Ethnographic fieldwork

Levon, Erez (2013). Ethnographic fieldwork. In: Mallinson, Christine; Childs, Becky; van Herk, Gerard (eds.) Data collection in sociolinguistics: Methods and applications (pp. 71-79). London: Routledge

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Since its inception as a field, sociolinguistics' primary goal has been to account for observed patterns of language variation and language change. To that end sociolinguists have focused attention on understanding the properties of both the linguistic systems in which variation occurs and the braoder social matrices in which those systems are embedded. The reason for this dual focus is that, from a sociolinguistic perspective, language never exists in a social vacuum.In the words of Labov (1963, p. 275), 'one cannot understand language (variation and) change apart from the socila life of the community in which it occurs'. In this chapter I discuss ethnographic fieldwork as one of the principal mtahods through which sociolinguists come to apprehend the social lives of the community and community members they study. I begin with a brief overview of what the term ethnography can be taken to mean before turning to a more practicalk discussion of the various methodolological steps that conducting ethnographic fieldwork involves.

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