4 Generating New Data

In Part II of this volume, " Generating New Data, " we take an in-depth look at methods and processes in creating data and corpora for sociolinguistic analysis. The chapters and vignettes in this section address the various ideological frameworks and applied methods for creating and dealing with new sociolinguistic data, and readers will note the predominant theme of creating data that speaks best to one's research questions and strengths as a researcher. In Chapter 5, Erez Levon discusses ethnographic data collection. He presents a comprehensive chronological overview of the use of ethnographic data collection in sociolinguistic research and walks readers through the strengths and weaknesses of the method, with reference to specific studies. Focusing on four guiding principles for conducting ethnographic fieldwork, the chapter moves readers through the important processes of accessing a community, interacting with participants, collecting data, and then, importantly, leaving the community. Levon provides specific examples from his own research in Israel to illustrate approaches and methods to be considered when conducting ethnographic research. The vignettes that follow the chapter on ethnographic data collection present three studies in communities from around the world that have used an ethno-graphically informed framework for data collection. Vignette 5a, by James A. Walker and Michol F. Hoffman, looks at fieldwork in immigrant communities. They begin by identifying the characteristics of immigrant communities and then work through their study, which looks at the place of immigrant English varieties in the large metropolitan city of Toronto. Walker and Hoffman offer suggestions for ways to effectively collect a corpus in an immigrant community, from using in-community fieldworkers to university-affiliated fieldworkers, and focusing throughout on the importance of building rapport with a community. In Vignette 5b, Rajend Mesthrie describes his work in a migrant and diasporic community in South Africa. He recounts a range of experiences often encountered when engaged in ethnographic study, including how to locate speakers of language variety under study to the strange and at times humorous interactions and missteps that can occur when working with people in a community that is not your own. In Vignette 5c, " Fieldwork in Remnant Dialect Communities, " Patri-cia Nichols describes her work in the Gullah community in the sea islands of South Carolina. Having spent a significant amount of time situating herself in