1 - Methodology and aims

Summary

In some areas of research it may appear possible to separate the linguistic from the socio-cultural, the synchronic from the diachronic or historical.

Dell Hymes 1971:423

Brief description of the proposed study

Thus far, sociolinguistics has concerned itself primarily with the analysis of synchronic variable speech data. If, however, sociolinguistics is to reach the final goal set for it by Hymes (1974a: 206), namely, that it should preside over its own liquidation, then clearly sociolinguistics should itself be an integrative mode of description. I take Hymes' comment to mean that the subject matter of linguistics should not be confined to the study of the conceptual function of language, but should also include its social function or communicative use. What he argues for, then, is a general theory of language which comprises both aspects. Such a theory would dispense with the need for a separate sociolinguistic theory; in other words, sociolinguistics would be ‘redundant’ (Labov 1972a: 183).

The chances of sociolinguistics becoming such an integrative discipline are, in Hymes' opinion as well as my own, uncertain. Furthermore, I question whether a sociolinguistic theory in these terms is possible. My starting point is the assumption that if sociolinguistics is to meet the challenge given by Hymes, it must move beyond the treatment of synchronic phonetic and phonological data to a more general body of linguistic data. My study attempts to extend the application of variation theory from the domain of synchronic phonological variation to the study of a problem in historical syntax.