在《语言学的新天地》(第一集)普赖德撰写的有关章节中,社会语言学这个术语指的研究领域非常广阔,几乎包括了语言与社会的关系的各个方面。尽管如此,还是可以根据其主要目标是语言学或社会学或两者兼顾而区分不同的研究。主要以语言为目标的社会语言学研究跟其它语言研究的区别在于:它们采用了数据收集和分析的特殊方法,但是最终旨在对语言学理论作出贡献,而不是对社会学理论作出贡献。以社会学为目标的研究,其目标是利用语言学数据为基础,为社会学理论作出贡献。 In the section on the New World of Linguistics (Part 1) written by Price, the term sociolinguistics refers to a very broad area of ​​research that covers almost every aspect of the relationship between language and society. Nevertheless, it is still possible to distinguish between different studies based on their main objective being linguistics or sociology or both. Sociolinguistics, primarily linguistic, differs from other linguistic studies in that they employ special methods of data collection and analysis, but ultimately aim to contribute to linguistic theory rather than to sociological theory. The goal of sociological research is to use linguistic data as a basis for contributing to sociological theory.