Dynamics of Change in Language Practices and Social Meaning 1700-1900 (DYLAPS)

The project asks how changes in language practices and social factors are interrelated and how this relationship can be studied. We
focus on language practices that relate to social groups, group distinctions, social aspirations and attitudes in the context of eighteenthand
nineteenth-century Britain. Social factors partly exist outside language, but they are also linguistically expressed and created. When
the inter-group dynamics change, what role do language practices play in this? Both lifeworld and system elements affect the kind of
language people use in different situations. In the project we study how these micro and macro perspectives can be combined in the
analysis of language practices and how we could take the analysis a step further to explain the dynamics of changing language practices
and social change in tandem.