  We introduce a framework for quantifying semantic variation of common words
in Communities of Practice and in sets of topic-related communities. We show
that while some meaning shifts are shared across related communities, others
are community-specific, and therefore independent from the discussed topic. We
propose such findings as evidence in favour of sociolinguistic theories of
socially-driven semantic variation. Results are evaluated using an independent
language modelling task. Furthermore, we investigate extralinguistic features
and show that factors such as prominence and dissemination of words are related
to semantic variation.
