The sociolinguistic survey of Cayo District, British Honduras, is planned as one of a series to be carried out by the same methods and as far as possible by the same team, so that comparable results can be obtained from a number of territories, and hypotheses about the relationship between patterns of verbal behaviour and other social factors based on one territory tested in the next. The hypotheses to be tested were formed (somewhat pretentiously) within a general ‘law’ with four riders in ‘Problems of description in multilingual communities’ (Le Page 1968a), and the practical ends of the survey also adumbrated there — viz., to help improve the quality of education in multilingual communities by illuminating the problems, the motives and the performance of children, by training the teachers and by helping in a basic way with the preparation of materials. The scientific aims are to gain an understanding of linguistic processes in relation to other relevant factors and modes of behaviour, so as to improve both linguistic and sociolinguistic theory.

This brief note describes a study of Montréal French presently being conducted by a group based at the Université de Montréal, and directed by Gillian Sankoff and Henrietta Cedergren. A pilot project, carried out during June, July and August of 1970, and made possible by a grant from the Ministère de l'Education (Québec), enabled us to make a series of recordings which were studied in order to identify speech variables, as well as invariant dialect characteristics. In addition, interviewers were trained in eliciting conversation on a number of topics.