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LABOV The sociolinguistic work of William Labov (b. 1927) takes the relation between social and linguistic structures as the primary object of inquiry. This can be read in two ways. On the one hand, it establishes through precise empirical work – in the analysis of phonetic variation, and in quantitative documentation and evaluation of variation – the close covariation of linguistic form and social structure. On the other hand, it can provide the theoretical basis and detailed description of the mechanisms of linguistic change. It may be most productive to see Labov’s work as integrating sociolinguistic and historical inquiry by a single powerful assumption, namely that the ‘correlations’ which he has described are produced by social forces and processes; and that they are the same for the differences visible at the micro-level of phonetics as for the macro-level that come to constitute separate languages.