Conducting sociolinguistic interviews via generative AI: A methods tutorial

Abstract

Sociolinguistic interviews (Labov, 1984) are integral to dialectology studies, providing insights into language variation and the social contexts influencing the emergence of new dialects (Hoffman, 2013; Pizarro Pedraza, 2016). Such data, while incredibly valuable, is typically time-consuming and expensive to collect. However, with the advent of generative AI (GenAI) applications e.g., ChatGPT 4o purported to produce discourse in multiple languages, its affordances for generating sociolinguistic interview data across different dialects of dialect-rich languages remain largely unknown. Building on a Gen-AI-assisted Mandarin/ Vietnamese dialect study in Tran and Stell (2024), this tutorial offers step-by-step guidance on conducting sociolinguistic interviews with ChatGPT. Key steps include generating prompts by establishing a dialogue context, formulating appropriate structured open-ended questions to elicit target dialectal varieties, and a cross-validation process with actual dialect speakers. While acknowledging the potential limitations of conducting sociolinguistic interviews with ChatGPT, this tutorial serves to aid those new to GenAI for dialectology research while suggesting future directions for refining this process as GenAI continues to develop.