1 Frequency effects in lexical sociolectometry are insubstantial

Lexical sociolectometry is a methodology to study aggregate lexical distances between varieties of a language. The methodology measures the extent to which different varieties use different labels for the same concept, and subsequently aggregates over many different variables with possibly very different usage frequencies. Drawing on a dataset sampling different varieties of written English (British and American, informative and imaginative, 1960s and 1990s), we determine if different types of frequency weighting (one boosting low-frequency concepts, one boosting high-frequency concepts, and no frequency weighting at all) have an effect on the lectal distances calculated. We fail to obtain any such effect, and discuss reasons for the absence of frequency effects in lexical sociolectometry. 1