ABSTRACT
This chapter develops the methodological basis for the analysis by understanding folklinguistics in its own terms. Far from “bad data”, folklinguistic accounts are under-examined as a means of understanding local processes of meaning making. A broad view of folklinguistics is taken, examining ideas from more social psychological (language attitudes) approaches through to ethnographic ones (ethno-metapragmatic discourse). It is asserted that folklinguistics is bound in evaluations of social groups as cultural positions. Moreover, folklinguistic accounts can both reproduce and challenge existing Discourses. The systematic division of language into the categories of use, mention and voicing is explained. Systematically separating mention and voicing as mechanisms of ethno-metapragmatic discourse is an exciting approach and is shown in Chapters 4 to 7 to lead to insights, particularly in closely analysing language production within performance and imitation through constructed dialogue (voicings). The methods used to explore all this (i.e., interview, interview tasks and questionnaire tasks) are described. It also presents some specifics of the study at hand, including an introduction to the city of Melbourne.
