This book challenges the predominance of mainstream sociolinguistic theories by focusing on lesser known sociolinguistic systems.

This engagingly written textbook provides a unique 'hands-on' introduction to sociolinguistics, which equips readers with the tools to start their own sociolinguistic research project.

From Los Angeles to Tokyo, Urban Sociolinguistics is a sociolinguistic study of twelve urban settings around the world.

How do social and political developments influence the process of meaning-making in different parts of the world? Why is a particular discourse interpreted in numerous ways depending on the context it is produced and propagated? And how are culture, politics, history, and language intertwined?

When researching languages in historical context, our goal is to understand the nature of linguistic variation in the past, and explain the extent to which the socio-cultural context of bygone times contributed to shaping linguistic variation and change.

Humanities, Centre for Linguistics

Conference, Workshops, masterclass and keynote lecture

Lecture, LUCL Sociolinguistics Series 2022/2023

Lecture, LUCL Sociolinguistics Series 2022/2023

On 21 September 2022 H. Hu successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

The current study focuses on Walpole’s social network and the language as contained in the letters of the network members.

Inaugural lecture

As of 1 July, Gijsbert Rutten is Professor by special appointment of Historical Sociolinguistics of Dutch at Leiden University. Rutten, who also works as Director of Education at the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL), will, among other things, research the historical relationship between…

How did common people write in the late eighteenth century? Little is yet known on this topic, since our knowledge is mainly based on printed texts written by a small part of the (male) elite population. This dissertation – written from a sociolinguistic point of view – gives us new insights into late-…

The project Going Dutch investigates why the link between being or becoming Dutch, and knowledge of Standard Dutch is so often taken for granted in public discourse, by diving into its historical roots.

Stylianos Irakleous defended his thesis on 6 February 2020

This volume provides a sample of the most recent studies on Spanish-English codeswitching both in the Caribbean and among bilinguals in the United States.

In this project, the hypothesis that language contact crucially impacts the development of spatial grammar and phonology is investigated.

Conference

In this dissertation, a corpus of 595 seventeenth-century letters (mainly private ones) written between 1664 and 1672 is examined from a sociolinguistic perspective.

Fokelien Kootstra defended her thesis on 23 April 2019

This dissertation the role of the English dissenting minister Joseph Priestley (1733-1804) as a grammarian is studied.

This project explores how Muslim authorities and writers use Russian to transmit Islamic contents, and whether this leads to a specific

On the 13th of October, Cesko Voeten successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Cesko on this achievement!

Conference

Conference

Lecture, Sociolinguistics Series

More info to follow.

Lecture

Research at the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL) focuses on linguistic variation and diversity. In order to create more awareness and scientific understanding of this topic, research activities are clustered around six (overlapping) umbrella programmes. Many of our researchers are active…

The goal of the field of Applied Linguistics is to apply the findings and the techniques from research in linguistics to solve practical language-related problems in society.

The research programme Language Use in Past and Present brings together linguists within LUCL whose central focus is both on actual language data, including language use in earlier stages of the language, and, taking a variationist perspective, on language change in various aspects.

Linguistic research on a unique collection of Dutch letters allowed us to gain access to the every-day language of people from various walks of life. Private letters by men, women and even children have been elaborately explored in the Letters as Loot researchprogramme, initiated and directed by prof.…

To make successful communication possible, people need much more than their knowledge of the language system.

Lecture, LUCL Sociolinguistics Series 2022/2023

In this dissertation, a comprehensive portrait of the American-born Quaker Lindley Murray (1745–1826) is painted and the influence of Murray’s Quakerism on his language use is investigated by analyzing a corpus of 262 of his unpublished private letters.

Lecture, Sociolinguistics Series

Like any language, the natural sign languages (henceforth: SLs) of deaf communities differ from each other in their grammars and lexicons. A growing number of studies indicates that SLs make use of the gestures of hearing speakers to build linguistic structure. This implies that variation and similarities…

Lecture, Sociolinguistics Series

Lecture, Sociolinguistcs Series

Conference

Lecture, Sociolinguistics Series