The Nature of Research Methods in Sociolinguistics

This article aims to throw some light on the nature of sociolinguistics, a subcategory of linguistics, as an empirical science and its research methods. Sociolinguistics tries to select the research methods that are reliable and valid so as to reveal the function and power of language to solve the problems of society and the world. Although it is still in its infancy it has got some interdisciplinary approaches that all agree to focus on language meaning and language context. Because language is used to establish a social context in order to sustain the communication on the other hand, social context influences language use and communicative meaning. Quantitative sociolinguists are inclined to distinguish how the identity of a person or a social group relates to the way that they use language. They attempt to answer the question such as what linguistic differences and similarities are between and within certain types of groups of people and how social variables such as age, gender, social class, and level of education impact on language use. Qualitative sociolinguists strive to understand the explanation of social phenomena in real context and natural setting and answer the question of why people behave in this way.

کلیدواژه ها:

Variationist ، Ethnographic approach ، Communicative competence ، Interactional sociolinguistics