J. K. Chambers, Peter Trudgill and Natalie Schilling-Estes (eds.), The handbook of language variation and change. (Blackwell Handbooks in Linguistics.) Oxford and Malden, MA: Blackwell. 2002. xii + 807 pp.

Extract

This is the eleventh volume in the Blackwell series “Handbooks in Linguistics.” Of the previous ten, one was devoted to general sociolinguistics (Coulmas 1997), making this the first in the series to deal with a specific branch of sociolinguistics. For many scholars, variation theory (including the study of change in progress) is the heartland of sociolinguistics, though not everyone would go as far as Chambers 2003 in equating sociolinguistic theory with variation theory alone. As the earlier Blackwell handbook suggests, the field of sociolinguistics is broader than variation theory per se. However, considering the richness of the handbook under review, one can understand why variation theory should hold the high ground in sociolinguistics. The handbook comprises 29 chapters, divided into five sections: methodologies, linguistic structure, social factors, contact, and language and societies.