ABSTRACT
Since the emergence of sociolinguistics as a field, methods of data collection have been continually refined to capture natural language samples. For sign language projects, capturing targeted data in a natural form is a challenge because of the visual nature of sign languages and a set of social characteristics that are unique to Deaf communities. Researchers conducting sign language projects also face the issue of the observer’s paradox. However, key differences between spoken language and sign language are the modalities that affect the use of a recording device in data collection. To address the problem of the observer’s paradox and the fact that language users may be inhibited in their language production when they are aware of being observed, Labov developed the sociolinguistic interview to encourage speakers to use the vernacular or everyday language. Sociolinguists have suggested that the production of informal language can be encouraged when interviewers share the same ethnicity as their interviewees.
