bell co-founded "journal of sociolinguistics" in 1996 with nikolas coupland. having served as regular correspondents to each other's work since the mid-1980s, bell and coupland wanted to find a project or study that the two could work on together. the two decided to establish a new sociolinguistics journal, especially during time when the field was beginning to grow and more publications were needed to be published: "but we had this idea that it would be nice to start a journal. we were both in awe of language in society and you know there were certainly other important journals around as well. but it simply occurred to me i think that there wasn't a journal called anything to do with sociolinguistics and why not? and the [sociolinguistics] symposium was growing and there was lot of work around and we thought we could make it work. so, we approached blackwell and they were utterly utterly wonderful from the very beginning. they saw the opportunity."