Survey on a Shoestring: A Manual for Small-Scale Language Surveys (SIL International and the University of Texas at Arlington Publications in Linguistics, vol. 96)

Shows how to conduct sociolinguistic surveys on a small scale without access to funding sometimes available to national language planners. Prepares to train people with little background in social research methodology. Spells out how those primarily concerned with local languages can learn to make informed decisions about language choice at local levels. Provides invaluable background on bilingualism and language use and attitudes. Shows how bilingualism develops and is maintained in different situations. Describes several methods for testing dialect comprehensibility in considerable detail, and gives advantages and disadvantages of each. It combines academic sophistication with realism and is a major contribution for conducting sociolinguistic surveys in general.