Review of Timofeeva, Olga. 2022. Sociolinguistic Variation in Old English: Records of Communities and People. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. ISBN: 978-9-027-21134-7. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/ahs.13

This book lays the foundations for studying the sociolinguistics of Old English, a period that has scarce sociolinguistic metadata and mass fragmentary evidence.While the Old English record is transmitted predominantly through a biased upper-class male religious elite, the author, Timofeeva, successfully illustrates that Old English has much to offer in the way of sociolinguistic information.Through eight chapters, the author surveys the applications of sociolinguistic methods and theories to Old English, focusing, in particular, on the application of social networks, and the extraction of sociodemographic information embedded in legal records.Chapter 1 contextualizes the overall aim of the book by arguing that Old English can provide a glimpse into the social world of its speakers.While the dearth of sociolinguistic metadata may disable the possibility of using the composite extant record of Old English to reconstruct the social forces influencing Old English, the author maintains that if analysts circumscribe their analysis to a smaller subset of texts, Old English can still be sociolinguistically informative.The chapter begins with a discussion of major milestones in the reconstruction of extralinguistic influences on the history and development of Old English.The author subsequently turns to a review of two branches of sociolinguistics: correlational sociolinguistics and interactional sociolinguistics.Justifiably, the author raises issues concerning the representativeness of Old English texts and summarizes the genres and text categories available.This treasure trove of information will be of immediate interest to students and scholars of Old English, linguists, language historians, and Medievalists.Chapter 2 illustrates how social network analysis can be applied to the study of historical documents and the texts associated with the court of King Alfred in the ninth century.King Alfred is revered as one of the most influential kings in British history, most notably, for his resistance