1. Introduction

Isabelle Buchstaller and Suzanne Evans Wagner

I. Methodological conundrums in building, sharing and analyzing panel corpora

2. Before there were corpora: The evolution of the Montreal French project as a longitudinal study

Gillian Sankoff

3. Alternative sources of panel study data: Opportunities, caveats and suggestions

Christopher Cieri and Malcah Yaeger-Dror

4. On the utility of composite indices in longitudinal language study: The case of African American Language

Janneke Van Hofwegen and Walt Wolfram

II. Key life-stage events across the life-span

5. Longitudinal sociophonetic analysis: What to expect when working with child and adolescent data

Mary Kohn and Charlie Farrington

6. The influence of age on estimating sound change acoustically from longitudinal data

Ulrich Reubold and Jonathan Harrington

III. Stylistic determinants of linguistic malleability

7. Comparing speech samples: On the challenge of comparability in panel studies of language change in real time

Frans Gregersen, Torben Juel Jensen and Nicolai Pharao

8. The effect of small Ns and gaps in contact on panel survey data

Patricia Cukor-Avila and Guy Bailey

9. What makes a panel study work? Researcher and participant in real time

Suzanne Evans Wagner and Sali A. Tagliamonte

IV. Interdisciplinary approaches

10. Ethnographic perspectives on panel studies and longitudinal research

Chantal Tetreault

11. Longitudinal studies in sociolinguistics and SLA: Bridging two parallel routes

Hélène Blondeau

Suzanne Evans Wagner is an Associate Professor of Linguistics at Michigan State University. She focuses on post-adolescent sociolinguistic modification, particularly with respect to community language change. She has published in Language Variation and Change and Language in Society. She is a co-editor of the Routledge Studies in Language Change series.

Isabelle Buchstaller is professor for varieties of English at Leipzig University. Her research investigates language variation and change, including the mechanisms of intra-speaker instability. Her monograph "Quotatives: New trends and sociolinguistic implications" appeared in 2014. She is a co-editor of the Routledge Studies in Language Change series.

The relationship between the individual and the community is at the core of sociolinguistic theorizing. To date, most longitudinal research has been conducted on the basis of trend studies, such as replications of cross-sectional studies, or comparisons between present-day cross-sectional data and 'legacy' data. While the past few years have seen an increasing interest in panel research, much of this work has been published in a variety of formats and languages and is thus not easily accessible. This edited volume brings together the major researchers in the field of panel research, highlighting connections and convergences across and between chapters, methods and findings with the aim of initiating a dialogue about best practices and ways forward in sociolinguistic panel studies. By providing, for the first time, a platform for key research on panel data in one coherent edition, this volume aims to shape the agenda in this increasingly vibrant field of research.