Language Variation and Time

The previous three chapters have examined different social factors that have been proposed to condition linguistic variation and changelinguistic variation and change. We looked at both large-scale social categories (social classsocial class) and smaller-scale groups that individuals engage in (social networkssocial network and communities of practice). We considered social characteristics that have been shown to be relevant to linguistic variation, such as sexsex/gendergender and ethnicityethnicity.