Qualitative methods in sociolinguistics

1. Introduction. 2. Methodology in the Historical Context (field methods in American dialect geography, field methods and discovery procedure in descriptive linguistics, analytical methods in historical/comparative linguistics, general themes). 3. Thinking About Methodology (What is research? What is Data? What does empirical mean? What makes a good research question? What is 4. Some Legal and Ethical Issues (researchers and the researched, researcher and resources, the uses of results). 5. Standards of Evidence (How do you know when you're right? Reliability and validity in qualitative research. Evaluating competing inerpretations.) 6. Thinking: Introspection and Intuition (What is intuition? What is introspection? Introspective research in sociolinguistics: an example. Roles for intutition in sociolinguistics? Intuitions about competence, intuituve leaps.) 7. Looking: Participant Observation (What is participant observation? What is ehtnography, Ethnography in sociolinguistics. Doing ethnography: some preliminary issues. Starting out: field methods for participant observation. Making sense: focusing on fieldwork and analytical methods.) 8. Reading and Listening: Discourse Analysis (selecting written texts, recording discourse, kinds of conversational data, transcribing, analytical approaches.) 9. Writing (The Article: introduction, literature review, methodology, findings, discussion. Other modes. The grammar of particularity).