The search for the social meaning of variation: the challenges of ethnographic research

Abstract

This article, the result of the doctoral thesis entitled “The Use of the Feminine Pronoun as an Identity Mark of a Gay Group: language, gender and linguistic evaluation”, seeks to highlight the challenges encountered when undertaking sociolinguistic research of an ethnographic nature (Severino, 2007; Mainardes, 2009), as well as demonstrating that overcoming such barriers is possible. Supported by the third-wave sociolinguistic perspective (Eckert, 2005), we chose to follow paths that would lead us to work with the social meaning of variation, experimenting with procedures that could look beyond social macrocategories and reach the use of variation in the stylistic construction of the subjects of
interaction. To achieve this, we began our research without an a priori defined object of study, as this would be chosen after a period of participant observation within a community of practices. The lack of this element that would direct our gaze during the research was one of the challenges to be overcome. The long period of observation was also an obstacle that needed to be overcome, but it helped us to, if not break, at least reduce the so-called “observer's paradox” (Labov, 2008). Overcoming such barriers,
we seek to identify the social meaning of a variable used by a group of cisgender gay men, in a community of practices.