Conference selection

HISON 2024

Zurich, 5-7 June 2024

John Benjamins will be present at HISON 2024. Check out our promotional material and discount order form through the links below. Or come and browse our books at the exhibit. If you wish to talk about our books, your work, and possible publishing projects please get in touch with Anke de Looper at anke.delooperbenjamins.nl.

Discount order form (PDF) for conference participants
JB journals pages, with ToCs, abstracts, sample issues, and submission guidelines
Guidelines for book proposals
Other links: Our homepage, our e-platform, Facebook, Linked In and Twitter

Check out our selection of top titles for this conference!

Showing all 21 titles.

AHS 5

Changing Genre Conventions in Historical English News Discourse

Edited by Birte Bös and Lucia Kornexl

This volume explores the dynamics of genre conventions in historical English news discourse. The contributions cover a wide spectrum of news writing and publication formats: from corantos to modern tabloids, from prototypical hard news stories and crime reports to more specialised genres such as medical and scientific... full description

July 2015. xiv, 254 pp.

CoLL 60

Constraints on Language Variation and Change in Complex Multilingual Contact Settings

Edited by Bertus van Rooy and Haidee Kotze

Constraints on Language Variation and Change in Complex Multilingual Contact Settings explores an innovative proposal: that linguistic similarities identified in different forms of contact-influenced varieties of language use (including translation, native and non-native varieties of English, and language... full description

Expected July 2024. v, 288 pp. + index

P&bns 330

Corpus Pragmatic Studies on the History of Medical Discourse

Edited by Turo Hiltunen and Irma Taavitsainen

The original studies in this volume provide new insights into the history of medical discourse across centuries in both professional and lay texts. The central themes deal with changes in medical writing in various societal and cultural contexts in search for best practices in corpus pragmatics for future work. Some... full description

July 2022. vii, 322 pp.

IVITRA 35

Desired Language

Languages as objects of national ideology

Edited by Francesc Feliu

National linguistic ideology has been at the base of most historical processes that –whether they are complete or not – have brought us to the current reality: a world of languages that represent, with greater or lesser exactitude, the diversity – and convergences – of human groups. Various of today’s thinkers have... full description

January 2023. vi, 294 pp.

AHS 6

Diachronic Developments in English News Discourse

Edited by Minna Palander-Collin, Maura Ratia and Irma Taavitsainen

The history of English news discourse is characterised by intriguing multilevel developments, and the present cannot be separated from them. For example, audience engagement is by no means an invention of the digital age. This collection highlights major topics that range from newspaper genres like sports reports,... full description

August 2017. vii, 301 pp.

AHS 7

Exploring Future Paths for Historical Sociolinguistics

Edited by Tanja Säily, Arja Nurmi, Minna Palander-Collin and Anita Auer

This volume explores potential paths in historical sociolinguistics, with a particular focus on the inter-related areas of methodological innovations, hitherto un- or under-explored textual resources, and theoretical advancements and challenges. The individual chapters cover Dutch, Finnish and different varieties of... full description

December 2017. vii, 331 pp.

AHS 10

Keeping in Touch

Emigrant letters across the English-speaking world

Edited by Raymond Hickey

The current volume presents a number of chapters which look at informal vernacular letters, written mostly by emigrants to the former colonies of Britain, who settled at these locations in the past few centuries, with a focus on letters from the nineteenth century. Such documents often show features for varieties of... full description

November 2019. x, 289 pp.

P&bns 340

Language Change in the 20th Century

Exploring micro-diachronic evolutions in Romance languages

Edited by Salvador Pons Bordería and Shima Salameh Jiménez

Language Change in the 20th Century: Exploring micro-diachronic evolutions in Romance languages examines the distinctive features that set the study of the 20th century apart from preceding periods. With a primary focus on Romance languages, including Spanish, Italian, French, and Portuguese, the book advocates for... full description

January 2024. vi, 292 pp.

AHS 9

Language Planning as Nation Building

Ideology, policy and implementation in the Netherlands, 1750–1850

Gijsbert Rutten

The decades around 1800 constitute the seminal period of European nationalism. The linguistic corollary of this was the rise of standard language ideology, from Finland to Spain, and from Iceland to the Habsburg Empire. Amidst these international events, the case of Dutch in the Netherlands offers a unique example.... full description

February 2019. x, 312 pp.

AHS 2

Letters as Loot

A sociolinguistic approach to seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Dutch

Gijsbert Rutten and Marijke J. van der Wal

The study of letter writing is at the heart of the historical-sociolinguistic enterprise. Private letters, in particular, offer an unprecedented view on language history. This book presents an in-depth study of the language of letters focussing on a unique collection of Dutch private letters from the seventeenth and... full description

November 2014. xiii, 426 pp.

AHS 14

Lifespan Acquisition and Language Change

Historical sociolinguistic perspectives

Edited by Israel Sanz-Sánchez

This volume connects the latest research on language acquisition across the lifespan with the explanation of language change in specific sociohistorical settings. This conversation benefits from recent advances in two areas: on the one hand, the study of how learners of various ages and in various sociolinguistic... full description

April 2024. x, 336 pp.

AHS 3

Norms and Usage in Language History, 1600–1900

A sociolinguistic and comparative perspective

Edited by Gijsbert Rutten, Rik Vosters and Wim Vandenbussche

Historical sociolinguistics has successfully challenged the traditional focus on standardization in linguistic historiography. Extensive research on newly uncovered textual resources has shown the widespread variation in the written language of the past that was previously hidden or neglected. The time has come to... full description

December 2014. viii, 334 pp.

AHS 8

Patterns of Change in 18th-century English

A sociolinguistic approach

Edited by Terttu Nevalainen, Minna Palander-Collin and Tanja Säily

Eighteenth-century English is often associated with normative grammar. But to what extent did prescriptivism impact ongoing processes of linguistic change? The authors of this volume examine a variety of linguistic changes in a corpus of personal... full description

September 2018. xi, 311 pp.

Impact 52

Reconstructing Non-Standard Languages

A socially-anchored approach

Lenore A. Grenoble and Jessica Kantarovich

Focusing on language contact involving Russian, and the linguistic varieties that emerged from that contact in different social settings, this book analyzes issues and methodologies in reconstructing both the linguistic effects of language contact and the social contexts of usage. In-depth analyses of Odessan Russian,... full description

December 2022. xv, 354 pp.

AHS 11

Records of Real People

Linguistic variation in Middle English local documents

Edited by Merja Stenroos and Kjetil V. Thengs

English local documents – leases, wills, accounts, letters and the like – provide a unique resource for historical sociolinguistics. Abundant from the early fifteenth century, they represent the language and concerns of people from a wide range of social, institutional and geographical backgrounds. However, as... full description

December 2020. ix, 310 pp.

AHS 13

Sociolinguistic Variation in Old English

Records of communities and people

Olga Timofeeva

This is the first extensive study of Old English to utilise the insights and methodologies of sociolinguistics. Building on previous philological and historical work, it takes into account the sociology and social dialectology of Old English and offers a description of its speech communities informed by the theory of... full description

July 2022. xv, 204 pp.

SILV 30

The Sociophonetics of Dublin English

Phonetic realisation and sociopragmatic variation

Marion Schulte

The Sociophonetics of Dublin English shows how social inequalities and language are connected by the stances speakers take in interaction. It is based on an instrumental phonetic analysis of recorded interviews and broadcasting data and a detailed qualitative account of the same data as well as the socio-cultural... full description

September 2023. xii, 172 pp.

AHS 12

Spanish Socio-Historical Linguistics

Isolation and contact

Edited by Whitney Chappell and Bridget Drinka

This interdisciplinary volume explores the unique role of the sociohistorical factors of isolation and contact in motivating change in the varieties of Spanish worldwide. Recognizing the inherent intersectionality of social and historical factors, the book’s eight chapters investigate phenomena ranging from forms of... full description

May 2021. v, 235 pp.

AHS 1

Touching the Past

Studies in the historical sociolinguistics of ego-documents

Edited by Marijke J. van der Wal and Gijsbert Rutten

The study of ego-documents figures as a prominent theme in cutting-edge research in the Humanities. Focusing on private letters, diaries and autobiography, this volume covers a wide range of different languages and historical periods, from the sixteenth century to World War I. The volume stands out by its consistent... full description

July 2013. vii, 279 pp.

AHS 4

Transatlantic Perspectives on Late Modern English

Edited by Marina Dossena

The volume presents an innovative approach to studies in Late Modern English by giving attention to variation and change in varieties of English on both sides of the Atlantic. As new corpora become available, scholarly interests broaden their horizons to encompass varieties, the history of which has only just begun to... full description

February 2015. vii, 221 pp.

CILT 364

Unlocking the History of English

Pragmatics, prescriptivism and text types

Edited by Luisella Caon, Moragh S. Gordon and Thijs Porck

This volume brings together contributions selected from papers delivered at the 21st International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (ICEHL, Leiden 2021). The chapters deal with aspects of language use throughout the history of English, including efforts to prescribe and regulate language in texts that... full description

April 2024. viii, 253 pp.