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Abstract Sociolinguistic projects can benefit from brand management practices to meet their research goals. This is especially (but not exclusively) relevant for projects involving longitudinal relationships between the researcher and the community. Scholars may be skeptical of branding, because it can evoke the idea of institutions spending money on corporate image rather than on research or teaching support. Yet by curating their project’s brand as an indexical field, sociolinguists can bring more intention to their project vision. This intentionality in turn helps to save time and energy by making all decisions easier, and by improving communication to project stakeholders. The paper offers an overview of relevant public sector brand theory and gives examples from four recent sociolinguistic projects: MI Diaries, Accent Bias in Britain, Manchester Voices, and Our Dialects. 

Abstract As technology (particularly smartphone and computer technology) has advanced, sociolinguistic methodology has likewise adapted to include remote data collection. Remote methods range from approximating the traditional sociolinguistic interview via synchronous video conferencing to developing new methods for asynchronous self‐recording (Boyd et al., 2015; Leeman et al., 2020). In this paper, we take a close look at the question prompts sent to participants in an asynchronous, remote self‐recording project (“MI Diaries”). We discuss how some of the techniques initially developed for obtaining a range of styles in a traditional in‐person sociolinguistic interview can be fruitfully adapted to a remote context. Of this range of styles, we give particular focus toNarratives of Personal Experience(Labov & Waletzky, 1967), and provide an analysis of how the theme, style, and development of prompts can encourage narratives from participants. We end with a short discussion of prompts that have successfully elicited other speech styles, and prompts that are especially fruitful with child participants. 

Variationist sociolinguistics has made significant contributions to linguistics and allied fields in the study of language variation and change. Yet within this paradigm, older adults remain understudied. There are non-trivial methodological challenges to collecting language data from the old age population. However, the Covid-19 pandemic led to increasing use of remote data collection methods that could fruitfully be employed with older adults. The MI Diaries project’s rich and growing collection of self-recorded ‘audio diaries’ via a custom mobile app demonstrates the success of this technology. An open-source version of the app, currently in development, will be adaptable to older users. For individuals who feel isolated, sending regular self-recordings to a responsive research team could be socially beneficial. As for variationist sociolinguistics, remote technologies could allow for greater engagement with outstanding  research questions about older adults’ sociolinguistic identities and their participation in language change.