Shows how questions are formulated and how data is collected, stored and interpreted in the various traditions of research of the American Dialect Society (ADS). Designed as a "how-to" text for scholars, it looks at current approaches to the general problems of language distribution and variation.

1. Preface (by Preston, Dennis R.); 2. I. Area Studies; 3. The historical and cultural interpretation of dialect (by Francis, W. Nelson); 4. An approach to linguistic geography: The Linguistic Atlas of the Gulf States (by Pederson, Lee); 5. Area Lexicon: the making of DARE (by Cassidy, Frederic G.); 6. Some applications of mathematical and statistical models in dialect geography (by Girard, Dennis); 7. Sociolinguistic dialectology (by Chambers, J.K.); 8. II. Community Studies; 9. Adapting dialectology: the conduct of community language studies (by Baugh, John); 10. Identifying and interpreting variables (by Wolfram, Walt); 11. The quantitative analysis of linguistic variation (by Guy, Gregory R.); 12. III. Group Studies; 13. Variation theory and language contact: concepts, methods and data (by Poplack, Shana); 14. A perspective on African-American English (by Bailey, Guy); 15. Professional varieties: the case of language and law (by O'Barr, William M.); 16. IV. Special Topics; 17. Folk dialectology (by Preston, Dennis R.); 18. The patterning of variation in performance (by Briggs, Charles L.); 19. Appendix; 20. Resources for research (by Linn, Michael D.); 21. Index