ABSTRACT
Sociolinguistic fieldworkers often apply a broad stroke when referring to their method of data collection as a sociolinguistic interview, allowing the term to stand for any face-to-face interaction that is recorded for use as sociolinguistic data. This chapter distinguishes between this broad use of “sociolinguistic interview” and what the author refers to as “The Sociolinguistic Interview,” defined more narrowly as a methodology developed within the Labovian variationist paradigm with the goal of systematically eliciting variation across contextual styles for use as the primary evidence for sociolinguistic stratification and linguistic change. The Sociolinguistic Interview serves as the primary data in the investigation of sociolinguistic variation and change because the interview, and the individual speaker represented by that interview, never stands alone. Despite its specific theoretical ends, The Sociolinguistic Interview shares much in practice with the broader set of face-to-face interviews conducted by sociolinguists.
