A union of Cognitive Linguistics and Sociolinguistics was bound to happen. Both proclaim a usage-based approach to language and aim to analyse actual language use in objective ways. Whereas Sociolinguistics is by nature on the outlook forlanguage in its variety, CL can no longer afford to ignoresocial variation in language as it manifests itself in the usagedata. Nor can it fail to adopt an empirical methodology thatreflects variation as it actually occurs, beyond the limitedknowledge of the individual observer. Conversely, while CL canonly benefit from a heightened sensitivity to social aspects,the rich, bottom-up theoretical framework it has developed islikely to contribute to a much better understanding of themeaning of variationist phenomena. This volume brings together fifteen chapters written by prominent scholars testifying of rich empirical and theoretizing research into the social aspects of language variation. Taking a broad view on Cognitive Sociolinguistics, the volume covers three main areas: corpus-based research on language variation, cognitive cultural models, and the ideologies of sociopolitical and socio-economic systems.