Making Meaning of Narratives, Vol. 6 Book

A thorough guide that suits both budding dialectologists and casual readers interested in this specific branch of linguistic research. Chambers and Trudgill do well to incorporate a detailed history of methodologies for both the "traditional dialectology" of the 19th/20th century and later the urban and variant-focused "sociolinguistics" of the mid-20th century to present. The volume is particularly successful in illustrating a sort of confluence between these two traditions, which are often cited as being "polar" approaches. Just like varieties of a language are gradually transitional rather than static, Trudgill and Chambers show that the same can be said of the development of dialect methodologies.

Of course with this second (and most recent) edition being published in 1998, much has been written about dialectology since the late 90s. A third edition is certainly needed. There's definitely potential for a few new chapters, for example on the topic of perceptual dialectology, of which there is nothing documented in this book. I also think that the book would have benefited greatly from a glossary section as well, as it was at times hard to keep track of all of the terminology.