate stability (and the lack thereof) across dialects and languages
  • investigate bilingualism in its historical context
  • identify and discuss methodological issues connected to working with historical written sources

Events

The research group meets regularly to discuss work in progress.

Past events 

Workshop Methodological Challenges in Historical Sociolinguistics: 
‘Oral and Written Texts’ and ‘Elite Bilingualism and Diglossia’ 
(23 and 24 May 2023) 

Download the program and abstracts here

Coordinator and group members

Coordinator: Liesbeth Zack

Members:
UVA members: Margreet Dorleijn, Camiel Hamans, Nina van Kampen, André Looijenga, Caroline Roset, Arjen Versloot, Manfred Woidich, Liesbeth Zack, Ewa Zakrzewska.

External members:  Muhadj Adnan (University of Bayreuth), Sabine Dedenbach-Salazar Saenz (University of Stirling), Rebeca Fernández Rodríguez (Utrecht University), Sune Gregersen (University of Kiel), Hans de Jong (University of Groningen), Miriam Neuhausen (Universität Freiburg) and Guillermo Olivera (Independent Scholar).