Three decades of sociolinguistic bibliographies: a wealth of data waiting to be thoroughly explored

In the preface to the first volume of Sociolinguistica, the yearbook’s founding editors (Ulrich Ammon, Klaus Mattheier and Peter Nelde) expressed their hope that the yearbook would positively “contribute to a better coordination of the many facets of European sociolinguistic research”. Networks of sociolinguists working in different countries already existed back in 1987, but they were perceived by the editors as “generally poorly developed or limited to only a few countries”. Scanning the bibliographies of publications available to them, the editors also noticed that sociolinguists considered “often only research in one’s own country or in a country with an easily accessible language” and that “definitive studies [in the French version of the preface they use the adjective ‘fondamental’, jd] published elsewhere remain[ed] unknown”. They saw it as the main task of the yearbook to “avoid ... isolation, to create contacts and to contribute to cross-fertilization within sociolinguistics throughout Europe as a whole” (Ammon/Mattheier/Nelde 1987: IX). In retrospect, the question deserves to be asked if the 34 volumes of the yearbook have really helped to create a denser European sociolinguistic community. Providing a straightforward answer to this question is far from easy. In fact, it would require a careful analysis of the kind of biand multilateral network ties that the yearbook (as well as yearbook-related activities) as such helped to create over the past 34 years. It would also require a careful analysis of the way in which the web of authors that contributed to Sociolinguistica overlaps with the exchange and the interactive networks that were part of the first-order ego networks of the original editors or still are part of the first-order ego networks of their successors (i. e. Sue Wright who succeeded Klaus Mattheier in 2008, Jeroen Darquennes who succeeded Peter Nelde in 2008 and Leigh Oakes who succeeded Sue Wright in 2018). A detailed analysis of the above-mentioned networks clearly goes beyond the scope of this contribution. With many of the scholars who published in the yearbook still alive, it might nonetheless be worthwhile pursuing such an analysis in itself or as part of a wider project on the development of applied linguistics on the European continent (cf. Darquennes [2013: 20] for a brief outline of such a project). A historical sociological account of the way in which sociolinguistic networks developed in Europe would help the research community to gain a more complete understanding of the field and of the way in which personal ties sometimes tend to have an influence on the circulation and the promotion of research topics and ideas.