This course investigates language variation and change in its socio- historical context, focusing on the effects of such parameters as age, gender, education, social class, and region on the historical development of language through time and space. The effects of socio- historical variables will be examined at all levels of historical language variation and change: orthographic, phonetic, phonological, morphological, syntactic, semantic, and lexical. The notions of "standard language" and "language standardization" will also be addressed from a historical sociolinguistic perspective.