This volume presents the long-anticipated results of several decades of inquiry into the social origins and social motivation of linguistic change.

• Written by one of the founders of modern sociolinguistics
• Features the first complete report on the Philadelphia project designed to establish the social location of the leaders of linguistic change
• Includes chapters on social class, neighborhood, ethnicity, gender, and social networks that delineate the leaders of linguistic change as women of the upper working class with a high density of interaction within their neighborhoods and a high proportion of weak ties outside of it

The author is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the co-editor of Language Variation and Change and is author of Sociolinguistic Patterns (1972), Language in the Inner City (1972), and Principles of Linguistic Change, Volume 1: Internal Factors (Blackwell, 1994).