Chapter 2 accounts for the general expectation that periods characterized by the dissolution of strong network ties and the establishment of weak ones can be expected to feature a great deal of language change. A survey of sociocultural and linguistic change in England between 1700 and 1900 then demonstrates that structural language change is less prevalent than could be expected given what must have been an increasing prevalence of weak network ties during the period. It is argued that the correlation between weak ties and language change in fact still holds, but that traditional estimates of the amount of language change in Late Modern English do not capture the full extent of the developments that take place between 1700 and 1900.