At the same time that dialectology was beginning to be influenced directly (if only slightly) by linguistics, it was also beginning to be influenced indirectly by the social sciences. Some dialectologists began to recognise that the spatial dimension of linguistic variation had been concentrated on to the exclusion of the social dimension. To some, this was felt to be a deficiency, since social variation in language is as pervasive and important as regional variation. All dialects are both regional and social. All speakers have a social background as well as a regional location, and in their speech they often identify themselves not only as natives or inhabitants of a particular place but also as members of a particular social class, age group, ethnic background, or other social characteristic. The concentration of work on the language of NORMs and the working class, it was therefore realised, had led to considerable ignorance about the dialects spoken by other social groups.

Social dialects

One of the first dialect studies to attempt to take social factors into account was the Linguistic Atlas of the United States and Canada. When work was begun on this survey in the 1930s it was very much in the mould of traditional dialectology. However, fieldworkers on the original New England section of the survey were instructed to select socially different types of informant (see 2.3.3).