In the present volume, the chapter by J. Milroy, on "Sociolinguistic methodology and the identification of speakers' voices in legal proceedings" exemplifies a new use for quantitative studies of the Labovian type: the employment of sociolinguistic findings in a field we can perhaps call "forensic sociolinguistics". And in another examination of the uses of work of this type, Fasold, in his chapter on language learning, looks at the application of variation theory, a relatively recent theoretical development out of Labov- style secular linguistics. His chapter uvariation theory and language learn- ing" starts from attempts to incorporate sociolinguistic findings concerning the structure and probabilistic nature of linguistic variation into theoretical models, and links these to foreign language acquisition processes.