The empiricist approach in studies in the area of sociolinguistic variation

Abstract

The present text is an analysis of the theoretical-methodological model of Variational Sociolinguistics and a criticism of the empirical approaches found in the research developed according to that model.  Linguistic change is always the result of a very complex interaction of social and linguistic causes; for this reason fragmentary quantitative data, separated from a global interpretation of the social process, are not enough to explain that historically determined change.