A sociolinguistic perspective on sociophonetic research

The four papers in this issue of the journal are jointly focused on two distinct themes: sociophonetics-the study of speakers and listeners' sensitivity to the social context in which language is produced and perceived-and exemplar theory, as a way of explaining this behavior. In these comments, I will try to relate the findings in the first area to the field of sociolinguistics, and then relate the discussion of exemplar theory to recent studies of change in progress. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.