ABSTRACT
Written data sources have been appropriate bases for sociolinguistic investigations and will continue to be, for good reasons. This chapter addresses relevant methodological issues and concerns that need to be considered in such an investigation. It presents a hands-on approach, starting from simple, practical questions that a researcher may ask her- or himself and moving along subsequent stages in carrying out such a project: Why would we want to, or have to, consider written data in the first place? What kinds of text sources are available and where may we find them? Investigating sociolinguistic correlations and indexicality essentially builds upon the observation of oral performance, i.e., speech—ideally, as unmonitored as possible. In contrast, writing counts as a cultural artifact; it represents a secondary encoding of speech via letters and transliteration, and it is conventionally constrained by its proximity to standard norms, "proper English".
