For best experience please turn on javascript and use a modern browser!
You are using a browser that is no longer supported by Microsoft. Please upgrade your browser. The site may not present itself correctly if you continue browsing.
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 focuses 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 (Heidelberg University)
Guillermo Olivera (Independent Scholar)