The eighteen papers of this edited collection cover diverse types of variation in many languages. Penelope Eckert's opening paper foregrounds linguistic variation as an indexical resource. She explores the culturally situated nature of indexicality, its interpretation in terms of speakers' experiences of their social worlds and its appropriation in the construction of personae. Next, Zhaleh Feizollahi & Barbara Soukup report on a perception experiment designed to probe the suprasegmental linguistic cues listeners use in response to speakers' strategic shifts between standard Austrian German and Bavarian-Austrian dialect—phonetically similar varieties with discrete stereotypical associations. Jane Stuart-Smith, Claire Timmins, & Farhana Alam describe the phonetic variation associated with “Glaswasian” (Glasgow Asian English) in Scotland, noting the increasing influence of “hybrid” cultural identities on local regional forms of British English. Emma Moore & Julia Snell focus on the identity-related functions of certain uses of right dislocation tags in particular working-class communities of practice in North East England schools.
In general, an increase in studies of syntactic variation is evident in the volume. Natalie Levshina, Dirk Geeraerts, & Dirk Speelman describe regional variation in the semantics of causative constructions between Netherlandic and Belgian Dutch. Ankelien Schippers & Jack Hoeksema explore factors affecting the productivity of long distance movement constructions in Dutch, while Heike Wiese draws attention to variety-specific constraints on syntactic variation, comparing Kiezdeutsch, a “multiethnolect” of German, with standard German.
Some papers provide novel approaches to data manipulation. Øystein Alexander Vangsnes & Janne Bondi Johannessen describe a contemporary corpus designed to investigate structural dialectal variation across the breadth of the North Germanic dialect continuum, combining both use and questionnaire data. Hanne Ruus & Dorthe Duncker explain a new strategy for managing orthographic variation in a corpus of historical texts.
Two papers address other methodological concerns. Comparing results from distinct grammatical acceptability judgment tasks, Isabelle Buchstaller & Karen Corrigan identify inconsistencies. Steffen Höder questions the traditional standard variety focus of areal linguistics, arguing for greater consideration of dialect convergence processes.
Theoretical issues are probed too, including change from above/below in Niina Kunnas's analysis of the role of morphological diffusion in relation to vowel changes in Viena Karelian, an endangered North West Russian variety. The push-pull influences of internal versus external change are the focus of Sofie Henricson's comparison of quotatives in Finland Swedish and Sweden Swedish. Marianne Rathje questions the notion of “reported” and “repeated” speech in relation to quotatives, which she redefines in terms of Bakhtin's concept of “double-voicing.” Her cross-generational study shows variation in the form and frequency of quotatives in Danish.
Three papers deal with lexicographic issues. Wojciech Gardela examines changes in the orthographic form of present participles in fourteenth to fifteenth century Northern English and Scots texts. Saija Tamminen-Parre's qualitative data shows that Finnish speakers' attitudes towards English loan words are connected to topic domains. Tjaša Jakop explores the diversity of terms for “cousin” across Slovene dialects. Finally, Brit Mæhlum's closing historical overview of research on urban varieties in Norwegian highlights the relevance of attitudes to linguistic varieties in variationist research.
