ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION One of the main concerns of variationist (socio)linguistics as developed by Labov is to understand language change. It does this on the basis of empirically collected linguistic data. An important aim of this approach is to understand the structure of variability by establishing correlations between the social characteristics of the speakers (the social variables) and use of linguistic forms. Sociolinguistics, therefore, pays a good deal of attention to methodology, and it is a priori for the social variables to be based on a realistic and meaningful categorization of speakers.
