Historical Sociolinguistics.

Catalog description

This course studies the problem of language change by exploring the intersection of historical linguistics and sociolinguistics, addressing both the internal (linguistic, cognitive) and external (social, cultural) factors responsible for linguistic variation, linguistic maintenance, and linguistic change. The focus lies on the use of textual materials to understand the linguistic and sociocultural factors responsible for variation and change. Students will learn key methods and concepts from subfields such as historical linguistics, sociolinguistics, philology, paleography, and corpus linguistics. Both qualitative and quantitative approaches will be introduced, providing a well-rounded foundation for analyzing linguistic change and variation in historical data.