Hic et ibi.

Even though spacious conditions are integral parts of the vast majority of studies in the fields of sociolinguistics and variationist linguistics, they are not always discussed as subject matters per se. The special issue In Stadt und Land – Perspektiven variations- und soziolinguistischer Forschung aims at uniting different approaches that construe spatial categories not as sheer preconditions for the assignment of linguistic features or for the drawing up of maps but as central parameters in the analyses. The contributions thus illustrate one of the current trends in sociolinguistic and variationist linguistic research to explicitly discuss, conceptualize and systematize spatial categories.