Reviews

“This collection provides a balanced, judicious, forward-looking summation of the ways in which we collect, access and process the data that is the foundation of our enterprise. In its format and its tone, it has the feeling of a symposium involving a select group of sociolinguists sharing their personal experiences as well as their collective wisdom. It is an invaluable sourcebook for researchers and students and also for veteran fieldworkers in the diverse situations we face on entering the community.”

—From the foreword by J.K. Chambers, Professor, Department of Linguistics, University of Toronto

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“Sociolinguistic fieldwork used to be the stuff of late night pints and in-group lore. No longer! The three editors have assembled in this volume a wide-ranging set of insights from junior and senior researchers that speak knowledgeably and intimately to the next generation of researchers. A copy should be on the shelf of every budding sociolinguist or seasoned mentor. The great adventure of the field beckons promisingly!”

—Back cover endorsement by Sali Tagliamonte, Professor, Department of Linguistics, University of Toronto

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“This book recognizes that data collection is fully influenced by research design. The editors have gathered together the widest range of sociolinguistic methods. This book is not just about qualitative questions, or even interviews, but also covers experiments and corpora. Data Collection in Sociolinguistics provides a set of standards and possibilities to my students, and in its pages are models for them to follow.”

—Back cover endorsement by Kirk Hazen, Professor, Department of English, West Virginia University

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“The editors of Data Collection in Sociolinguistics: Methods and Applications (DCSMA) deserve our gratitude for creating this innovative and useful volume… Although ‘bigger’ is sometimes more of a good thing than publishers can afford, in this case my chief criticism is only that DCSMA was not 100 pages longer. …[T]he articles are cumulatively informed by ethnography, linguistic anthropology, and consideration of data beyond that obtained through traditional fieldwork. Important technological advances in data collection, storage, and analysis are described, and a variety of languages and cultures are considered. In addition, the editors are to be especially congratulated for allowing for extensive discussion of ethical issues—including giving ethics the prominent opening section of the book. DCSMA offers a significant contribution to linguistics as a whole: it will be of use to social scientists and other linguists who work within practices outside the various Labovian boxes because it provides a readable, wide-ranging, timely introduction to both old and recent achievements of core sociolinguistic traditions and to methodological, technological, and ethical questions pertinent to the social sciences in general.”

—Review in American Speech by Ronald R. Butters, Professor Emeritus, Department of English, Duke University

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“The format is clearly the distinguishing feature of the book, and it is appealing on a number of levels. As a volume intended to help new sociolinguistics students and researchers enter the field’s praxis, it introduces readers not only to a wide array of potential methodologies but also to the voices and perspectives of many current practitioners… [It] is exciting to encounter so many ideas from so many researchers in such a concise collection. Data Collection in Sociolinguistics is a unique approach to the genre of the methods text and one that readers will find both thought-provoking and enjoyable.”

—Review in Journal of English Linguistics by Christopher Strelluf, Assistant Professor, Department of English and Modern Languages, Northwest Missouri State University

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“Both beginners and advanced readers will benefit from the pertinent and up-to-date reflections in this book. … The shared field experiences presented in Data Collection in Sociolinguistics: Methods and Applications give us an excellent tutorial on how to meet the challenges of collecting data ethically and it is useful for the whole sociolinguistics research community.”

—Review on LinguistList by Raquel Freitag, Adjunct Professor, Departamento de Letras Vernáculas, Universidade Federal de Sergipe, Brazil

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“This is a great collection of updated, straight-to-the-point short chapters that introduce beginners to the endeavor of data collection in sociolinguistics, with hands-on instructions for the design, collection, transcription, and preservation of sociolinguistic data. The breath of the subjects covered by the volume is impressive, including a diversity of unanticipated challenges a fieldworker may encounter, in addition to theoretical and  ethical considerations.”

—Review by Ana M. Carvalho, Associate Professor, Department of Spanish and Portuguese, University of Arizona

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