ABSTRACT
In the previous chapters we have time and again singled out Dorothy Osborne for exclusion from our aggregate fi gures as an outlier because, far ahead of her contemporaries in a given process of change, she would skew the overall results of the analysis. Rather than excluding outliers, this chapter returns to individual language users’ participation in ongoing linguistic changes, stressing the point that language change comes about through the actions of individuals. We will analyse individual language use from two perspectives: fi rst, by tracing patterns of language change over the lifespan of a number of individuals and, second, by discussing individual participation in linguistic changes in more general terms. We will also be looking for characteristics potentially shared by people who are found to be among the leaders of linguistic changes in the community at large.
