ABSTRACT
Vineyard in Massachusetts, New York City’s Lower East Side and Harlem. This approach to the study of language and society and the variationist paradigm were soon applied to second language acquisition (SLA), beginning in the mid 70s with studies of variation in the pronunciation of Japanese learners of English. However, until the 1990s and the first decades of the present century, studies of variation in SLA were relatively rare, and most were confined to English. This chapter outlines the theoretical and methodological bases of the study of language variation and change. Then, using representative studies of a variety of L2s, the chapter illustrates how this approach can inform SLA theory and learner assessment. Finally, the chapter offers suggestions for future research, with emphasis on studies that focus on perception as well as production, studies of populations that have received relatively little attention, and longitudinal studies that combine traditional variationist methods with ethnographic observation.
