Homeless in Post-Modern Linguistics? (Re/Dis)placing Hispanic Dialectology

Within the context of contemporary Hispanic linguistics, dialectology is often felt to be an anachronism, a notion grounded in the stereotype of the dialectologist as linguistic butterfly-collector. In fact this view is as unrealistic in the 21st century as the concept of a physician administering leeches and “philtres,” and stems from a failure to acknowledge that dialectology has evolved together with the rest of linguistics. Dialectology as currently practiced is best defined as the response to the question of how and why languages vary regionally and socially. As such, dialectology intersects with, but is not superseded by, sociolinguistics; contemporary dialectology includes theoretical advances in syntax, phonology, phonetics, historical linguistics, and variational linguistics.