In its emergence as a paradigm for the study of language, sociolinguistic variation theory has evolved through simultaneous confrontation with various other ways of viewing language. Along with most other schools of linguistics, it has explicitly taken position against unscientific normative and prescriptive ideologies of language, but it has also carried on a rather subtler rivalry with certain methodologically more rigorous psycholinguistic traditions. Together with other ‘hyphenated’ branches of linguistics, it has had continuously to situate itself with respect to generative linguistics, but at the same time it has defended its own criteria and methods from attack by antiformalist sociolinguistics. These external debates are reflected in the most important issues within the field; in this chapter I review these highly interrelated isues in what I believe to be a coherent synthesis of the variation theory perspectives on data, method, theory, and the social insertion of linguistic science. I adopt a Habermasian, critical theory approach to understanding:

1. the social interests underlying linguistic research paradigms

2. the origins of variation theory in colonialized and minority language communities

3. the type of data that must be accounted for in these communities

4. the particular kind of analytical problems and theoretical questions pertinent to these data

5. the epistemological status of a descriptive–interpretive methodology for dealing with the form–function problem – the central issue in the study of syntactic variation, with ramifications for all of these topics.