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Historical Perceptual Dialectology

Historical perceptual dialectology allows linguists to examine how and why dialects in the past gained popularity; and linguists gain the chance to examine how the perceptual dialectology of certain dialects of languages have evolved a given time. The principle scholar examining perceptual dialectology was Dennis Preston, and his methodology involved interview-based techniques. Therefore, applying the initial methodology used in the field of perceptual dialectology would be impossible, when examining the dialects of the past.

Historical perceptual dialectology must not be confused with historical linguistics, which is concerned with examines changes in linguistic phenomena over time. Unlike historical linguistics, historical perceptual dialectology is used to contribute to the social understanding of language and is used to link dialect perceptions to political and intellectual history. Historical perceptual dialectology also has the ability to date the emergence of dialects.

Issues with historical perceptual dialectology include relying on the text of the literate population of the past. Considering perceptual dialectology is interested in the perceptions of the common folk, relying on a certain social group of a population is troublesome. Dennis Preston uses interview-based techniques; therefore subjects could be taken from a larger sample pool. Another issue when using historical perceptual dialectology involves scholars only having a single cases to examine.

A scholar that has used historical perceptual dialectology is Alexander Maxwell. He examined the emergence of the three dialects of Slovak and how the general population of Slovak speakers came to accept that three dialects of Slovak exist; he used articles written mostly by "amateur linguists and language planners." This scholar was interested in seeing how Slovak perceptual dialectology had evolved over time to reach the consensus of the general population. Maxwell found that perceptions of dialects shifted with political shifts.

Examining historical perceptual dialectology, evidence shows shifts in perceptions of dialects are directly correlated to historical shifts, whether political,intellectual, or social. These studies imply the need to study linguistics with respect to history.