Coalitions and the Investigation of Social Influence in Linguistic History

Social network analysis in the social and behavioural sciences has been developed to illuminate the nature and direction of social influence among individuals. It is designed to provide a micro level in the context of the macro level represented by the business corporation or social class. The processes argued to underlie social influence include ‘relations of authority, identification, expertise and competition’.1 Clearly, these relations have to be constructed and demonstrated to be effective rather than simply identified. At the same time, these processes may be instrumental in providing a critical context for marking out patterns of linguistic influence in distant historical periods. Social network analysis is suitable for historical application, assuming an appropriate historiography and social theory.2 Because the task of the historical linguist is to critically consider and develop an effective procedure for applying social network analysis in