Historical sociolinguistics: the field and its future

This article introduces the newJournal of Historical Sociolinguisticsby situating it in the developing field of historical sociolinguistics. The landmark paper of Weinreich et al. (1968), which paid increased attention to extralinguistic factors in the explanation of language variation and change, served as an important basis for the gradual development and expansion of historical sociolinguistics as a separate (sub)field of inquiry, notably since the influential work of Romaine (1982). This article traces the development of the field of historical sociolinguistics and considers some of its basic principles and assumptions, including the uniformitarian principle and the so-called bad data problem. Also, an overview is provided of some of the directions recent research has taken, both in terms of the different types of data used, and in terms of important approaches, themes and topics that are relevant to many studies within the field. The article concludes with considerations of the necessarily multidisciplinary nature of historical sociolinguistics, and invites authors from various research traditions to submit original research articles to the journal, and thus help to further the development of the fascinating field of historical sociolinguistics.