Perceptual dialectology is the scientific study of how ordinary individuals perceive variation in language—where they believe it exists, where they believe it comes from, how they believe it functions, and how they socially evaluate it.
Perceptual dialectology differs from ordinary dialectology in that it is concerned not with empirical linguistic understandings or discoveries about language itself, but rather with empirical research on how non-linguists perceive language, also known as folk linguistics, which includes how non-linguists perceive various accents, vocabulary usages, grammatical structures, etc.
Common topics in the study of perceptual dialectology include the comparison of folk perceptions of dialect boundaries with traditional linguistic definitions, the examination of what factors influence folk perceptions of variation, and what social characteristics individuals attribute to various dialects.
In the little arrows method, researchers begin with a general map of a region, often with traditional linguistic dialect boundaries indicated for reference.
The specific measures composing the five-point method include: One of the areas of perceptual dialectology is discerning linguistic and folk judgments.
A study by Zoë Boughton investigates perceptual dialectology in northern France through a dialect identification task.
The usage of authentic speech samples for identification reveals how well subjects are able to actually perceive the differences between dialects according to their own folk beliefs.
When completing their assigned task, the white males had a ready-made phonology, a set of paralinguistic features of pitch range, rhythm, and vocal quality, and a rich and detailed variety of roles and topics.
Yet, the white males had an extremely limited number of morphological and syntactic devices and a small comically exaggerated lexicon (including ethnically stereotyped lexemes).
Many of the labels in a dialect mapping task focused on slang terms when studying perceptual dialectology of English spoken in California.
Linguists gain the chance to examine how the perceptual dialectology of certain dialects of languages have evolved over a given time.
[13] The principal scholar examining perceptual dialectology is Dennis Preston, and his methodology involves interview-based techniques.
Applying the initial methodology used in the field of perceptual dialectology would be impossible when examining the dialects of the past.
[13] Issues with historical perceptual dialectology include relying on the text of the literate population of the past.
He was interested in seeing how Slovak perceptual dialectology had evolved over time to reach the consensus of the general population.
Thus, dialects can come to index certain perceived social attributes such as formality, politeness, friendliness, intelligence, snobbishness, and other traits.