The one-nation-one-language assumption is as unrealistic as the well-known Chomskyan ideal of a
homogeneous speech community. Linguistic pluricentricity is a common and widespread phenomenon
it can be understood as either differing national standards or differing local norms. The nine
studies collected in this volume explore the sociocultural conceptual and structural
dimensions of variation and change within pluricentric languages with specific emphasis on the
relationship between national varieties. They include research undertaken in both the Cognitive
Linguistic and socolinguistic tradition with particular emphasis upon the emerging framework
of Cognitive Sociolinguistics. Six languages all more or less pluricentric are analyzed: four
Germanic languages (English German Dutch and Swedish) and two Romance languages (Portuguese
and French). The volume describes patterns of phonetic lexical and morphosyntactic variation
and perception and attitudes in relation to these pluricentric languages. It makes use of
advanced empirical methods able to account for the complex interplay between conceptual and
social aspects of pluricentric variation and other forms of language-internal variation.
