LAUSR

Early sociolinguistic studies in England were mainly conducted in the geographical South of the country, e.g. Trudgill in Norwich (1974), Cheshire in Reading (1982), Britain in the Fens (1997), and Kerswill and Williams in Milton Keynes (2000). However, around the turn of the millennium, interests shifted more and more towards investigating varieties in the North. The biennual Northern English workshop, and the edited volumes by Hickey (2015) and Beal and Hancil (2017) are witnesses of the increased research into variation and change processes in Northern English varieties. Meanwhile, research in the South was dominated by the discussions around the nebulous term Estuary English (Rosewarne, 1984), and the two large-scale Multicultural London English projects by Jenny Cheshire and Paul Kerswill (e.g. Cheshire et al., 2011). As a result, for a long time, research of linguistic variation in other Southern English variety areas was more or less neglected (with the exception of extensive research by Dave Britain in the Fenlands). However, in the last decade we have seen some increasing interest in research on Southern varieties which is reflected in the number of research activities involving Southern English varieties. A workshop on historical and present-day aspects of Southern English was held at the University of Brighton in March 2014, and this was to run again at Cambridge University in 2015, and at University College London in 2016. Wright (2018) subsequently published an edited volume on linguistic research in the South of England. In April 2017, we organised a language variation and change workshop at the University of Suffolk, which, once again, focused on Southern English varieties. We became aware that there is a young generation of linguists all working on variation and change in the South of England, and wanted to promote and foster this interest. Hence, plans were made to compile this special issue to showcase and draw attention to the diverse range of exciting work which is taking place in this much under-studied region. The South is a diverse geographical area which can be divided into the South East and the South West, and, within these broader categories, we can begin to distinguish more specific geographical areas. The South East, i.e. London and the Home Counties, is characterized by being the most populous area, with a diverse population and high mobility. This is true, in particular, for the well known ‘commuter belt’, that is high intensity regions of people commuting to London for work from surrounding areas (e.g. Britain, 2010). Hence, the South East is typically thought of as highly mobile, which, inevitably, has repercussions on language use. Large-scale dialect levelling, i.e. the reduction of dialect features, led much of the