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Dialect geographers have long been concerned with identifying and mapping dialect boundaries and describing linguistic differences within these boundaries. This research focuses primarily on production–fieldworkers record the linguistic features that are used regularly (or historically) among members of a community. The observed phonetic, morphosyntactic, and/or lexical differences are then superimposed on maps so that researchers can draw linguistic isoglosses to indicate dialect differences. This work has led to various linguistic atlases about English in the United States. A few notable examples are the Linguistic Atlas of New England, the Linguistic Atlas of the Middle and South Atlantic States, the Linguistic Atlas of the Gulf States, and the Atlas of North American English.

More recently, dialect geography research has begun to focus on documenting “perceived” dialect differences, ie, where people believe dialect boundaries to exist along with their perceptions of language variation within those boundaries. This subfield of sociolinguistics, known as perceptual dialectology, explores non-linguists’ perceptions of