In the Prologue (pp. ix–x), Peter Trudgill rightly acknowledges the authors as “highly experienced” in carrying out sociolinguistic research and as “first-class practitioners.” In the Introducción (xi–xiv), Hérnandez Campoy and Almeida (HC&A) state that their work is an attempt to compensate for the scarcity of “introductory manuals dedicated to present the methodology and procedures in sociolinguistic research” (xi),^a

The volume consists of two sections, each containing three chapters. The first part (1–35), “Fundamentos teóricos (definición y orígenes),” is much shorter than the second and covers the theoretical foundations of the discipline, whereas the second (37–288), “Metodología para el estudio de la variación,” deals with the methods used in sociolinguistic research. Three appendices (289–95) and an extended reference section (297–349) complete the book.

The first chapter (1–22), “Definición y orígenes de la sociolingüística,” introduces the reader to the linguistic science of the 1950s, distinguishing between micro (phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics) and macro linguistics (psycholinguistics, pragmatics, sociolinguistics), between formal and functional paradigms, and, at a broader level, between two opposite philosophical views of the world: Cartesian and Hegelian. HC&A outline the origins of sociolinguistics in the aftermath of World War II, in accordance with the so-called quantitative revolution, resulting from “a solid neopositivist trend in the scientific world in general” (10). The interest in macrolinguistic disciplines led scholars to recognize the existence of “regularly heterogeneous” speech communities, to reject the well-established notion of free variation, and to claim that linguistic variation is socially and/or contextually conditioned. In the last two sections of chap. 1, the authors briefly review the disciplines that engendered sociolinguistic studies, from traditional to urban dialectology, with special attention to Labov's pioneer research and the contributions of anthropology and ethnography. The chapter closes with a short survey of how and when sociolinguistic studies were introduced in Spain.

In chap. 2 (23–35), “Aspectos controvertidos en sociolingüística,” HC&A review the early debates about sociolinguistics: Labov's refusal of the term because of its redundancy – successful linguistic theory and practice must be social – and the establishment of boundaries between language and society, on the one hand, and sociolinguistics, on the other. The more valuable part of this chapter is the pages dedicated to the rarely cited Uruguayan linguist José Pedro Rona, who in the early 1970s contributed to the diffusion of sociolinguistic studies in Latin America.

The third chapter (31–35) is very brief and focuses, as suggested by its title, “Direcciones en la investigación sociolingüística,” on the relationship between language and society that determined the most relevant areas of sociolinguistic studies in terms of their goals (Hymes 1974): sociological as in ethnomethodology; sociological and linguistic as in sociology of language, social psychology of language, discourse analysis, ethnography of communication, and anthropological linguistics; linguistic as in dialectology, Labovian sociolinguistics, and geolinguistics, as commented upon by Trudgill 1978.

The first part of the volume is obviously directed to nonspecialist readers. As such, its contents could have been summarized in one introductory chapter, since it is assumed that people interested in methods of sociolinguistic research have been exposed to the principles and history of the discipline.

The second part begins with chap. 4 (37–112), “Planificación inicial,” which addresses the main purpose of the publication. It is divided into seven sections, starting with the description of linguistic variation. The second section deals with the treatment of time: apparent vs. real time analyses, panel and trend studies, and speakers' classification according to age group. The authors dedicate the third to the identification and selection of linguistic variables and variants, and discuss the difficulties of analyzing syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic variables, as well as issues having to do with the size of the linguistic corpus and implicational scales. The independent extralinguistic variables are reviewed in the fourth section: speakers' classification according to socioeconomic level, sex, age, religion, ethnicity, etc.; advantages and disadvantages of random vs. quota sampling; number of speakers in the corpus; speakers' social stratification based on class, age, sex, race, and social network. Finally, the study of stylistic variation is described in terms of (i) speech formality and speaker's attention to it, which may cause hypercorrection as a result of linguistic insecurity (Labov 1966), (ii) audience design (Bell 1984, 2001), and (iii) speaker design (Schilling-Estes 2002). The fifth section is dedicated to the use of written corpora: textual analysis and historical sociolinguistics, the latter being treated in more depth (82–91). In section 6, the authors review language attitude studies, including recent ones within the frame of “perceptual” or “folk” dialectology (Preston 2002). The chapter ends with a brief introduction to Optimality Theory and its use in variation studies (Anttila 2002).

Chap. 5 (113–92), “Métodos de campo,” is a thorough survey of methods used by sociolinguistic researchers to obtain their data. The authors warn the readers that fieldwork requires effort and time. Many aspects of controlled observation are described in the second section, from mail and electronic surveys and matched guise technique to different types of interviews. Section 3 is dedicated to noncontrolled observation, and section 4 to obtaining data from radio and television programs. Section 4 reports on interesting research conducted by one of the authors (Hernández Campoy & Jiménez Cano 2003) on the linguistic standardization that took place at the phonetic level in Murcia, a region of Spain, co-occurring with the political transition from dictatorship to democracy between 1975 and 2000. The fifth section deals with the sometimes forgotten issue of ethics in fieldwork. Section 6 presents the problems of transcribing the obtained data, with particular emphasis on the transcription of recorded data. The seventh and last section covers geolinguistics – the relation of linguistics to space – “one of the social categories that has received least attention of all” (Britain 2002:603); the fact that HC is a practitioner of this discipline allows the readers to get acquainted with a first-hand detailed report (166–88) of his recent analyses of Murcia (Hernández Campoy 2003).

The sixth and last chapter (193–288), “Metodología para el estudio de la variación: Análisis cuantitativo y cualitativo,” comprises three major sections dedicated to qualitative and quantitative analyses, statistical procedures, and interpretation of results. The authors recognize that in the past two decades new areas of sociolinguistics – discourse and conversational analysis, pragmatics, and ethnomethodology – have increased the use of qualitative approaches. They also stress the importance of qualitative techniques in the preliminary phases of quantitative studies, especially in the definition of social variables such as class, gender, and age. Quantitative analysis, its procedures and applications, occupies the last 90 pages of the book, which cover basic notions (sample, population, nominal, ordinal, interval and ratio), descriptive and inferential statistics, and research vs. null hypothesis. Parametric statistical procedures – contingency tables, correlations, simple lineal and multiple regression analyses – are described in the fourth section. Several non-parametric tests are surveyed in section 7. HC&A close the part focusing on statistical procedures with a detailed description of how to use the programs especially designed by David Sankoff to study linguistic variation: Varbrul and GoldVarb. They offer a clear and detailed description of Varbrul 2S, first, and of GoldVarb 2001 (for Windows), exemplifying their use with data drawn from one of their own analyses of Santa Cruz de Tenerife Spanish, which may be of great advantage for those who have not yet employed these programs. Appendix 2 (291–93) shows how the results of binomial regression analysis by GoldVarb 2001 are presented.

In the book, direct citations of English texts have been translated into Spanish. However, only the original books or articles are mentioned in the references, making it difficult for the reader to know whether the translation is by the authors themselves or has been extracted from a published Spanish version. One example: quotes from Labov's well-known Sociolinguistic patterns (1972) appear in Spanish (23), but year and page of publication refer to the original (325) and not to the Spanish version published in 1983. It seems to me that this procedure may cause some difficulties for the readers who are not sociolinguists and for whom, ultimately, the book is intended.

There are a few errors, mostly typos, such as “variales” instead of “variables” (48), “dió” for “dio” (87), English “mached-guise” for “matched-guise,” French “lange” for “langue” (304), “Marcova” for “Markova” (330), as well as a citation in the text that is repeated in the footnote (115), all of which should be corrected for an eventual next edition.

To summarize, the book fulfills the reader's expectations of what are “the most important aspects” of actual sociolinguistic research, and it can be considered a useful survey of such methods. The introduction of new research tendencies – for instance, Optimality Theory and geolinguistics – should be praised, as they represent new paths that Spanish-speaking students can explore.