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The development of African American Vernacular English is discussed, based on research conducted on the Pamlico Sound dialect in Hyde County, North Carolina. Topics include the sociohistorical context of mainland Hyde County, research methods, a linguistic profile, and dialect alignment in Hyde County.

Phonetic methods have a potential for much wider use in sociolinguistics, beyond the studies of sound change that have been conducted. Other research applications include duration, phonation and third-formant variation in vowels; consonantal variation and prosody; speech perception; identity; and the mental representation of sounds.

The vowel variants of Southern English that help in sociolinguistic descriptions are explored. It also provides insights into the processes of sound change and speech perception.

The experiments conducted in the past and the guidelines provided for sociolinguists, who were interested in studying perception, with suggestions for future work were reviewed. The extent to which different transcribers were affected by preconceptions and by the influence of their own native dialects is discussed.