Guides to Research Methods in Language and Linguistics
Series Editor: Li Wei, Birkbeck College, University of London
The science of language encompasses a truly interdisciplinary field of research, with a wide range of focuses, approaches, and objectives. While linguistics has its own traditional approaches, a variety of other intellectual disciplines have contributed methodological perspectives that enrich the field as a whole. As a result, linguistics now draws on state-of-the-art work from such fields as psychology, computer science, biology, neuroscience and cognitive science, sociology, music, philosophy, and anthropology.
The interdisciplinary nature of the field presents both challenges and opportunities to students who must understand a variety of evolving research skills and methods. The Guides to Research Methods in Language and Linguistics addresses these skills in a systematic way for advanced students and beginning researchers in language science. The books in this series focus especially on the relationships between theory, methods, and data – the understanding of which is fundamental to the successful completion of research projects and the advancement of knowledge.
Published
Forthcoming
Edited by Janet Holmes and Kirk Hazen
This edition first published 2014
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Research methods in sociolinguistics : a practical guide / Edited by Janet Holmes and Kirk Hazen.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-470-67360-7 (cloth) – ISBN 978-0-470-67361-4 (pbk.)
1. Sociolinguistics–Methodology. 2. Sociolinguistics–Research. I. Holmes, Janet, 1947–
II. Hazen, Kirk, 1970– editors of compilation.
P40.3.R47 2014
306.44072′1–dc23
2013012067
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Cover image: Arch Bridge on California coast. Image © Shubroto Chattopadhyay/Corbis
Cover design by www.cyandesign.co.uk
Michael Adams teaches English language and literature at Indiana University as an Associate Professor. Currently President of the Dictionary Society of North America, he also edited its journal, Dictionaries, for several years. Now he edits the quarterly journal American Speech. An assistant on the Middle English Dictionary, Consulting Editor on The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 4th edn (2000), and a Contributing Editor on The Barnhart Dictionary Companion (1999–2001), he is the author of Slayer Slang: A Buffy the Vampire Slayer Lexicon (2003) and Slang: The People’s Poetry (2009), and, with Anne Curzan, How English Works: A Linguistic Introduction, 3rd edn (2012).
Jannis Androutsopoulos is Professor in German and Media Linguistics at the University of Hamburg. His research interests are in sociolinguistics and media discourse studies. He has written extensively on linguistic variability and style, multilingualism and code-switching, and media discourse and diversity. He is co-editor of the volume Orthography as Social Action: Scripts, Spelling, Identity and Power (2012) and editor of the Special Issue Language and Society in Cinematic Discourse (Multilingua 31:2, 2012). He serves on the advisory boards of the journals language@internet, Pragmatics, Discourse Context & Media, and International Journal of Computer-Assisted Language Learning and Teaching.
Paul Baker is Professor of English Language at the Department of English Language and Linguistics, Lancaster University where he researches discourse analysis, corpus linguistics, and language and identities. He has authored or co-authored 11 books including Using Corpora in Discourse Analysis (2006), Sexed Texts: Language, Gender and Sexuality (2008), and Sociolinguistics and Corpus Linguistics (2010). He is commissioning editor of the journal Corpora.
David Britain is Professor of Modern English Linguistics at the University of Bern. His research interests include the dialectology of Englishes, both new and old, especially the varieties spoken in southern England, the southern hemisphere, and Micronesia; and the dialectology–human geography interface, as well as the dialectological implications and outcomes of mobility and dialect contact. He is co-author of Linguistics: An Introduction (Cambridge University Press, 2009), editor of Language in the British Isles (Cambridge University Press, 2007), and co-editor, with Jenny Cheshire, of Social Dialectology (John Benjamins, 2003).
Nikolas Coupland is Distinguished Professor of Sociolinguistics at University of Technology Sydney, and holds Research Chairs at both Copenhagen and Cardiff universities. He was founding co-editor of the Journal of Sociolinguistics and co-edits the book series Oxford Studies in Sociolinguistics. He has published on the sociolinguistics of style and performance, sociolinguistic theory, bilingualism in Wales, and language and aging. His most recent books are the Handbook of Language and Globalization (editor, Wiley-Blackwell, 2010) and Standard Languages and Language Standards in a Changing Europe (ed. with Tore Kristiansen, Novus, 2011).
Julia Davydova is a Research Associate at Mannheim University, where she teaches English linguistics at all levels. Her major research areas include language variation and change in non-native Englishes as well as the sociolinguistics of second language acquisition. Her first monograph is titled The Present Perfect in Non-Native Englishes. A Corpus-Based Study of Variation (Mouton de Gruyter, 2011). Her most recent publication is a textbook, The Amazing World of Englishes, co-authored with Peter Siemund and Georg Maier (Mouton de Gruyter, 2012).
Robin Dodsworth is Associate Professor in the Sociolinguistics program at North Carolina State University. Her primary research is on the changing vowel systems in the American South, particularly in the city of Raleigh. An article on the contact-induced reversal of the Southern Vowel Shift in Raleigh, co-authored with Mary Kohn, appeared in Language Variation and Change in 2012. Her ongoing research focuses on the effects of socioeconomic class on linguistic variation.
Katie Drager is an Assistant Professor in Linguistics at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa. She is Co-Director of the Sato Center for Pidgin, Creole, and Dialect Studies and teaches sociolinguistics to undergraduate and graduate students. Her work uses ethnographic and experimental methods to investigate the relationship between linguistic variants and social meaning, focusing on how social and linguistic information are stored in the mind and how these mental representations are accessed during the production and perception of speech. Some of her recent publications can be found in Language and Speech, Journal of Phonetics, and Language Variation and Change.
Paul Drew is Professor of Conversation Analysis at Loughborough University, UK, having for many years taught at the University of York. His research covers the basic processes and practices of mundane social interactions, as well as research in more applied settings, including legal, social welfare, and especially medical settings, in which he currently has a number of projects including seizure and memory clinics. He is co-editor (with John Gumperz and others) of the Cambridge University Press series Interactional Linguistics. His recent publications include a four-volume collection, co-edited with John Heritage, Contemporary Studies in Conversation Analysis (SAGE, 2013).
Gregory R. Guy has been Professor of Linguistics at New York University since 2001, following previous appointments at Sydney, Cornell, Stanford, and York. His research interests include language variation and change, language and social class, and theoretical models of linguistic variation. He has done original sociolinguistic research in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, the Dominican Republic, New Zealand, and the United States. He is the co-author of Sociolingüística Quantitativa (Parábola, 2007), and the lead editor of Towards a Social Science of Language (John Benjamins, 1996), and has published in such journals as Language, Language Variation and Change, Diachronica, and American Speech.
As Professor of Linguistics at West Virginia University, Kirk Hazen researches language variation and change in American English, primarily writing about Southern US varieties and English in Appalachia. He promotes sociolinguistic goals by presenting dialect diversity programs to numerous communities. Since founding the West Virginia Dialect Project in 1998, he has secured funding from state and federal sources (NSF and NEH) for linguistic research and outreach. His publications include articles in Language Variation and Change, Language, English World-Wide, and American Speech. He has written a forthcoming book entitled An Introduction to Language, designed for non-linguistic majors and published by Wiley-Blackwell.
Michol Hoffman is Associate Professor in the Department of Languages, Literature, and Linguistics at York University in Toronto. As a sociolinguist, she is interested in ethnicity, identity, language and dialect contact, language attitudes, historical linguistics, phonetics, and phonology. Her recent work focuses on variation and change in Spanish and English in Toronto, and her publications include articles in Language Variation and Change, American Speech, and the Bulletin of Hispanic Studies.
Janet Holmes is Professor of Linguistics at Victoria University of Wellington where she directs the Language in the Workplace Project and teaches sociolinguistics at undergraduate and postgraduate level. She has published on a wide range of topics including New Zealand English, language and gender, sexist language, pragmatic particles, compliments and apologies, and most recently on aspects of workplace discourse. Her most recent books are the 4th edition of the Introduction to Sociolinguistics (Pearson, 2013), Gendered Talk at Work (Blackwell, 2006), and Leadership, Discourse, and Ethnicity (Oxford University Press, 2011).
Alexandra Jaffe is Professor of Linguistics and Anthropology at California State University, Long Beach. She has published widely on her ethnographic and sociolinguistic research on Corsica, and on such topics as language politics, bilingual education, and language in the media. Her most recent edited volume projects include Stance: Sociolinguistic Perspectives, reissued in paperback by Oxford University Press in 2012, and Orthography as Social Action (De Gruyter, 2012) in collaboration with Mark Sebba, Jannis Androutsopoulos, and Sally Johnson. She is currently editor-in-chief of the Journal of Linguistic Anthropology.
Paul Kerswill is Professor of Sociolinguistics at the University of York, UK. His research is largely focused on sociolinguistic and linguistic aspects of dialect contact, particularly where migration and mobility are involved. His doctoral research dealt with rural migrants in the Norwegian city of Bergen (Dialects Converging: Rural Speech in Urban Norway, Oxford University Press, 1994). In England he has directed sociolinguistic projects on the New Town of Milton Keynes and, latterly, on Multicultural London English. He has co-edited Dialect Change: Convergence and Divergence in European languages (Cambridge University Press, 2005) and The SAGE Handbook of Sociolinguistics (SAGE, 2011).
Rajend Mesthrie is Professor of Linguistics in the School of African & Gender Studies, Anthropology & Linguistics at the University of Cape Town, where he holds a National Research Foundation chair. He is a past president of the Linguistics Society of Southern Africa and past editor of English Today. Amongst his publications are Language in South Africa (editor, Cambridge University Press, 2002), World Englishes (Cambridge University Press, 2008, with Rakesh Bhatt), A Dictionary of South African Indian English (UCT Press, 2010), and The Handbook of Sociolinguistics (editor, Cambridge University Press, 2011). His current research focuses on sociophonetics and social change in post-apartheid South Africa.
Terttu Nevalainen is Professor of English Philology and the Director of the VARIENG Research Unit at the University of Helsinki. Her research and teaching are in historical sociolinguistics and corpus linguistics. She is one of the compilers of the Helsinki Corpus of English Texts and of the Corpus of Early English Correspondence. Her publications include An Introduction to Early Modern English (Edinburgh University Press, 2006), Historical Sociolinguistics (with Helena Raumolin-Brunberg; Pearson, 2003), and The Oxford Handbook of the History of English (with Elizabeth Traugott; Oxford University Press, 2012). She edits Neuphilologische Mitteilungen and the book series Oxford Studies in the History of English.
Carmel O’Shannessy is Assistant Professor in Linguistics at the University of Michigan. She documents Light Warlpiri, a newly emerged mixed language spoken in a Warlpiri community in northern Australia, focusing on the role of children in the development and stabilization of the new code. She approaches her study of the children’s continuing multilingualism using a variety of methods, including ethnography, naturalistic and elicited production, and experiments. Key publications include papers on code-switching in Linguistics, on grammatical patterns in multilingual acquisition in the Journal of Child Language, and on language variation in a Warlpiri community in a recent edited collection.
Erik Schleef is Lecturer in English Sociolinguistics at the University of Manchester, UK. His research focuses on discourse, phonetic and phonological variation and change in dialects of the British Isles, the acquisition of variation, sociolinguistics and perception, and language and gender in educational settings. He has recently published the Routledge Sociolinguistics Reader with Miriam Meyerhoff, and he is co-editor of the Edinburgh Textbooks in Applied Linguistics.
Erik R. Thomas is a Professor of Linguistics at North Carolina State University, where he co-directs the linguistics program and teaches a variety of linguistics courses. He has published on various aspects of sociophonetics, ethnic dialects, and dialect geography. He is author or editor of four books, including Sociophonetics: An Introduction (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011) and, with Malcah Yaeger-Dror, African American English Speakers and Their Participation in Local Sound Changes: A Comparative Study (Duke University Press, 2010).
Kevin Watson is a Lecturer in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, where he teaches sociolinguistics and sociophonetics at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. He has research interests in language variation and change, with a particular focus on the accents of northwest England and varieties of English spoken in New Zealand. He is the current editor of the New Zealand English Journal.
This book has been great fun to produce, largely due to the enthusiasm and cooperation of all those who have contributed in a variety of ways. We wish here to express our appreciation to them all.
Firstly, there are the 21 contributing authors from all over the world. They have worked hard to meet our deadlines, and we are very grateful to them for that.
Secondly, there are our two editors, Julia Kirk and Danielle Descoteaux, who have been unfailingly supportive and responsive to our many queries and requests for guidance.
Thirdly, we would like to thank our research assistants, Lily Holz, Isabelle Shepherd, and Jaclyn Daugherty in the USA and Natalia Beliaeva in New Zealand, who helped with the editing, index, and reference checking, and Sharon Marsden in New Zealand who helped with the index. We also acknowledge the financial assistance of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Victoria University, and the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences at West Virginia University, which made this editing assistance possible.
Finally, we express our appreciation to our families, who provided wonderful support and encouragement throughout this project.
| Keyword | Vowel | Phonetic transcription |
| FLEECE | i | [bi] |
| KIT |
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| GOOSE | u | [bu] |
| FOOT |
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| FACE |
|
[bet] |
| DRESS | ε | [bεt] |
| COMMA |
|
|
| GOAT | o | [bot] |
| THOUGHT |
|
|
| BATH | æ | [bæt] |
| LOT | a | [bat] |
| PRICE |
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| CHOICE |
|
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| MOUTH |
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|
Janet Holmes and Kirk Hazen
We developed this book to help students conduct high-quality sociolinguistic research. It is a book about sociolinguistic methodology, and it encompasses a wide range of methodologies. The goal of each chapter is to provide students with a solid understanding of how to conduct different kinds of sociolinguistic research. Before we describe how we have organized the book, and what is covered, a few words about the scope of current sociolinguistic research may be helpful.
The study of linguistics itself is a young field, with its modern roots dating back to about 1850. The term sociolinguistics is even younger, and the collection of activities associated with it have been pulled together as an academic field only in recent decades. Many different research goals and different methodologies can be found under the label “sociolinguistics.” Some sociolinguistic research relies on experimental and quantitative data, with those researchers using statistical tests on abstracted data. Other sociolinguistic research adopts a more sociological or anthropological approach, conducting qualitative analysis while striving for ecological validity. Across this breadth of research, the authors and editors of this book have striven to connect their different areas of research through clearly explained methodologies. As indicated by the wide scope of this book’s research interests, the field of sociolinguistics is steadily maturing and developing disciplinary strengths from the rich soils of many diverse academic fields.
We have organized the book into two major sections. The first section focuses mainly on identifying the different types of data used in sociolinguistic research, and explains how to collect them. The second section demonstrates the many different ways in which sociolinguistic data can be analyzed. The second section is further divided into (i) chapters which examine what a sociolinguistic approach can tell us about the way language is structured, and (ii) chapters which consider what language can tell us about the way people use language to create their social identities in society. As Kirk Hazen describes in the first chapter, this latter division reflects a well-established difference in focus which can be traced back to the birth of sociolinguistics as a distinct discipline in the 1960s. Labov’s linguistic research began by grouping people into social categories and then examining the linguistic features in the speech of different social groups. He searched for patterns in the linguistic and social heterogeneity. Dell Hymes, on the other hand, began by identifying languages and examined who used them for what purposes and in what kinds of sociocultural contexts. While there is inevitably some overlap in the methods, the writers of each chapter have oriented their discussion in one of these two directions.
The chapters are mainly aimed at budding sociolinguists and their teachers. In general, the authors do not assume familiarity with sociolinguistics, although there is much here that will be valuable to more senior students and even experienced researchers. Some chapters are more technical than others, and some assume a greater familiarity with linguistics terminology than others: for example, Erik Thomas’s discussion of acoustic analysis assumes a sound knowledge of phonetics. Another distinction between the chapters is the material used for exemplification. Researchers tend to draw on material from the regions most familiar to them, and this familiarity allows them to authoritatively account for the social context. Thus the book includes illustrative material from the very wide range of geographical regions from which our contributors hail (nine countries on four continents).
The first chapter sets the historical scene for the rest of the book. Kirk Hazen’s chapter explains how different kinds of research questions lead researchers in different directions to find answers which focus more on linguistic features or more on social identity. Both areas of study serve to further the goals of sociolinguistics, as he points out, but each researcher needs to choose which aspect of sociolinguistics they wish to focus on – the study of language or the study of society.
The four chapters that follow comprise the section of the book which deals with collecting different types of data. Between them, the four authors cover the most common methods of data collection in sociolinguistic research.
In Chapter 2, Michol Hoffman describes in detail what is involved in undertaking sociolinguistic fieldwork, from project conception and design, through preliminary reconnaissance about and within communities, to ethnographic fieldwork methods, including the challenge of conducting successful interviews. While offering practical advice, she illustrates with examples from classic and recent studies. Dealing with one of the most widely used and important methods of sociolinguistic data collection, Hoffman’s advice should assist any student who wants to conduct sociolinguistic interviews.
Erik Schleef describes in Chapter 3 how to construct and administer a questionnaire. Using examples from a number of relevant sociolinguistic studies, he describes the importance of careful preparation, discusses how to write good questions, and provides an overview of the main question types. He exemplifies the standard structure of successful questionnaires and concludes with advice on testing and administering a questionnaire.
In Chapter 4, Katie Drager leads students through experimental design in sociolinguistics, a rapidly growing area. She notes that a range of different experimental designs are available, depending on the sociolinguistic issue being researched. Her chapter provides a step-by-step guide to two of these: a matched-guise task, which can be used to investigate the social characteristics attributed to people who speak different varieties, and an identification task, which can be used to determine the degree to which expectations about a speaker affect how their speech is processed. She usefully outlines the advantages and disadvantages of different methodological decisions in the experimental process.
Chapter 5, the last chapter in this section, extends the definition of what counts as a research site and as appropriate data. Jannis Androutsopoulos helps readers explore data collection in the areas of computer-mediated communication (CMC) and linguistic landscapes (LL). Covering a wide range of both quantitative and qualitative data collection procedures, he illustrates CMC with text-based interpersonal communication via digital media, including e-mails, texts, social network sites, and discussion forums. Similarly, he illustrates LL research with data on language use in public space and data from the owners, creators, and consumers of such linguistic landscapes.
The next section of the book explores methods of analysis, and the first part of this section takes a more linguistic focus. Chapter 6 opens with Terttu Nevalainen writing on sociohistorical analysis. Her chapter provides background, tools, and ideas for the study of historical topics. She evaluates the advantages and disadvantages of engaging with historical data by looking at how language change can be observed in real time. Her case studies represent both variationist and sociopragmatic approaches.
Paul Baker provides a succinct description and evaluation of the benefits of corpus analysis in Chapter 7. He describes how advances in computer software make it possible to pursue new research issues, identify unexpected patterns, and confirm hypotheses. In the chapter, he describes some of the main analytical techniques and outlines the basic principles behind building corpora. He also illustrates the sorts of research questions most appropriate to this method and demonstrates its potential with a small study comparing age differences in language use.
In Chapter 8, Erik Thomas describes how to go about sociophonetic analysis. Sociophonetic analysis is an essential method for any sociolinguist working with sound variation. It does involve technical details, but Thomas’s chapter leads readers through some of the most foundational techniques in a straightforward fashion. In the chapter, he also explains basic terms like formants, provides advice on how to avoid common sources of measurement errors, and points toward other readings for additional techniques. The chapter provides a solid starting point for any researcher conducting a sociophonetic analysis.
In Chapter 9, Paul Kerswill and Kevin Watson discuss phonological concerns when analyzing variation in sound. Covering a range of different phonological variables (e.g., consonantal/vocalic, systemic/allophonic) and different methodologies from both production and perception studies, they illustrate with case studies how the phonological system constrains the variation of linguistic features.
In Chapter 10, changing linguistic levels, Julia Davydova describes procedures for conducting sociolinguistic analysis on morphosyntactic variation. She explains how to identify potential influencing factors, the effects of other linguistic levels, and the methodological choices facing researchers of morphological variation. She also provides advice on considering diachronic variation and the nature of the language’s lexicon. To help the reader, Davydova delivers examples from different languages to illustrate the range of morphosyntactic variation.
Michael Adams describes how sociolinguistic analysis can illuminate lexical studies in Chapter 11. From a social perspective, words are often informative markers of linguistic identity, and may also provide interesting clues to immigration, settlement patterns, and intergroup contact. Adams discusses ways of collecting lexical evidence, including observation, surveys, questionnaires, and text analysis. He also illustrates ways of representing sociolinguistically interesting data, such as mapping. Additionally, this chapter discusses what the study of names can tell us about processes such as language change, and accommodation or resistance to pressures from other social groups.
Chapter 12 illustrates the value of discourse analysis in examining social interaction. Janet Holmes first describes a number of theoretical frameworks, and then takes a step-by-step approach to analyzing spoken discourse, from developing research questions through data collection to data analysis. Using workplace humor for exemplification, she illustrates the value of both qualitative and quantitative approaches to the analysis of discourse, presenting these as usefully complementary.
Chapter 13 is the last chapter in this section. In it, Gregory Guy provides a clear account of what statistics has to offer the sociolinguist and demonstrates why quantitative analysis remains an important component of sociolinguistics. He emphasizes that speakers and speaker groups do not differ categorically; they differ in the frequency with which they use certain linguistic variables. This chapter illustrates for readers why such phenomena require quantitative and statistical techniques. Guy explains some of the most relevant methods commonly used in sociolinguistic work.
The final section of the book begins with Chapter 14 and focuses on the sociocultural information that sociolinguistic analysis can provide. With her detailed analysis of a classroom interaction in a multilingual context, Alexandra Jaffe illustrates what an anthropological approach offers. She discusses the crucial roles of context and indexicality in linking the details of interactional practice with wider cultural, ideological, social, and political frameworks and processes. The analysis illustrates in detail the types and levels of contextual information needed to answer the question, “What is going on here?,” and shows how different categories of data can be used to explore hypotheses and provide evidence for analytical claims.
In Chapter 15, while explaining its sociological roots, Paul Drew provides a valuable discussion of the features which distinguish conversation analysis (CA) from other kinds of discourse analysis. He clearly outlines the principal stages in the CA research process and then identifies and exemplifies three elements on which that process rests – social action, turn and turn design, and sequence organization. Using examples from mundane social interaction, as well as medical and other institutional interactions, this chapter illustrates the central significance of these concepts in CA.
David Britain details in Chapter 16 the ways in which dialect geography has developed as an area of sociolinguistics in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. As an aid to the reader, Britain presents a critique of different geographical dialectology methods. He describes examples from speech communities and languages from around the world, including Norway, the United States, and East Anglia, identifying strengths and weaknesses which can help guide a new researcher in this area. As readers consider their own dialectological research, Britain’s advice should steer them smoothly through the available literature and the wisest research methods.
Robin Dodsworth’s Chapter 17 will appeal to those readers struggling to define the distinguishing qualities of speech communities, social networks, and communities of practice. As she notes, these three frameworks offer complementary units of analysis. Using examples from classic sociolinguistic studies, Dodsworth argues that the speech community is useful for comparing linguistic practices across demographic categories, and the social network approach is valuable for exploring how language changes spread. The community of practice framework foregrounds the social meanings of linguistic variables in everyday social contexts. The chapter offers readers the opportunity to explore which terms will prove most useful in their own research.
Chapter 18 turns the spotlight on multilingual communities. Rajend Mesthrie describes how to analyze variation in multilingual societies from the perspectives of language variation and change and language contact. Advice for analyzing variation in multilingual communities includes areas of phonetic and syntactic variation within a single language, mutual influences between two or more languages, code-switching, and issues of endangered languages. Any reader working on sociolinguistic variation in a multilingual community will need to study this chapter.
Style and social identity have both attracted increasing attention from sociolinguists in the last decade, and Nikolas Coupland explains in Chapter 19 why they hold such a central place in qualitative analytical approaches within sociolinguistics. Coupland argues that style researchers work to establish the ecological validity of their research, investigating and explaining social meanings at work in local environments. Style researchers hope to model how social actors themselves develop meaning in speech events. Coupland’s chapter models examples of style analysis for readers to follow.
Finally, in Chapter 20, while reflecting on the huge range of sociolinguistic information which competent members of a speech community possess, Carmel O’Shannessy describes how to analyze the processes involved in acquiring sociolinguistic competence. Reaching across several linguistic fields, she emphasizes why children’s development of sociolinguistic knowledge is important to the development of language skills. O’Shannessy clearly explains several research strategies needed to build a complete account of children’s speech environments and children’s competence. She illustrates for readers both qualitative and quantitative methods for gathering social information and other details of children’s language development. The chapter offers practical, field-tested methods for creating playful contexts to elicit language data from children. From this chapter, readers will be able to develop a successful research project on sociolinguistic acquisition.
Readers will find that all chapters have broadly similar structures, with a number of features in common. Our authors have all provided a brief opening summary box previewing what their chapter covers. Most include text boxes with interesting information such as further examples, explanations, clarifications, definitions, or elaborations. Every chapter provides positive advice for the new researcher, often in the form of bullet points, as well as identifying potential quagmires. Most suggest ways of avoiding potential pitfalls and hazards, and offer strategies for resolving typical problems. In each chapter the reader will also find ideas for projects which are stimulating and doable, as well as suggestions for further reading on the topic. The result is a collection of chapters which have greatly excited us. We hope they excite you too and stimulate you to make your own contribution to sociolinguistic research.