Qualitative Research Methods in Sociolinguistics: Looking Back and Moving Forward

Methodological issues and innovations are integral to the development of sociolinguistics. While earlier sociolinguistic methods were able to effectively illustrate the methodological problems of Chomskyan linguistics, they were consequently criticized for being too structuralist and positivist. In this paper, I discuss the place of qualitative research methods in sociolinguistics. To do this, I first provide a historical sketch of the key events (or “waves”) in the development of sociolinguistics that warranted a turn to qualitative methods. I illustrate how qualitative methods have acquired a stronghold in both variationist and non-variationist sociolinguistics. The paper concludes with an exploration of potential ways of moving forward.