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Description: This book constitutes two complementary holistic studies in the field of variationist second language acquisition (SLA) investigating how, when and why second language (L2) German learners in the Austro-Bavarian naturalistic context develop sociolinguistic competence, i.e. “the capacity to recognize and produce socially appropriate speech in context” (Lyster 1994: 263). In the first cross-sectional study, we combine sophisticated quantitative group-level analyses with person-centered individual qualitative data, the goal being to explore the effects of linguistic, socioaffective and cognitive factors on 40 adult L2 learners’ inter-individual acquisition of sociolinguistic competence. The second study is the first in variationist SLA research to analyze intensive micro-longitudinal data: It scrutinizes micro-developmental trajectories in four L2 learners’ sociolinguistic production and perception during initial periods of residence in Austria and attempts to identify relevant environmental and psychological stimuli for change. Taken as a whole, this book makes a convincing methodological case to complement cross-sectional data with microlongitudinal individual data so as to better reconcile generalizability, individuality and within-person variability. The results provide the field of variationist SLA with a more detailed mechanistic understanding of the acquisition and development of sociolinguistic competence in the non-instructed naturalistic sphere.