The status of variable rules in sociolinguistic theory1

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Abstract
INTRODUCTION In a recent paper, Botha (1976) suggests that the analysis of linguistic argumentation is a ‘non-normal’ thing for linguists to do. ‘Normally’, he maintains, ‘linguists are oriented towards uncovering the nature of human language, and not the nature of linguistic science.’ Botha (1976: 3) even goes so far as to claim that the analysis of a form of argumentation is not a sort of linguistic analysis; it is instead a form of philosophical analysis. Some philosophers would probably disagree here with Botha and say that philosophical analysis is a sort of linguistic analysis. I am thinking here of Wittgenstein, for example, and the so-called philosophers of language who accept the view that the business of philosophy is to deal with the question of how words mean what they mean, etc., rather than to offer a comprehensive theory of the universe. It is difficult to draw a line of demarcation between a discipline proper and the study of the methodological underpinnings of that discipline, which I am not sure is essential anyway. My point is that a certain amount of self-criticism and awareness of the status of theoretical concepts and arguments can do linguists no harm.

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