Linguistic Methodology

Author: Gui Shichun
Publisher:
Publish Date: 1998-12-01
Features: The first consideration when we compiled this book was the continuously expanding boundaries of linguistics, and the research methods could no longer adhere to their original territory. However, its scope is indeed too vast, and with our limited knowledge, we had to make choices. Therefore, we had to define the scope of the book: one is "contemporary," such as historical linguistics and philology, which had to be set aside. The second is "Western," as there are already many books discussing the methodologies of Chinese textual criticism and dialectology, and we did not need to reinvent the wheel. Discussing "Western" is not about being overly enthusiastic about foreign things, but rather about introducing new methods and tools to enrich our linguistic research and align it with international standards. The third is to only introduce what we are familiar with, such as the research methods of neurolinguistics, which are highly specialized and beyond our expertise, so we can only wait for future exploration. The fourth is that due to space constraints, many research methods can only be touched upon briefly and cannot be discussed in depth.
This book is divided into three parts: Theoretical Methods, Descriptive Methods, and Experimental Methods. The purpose of this division is to facilitate the discussion of the issues. The first part focuses on the methodologies of theoretical linguistics. The second part focuses on the methodologies that evolved from the anthropological linguistics tradition, including descriptive linguistics, sociolinguistics, cultural linguistics, and textual linguistics. The third part focuses on the methodologies of applied linguistics (educational linguistics), psycholinguistics, and cognitive linguistics. This discussion is organized around methodologies, as many linguistic research projects often cross-reference different methods.