The fourth volume in the series Language Competence and Language Awareness in Europe features contributions from various philologies in the young but rapidly growing research area of linguistic variability. The book grew out of a nucleus of papers presented at a North German Linguistics Workshop organised by the chair of English Linguistics, and developed into a collection of doctoral and post—doctoral research papers on variability in different domains of language use, variability as conceptual cum linguistic variability, and variability as studied in the mainstream research framework of corpus linguistics. It is the integrative presentation of thematic breadth and pluralistic research methodologies that inspired the title New Approaches to the Study of Linguistic Variability. The volume focuses on sociolinguistic studies of language use as social practice and variability of authentic language use.