Style constitutes an essential component for the non-referential indexicality of speakers’ sociolinguistic behaviour in interpersonal communication. Historical Sociolinguistics applies tenets and findings of present-day research to the interpretation of linguistic material from the past, but without giving intra-speaker variation the same relevance as to inter-speaker variation. The aim of this paper is to show results obtained from the investigation of style-shifting processes in late medieval England by applying contemporary models of Audience Design to diaphasic variation from historical corpora of written correspondence. The study is carried out through the analysis of the use of the orthographic variable (TH) by male members of the Paston family from the Paston Letters corpus when addressing recipients from different social ranks. The data show both addressee and referee-based accommodation patterns in the communicative practice of medieval individuals. In addition to tracing language variation and change in speech communities, private letters may also shed light onto the motivations and mechanisms for intra-speaker variation in individuals and their stylistic choices in past societies.

Historical sociolinguistics has favoured the interest in tracing heterogeneity and vernacularity in the history of language, reconstructing the sociolinguistic contexts and directions of language change as well as socially based variation patterns in remote speech communities. But this treatment of language variation and change macroscopically, longitudinally, unidimensionally and focused on the speech community as a macro-cosmos can be revealingly complemented with other views microscopically, cross-sectionally, multidimensionally and privileging individuals and their community of practice as a micro-cosmos. This conveys a shift from the study of collectivity and inter-speaker variation to that of individuality, intra-speaker variation and authenticity. The aim of this paper is to show results of the microscopic investigation of intra-speaker variation and the use of stylistic choices as linguistic resources for persona management within the micro-cosmos of late Medieval England, through the application of current multidimensional socio-constructionist models to historical corpora of written correspondence. The study is carried out through the analysis of the behaviour of the orthographic variable (TH) in the letters written by members of the Paston family. In addition to tracing language change, the data obtained from private letters provide us with the possibility of reconstructing the sociolinguistic values in medieval times. Ultimately, this study’s contribution is to account for the social meaning of inter- and intra-speaker variation in the sociolinguistic behaviour of speakers at the individual level as a linguistic resource for identity construction, representation, and even social positioning in interpersonal communication.

The aim of this paper is to explore the impact of social and context factors on the diffusion of a linguistic change from above, namely the deployment of the spelling innovation <th> in fifteenth-century English, and especially in some letters from the well-known Paston collection of correspondence. We particularly focus on the socio-stylistic route of this change from above, observing the sociolinguistic behaviour of some letter writers (members of the Paston family) in connection with the social-professional status of their recipients, the interpersonal relationship with them, as well as the contexts and styles of the letters. In this way, different dimensions of this change from above in progress in fifteenth-century English can be reconstructed.

la década de 1960 fue demostrar que la variación lingüística no es libre, sino condicionada por factores sociales, situacionales y/o lingüísticos, y que, consiguientemente, el uso lingüístico y el cambio no están sólo condicionados regionalmente sino también social, estilística, y lingüísticamente (véanse Labov 1966(véanse Labov , 1972Trudgill 1974). Así, desde entonces, los variacionistas vienen explorando el funcionamiento del lenguaje con especial atención a: los patrones de comportamiento sociolingüístico, la estratificación social del lenguaje, la estructura de los sistemas lingüísticos, la naturaleza de la variación lingüística, los mecanismos del cambio lingüístico, los patrones de desarrollos y tendencias en sistemas lingüísticos, la predicción de proceso evolutivos en las lenguas, o el diagnóstico de la salud y vitalidad de las variedades lingüísticas (véase Chambers, Trudgill y Schilling-Estes 2002).Metodológicamente, desde que Georg Wenker inició el primer estudio dialectológico moderno en Alemania en 1876, empleando el método indirecto