ABSTRACT
This chapter talks about a boilerplate sidebar rather than an opportunity for genuine reflection on the social, educational, and political implications of the proposed research. This is unfortunate, because the broader social consequences of sociolinguistic research are not insignificant afterthoughts. The chapter considers the impact of research derived from a range of sociolinguistic research projects in the Southeastern United States, particularly within the state of North Carolina. Modern sociolinguistics in the United States rose in the 1960s from the natural evolution of linguistic description within the tradition of cultural anthropology. The establishment of language variation and sociolinguistics as a field within the broader field of linguistics is a story deserving of its own narrative, but it is important not to dismiss the impact of sociolinguistics within its home discipline. One of the obvious but often-overlooked communities for the transmission of sociolinguistic knowledge and application is the broader university community in which we participate as researchers and teachers.
