ABSTRACT
In modern linguistic discourse, sociolinguistics has commonly come to be associated with the social axis of linguistic variation to do with social groups and structures. Dialectology, by contrast, is associated with the regional axis and equated with dialect geography. The divergent foci of the two disciplines have also been expressed by such terms as ‘vertical’ vs. ‘horizontal’ and ‘urban’ vs. ‘rural’. But as suggested by Peter Trudgill (1999b: 3-4), despite their differences in emphasis and methodology, the disciplines share important macro-level objectives, such as improving our understanding of the nature of linguistic change. In this chapter we will see that, when it comes to historical processes of change, a hard-and-fast line between regional and social dialects is difficult to draw.
