Sociophonetics is a privileged domain for the investigation of language variation and change. By combining theoretical reflections and sophisticated techniques of analysis, both phonetic and statistical, it is possible to disentangle step by step the role of individual factors (socio-cultural, physiological, communicative-interactional etc.) in the multidimensional space of speech variation. Covering a relatively large number of Germanic and Romance languages and dialects, this volume investigates the fundamental relation between speech variation and the social background of speakers from articulatory, acoustical, dialectological and conversational perspectives, thus breaking new ground with respect to classical variationist and dialectological studies. Specialists from a broad range of disciplines – including phoneticians, phonologists, sociolinguists, psycholinguists and researchers in cognitive linguistics – will find innovative suggestions for multiple approaches to the study of speech and language variation.