Making Waves: The Story of Variationist Sociolinguistics

Making Waves tells the human story of an academic field based on one-to-one interviews with 43 of the most famous scholars in Variationist Socioinguistics. Explanations of concepts, ideas, good practice and sage advice come directly from the progenitors of the discipline.

• An authentic, inside story about the origins of Sociolinguistics as Language Variation and Change, recording the context and spirit of sociolinguistics
• Provides a timely audio archive of the reminiscences of the major Sociolinguists, including Labov, Fasold, Milroy, Trudgill, and Wolfram, with a companion website at featuring 400 audio clips from the interviews 
• Gives students access to the views on language variation of major sociolinguists such as Bill Labov and Peter Trudgill
• Offers a human story of an academic field, and is written in the style of a novel, offering complete accessibility with minimal in-group terminology

Keywords:

Variationist sociolinguistics, sociolinguistics, sociolinguists, sociolinguistic variation, Labov, Fasold, Milroy, Trudgill, Wolfram, pidgins, creoles, bilingualism, dialectology, variation studies, Sali Tagliamonte, cognitive linguistics, usage-based theories, phonetics, lab phonology, experimental syntax, quantitative sociolinguistics, sociolinguistic theory, variation in language, English language studies, American English, British English.

, Sociolinguistics