Laboratory Sociolinguistics: A Novel Approach to Language Variation

This paper presents laboratory sociolinguistics, a novel approach to
variationist sociolinguistics in which laboratory techniques and quantitative research methods are central. The aim is to take our understanding of the linguistic,
social and cognitive mechanisms underlying language variation and its dynamics further than in previous sociolinguistic work, and to shed new light on the
driving forces that turn language variation into language change. Laboratory sociolinguistics is anchored in new developments in sociolinguistics, in linguistics
and in social sciences in general, and reaches out to other disciplines. This contribution is a first introduction of this novel approach. It sketches the rationale,
defines its research focus, presents the type of research questions that can be
tackled and invites other researchers to join this development.