ABSTRACT
A collection of panel studies of language variation and change was published in the Routledge Studies in Language Change series only a few years ago (Wagner and Buchstaller 2017). Why do we need another one so soon? First, the present volume provides a venue for studies of the typically fragmentary, sparse data that often characterize panel studies, and thus cannot be subjected to the complex statistical techniques now expected from many peer-reviewed journals in linguistics. Second, because panel studies are often limited that we need to undertake more of them. This will help them to garner the attention and scrutiny they require, and in doing so, will increment our overall knowledge of the interaction between language change in the individual versus the community. Third, the variationist study of individual lifespan linguistic change, while certainly not new, has always been of justifiably secondary concern to variationist sociolinguists, whose focus has been on the collective community grammar. One advantage to panel studies being a still-nascent area in quantitative sociolinguistics is that their practitioners are compelled to seek out insights from adjacent (sub)fields in which they are better established, leading to a cross-disciplinary exchange of information that can surely only accelerate the science. This collection serves as cross-sectional snapshot of the state of the field at the moment of publication and a commentary on where the field is going next.
