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What Can Ethnography Tell us about Sociolinguistic Variation over Time? Some Insights from Glasgow

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Sociolinguistics in Scotland

Abstract

Although a well-established methodological framework in anthropology, criminology, and sociology (Atkinson and Hammersley 2007: 1–10), it has only been over the past 10–15 years that ethnographic methods have seen increased use in (quantitative) sociolinguistics in the UK (see Rampton 2007 for a discussion of linguistics and ethnography in the UK). Scotland in particular has been a key site for research which integrates ethnographic approaches with sociolinguistic investigations of language use and linguistic variation and change in a variety of contexts. This has included research on community organisations (Clark 2009; Clark and Trousdale 2009), Gaelic communities (McEwan-Fujita 2010; Smith-Christmas 2012), national parliaments (Shaw 2009–2011), rural communities (Thomson 2012), schools (Alam 2007; Lambert, Alam and Stuart-Smith 2007; Lawson 2009; Nance 2013), sports clubs (Wilson 2007), and the workplace (Eustace 2012).

* Thanks to Lauren Hall-Lew for her thoughts and comments on drafts of this chapter.

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  1. Robert Lawson
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Lawson, R. (2014). What Can Ethnography Tell us about Sociolinguistic Variation over Time? Some Insights from Glasgow. In: Lawson, R. (eds) Sociolinguistics in Scotland. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137034717_10

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