A cognitive approach to quantitative sociolinguistic variation 297social practices of a particular group of speakers, rather than a focus on the
hierarchical social structure of the group, with the explicit intention of un-
derstanding the ways in which speakers imbue linguistic variation with
social meaning.
Figure 1. Map showing the location of west Fife
The sociolinguistic interview has been the most common method of data
collection among variationist sociolinguists (Milroy and Gordon 2003: 61).
This is typically a one-on-one exchange between the researcher and the
informant although variations of this include interviewing two or more
speakers together (e.g. Labov 1972). The goal of the sociolinguistic inter-
view is to elicit ‘natural’ or ‘casual’ speech and it has been used as a tech-
nique to reduce the effects of the ‘observers paradox’ i.e. the problem of
observing how people speak when they are not being observed (Milroy and
Gordon 2003: 49). Milroy and Gordon explain that the interview is a
“clearly defined and quite common speech event to which a formal speech
style is appropriate” (2003: 61) and that it generally involves interaction