ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the methods that are used by dialectologists who are interested in documenting the way speakers use language differently and why language varies depending on what village, town or region speakers come from. It examines how a more comprehensively social dialectology emerged from regional dialectology. The results of dialect surveys are often plotted on maps, thus providing an atlas which, instead of showing topographical features like mountains and plains, shows how speakers' pronunciation of words changes as people move across physical space. The chapter also focuses on the study of a small island 'Martha's Vineyard' in Massachusetts, in which methods and principles for a social form of dialectology were established. People sometimes have very clear perceptions about the features that differentiate linguistic varieties. These stereotypes are things people can comment on and discuss, and they often have very strong positive or negative opinions about them.
