ABSTRACT
Gaining access to participants and entering a community can be quite a challenge. People should have backup plans in place and test out several ways into the community. Judgement sampling is frequently used in sociolinguistics. Making decisions about social categories is not as straightforward as one may think, Schilling problematises some social categories. It is a good idea to create a data grid and fill the cells, either: randomly, by your own judgement, or by advancing from speaker to speaker through a social network. However, linguistic behaviour is much more uniform than other social behaviour, so even a judgement sample allows a certain degree of generalisability. People's assumption so far has been that they want to conduct a study of a speech community. However, there are frameworks for viewing multiple speakers: social networks and communities of practice. The community of practice is a useful concept to bridge global and local concerns and to do quantitative as well as qualitative work.
