Short answers, pulled from the story.
Thomas Callan Hodson first used the term sociolinguistics in the title of his 1939 article "Sociolinguistics in India," published in the journal Man in India. This is the first attested use of the term on record.
William Labov, a Harvard and Columbia University graduate, is regarded as the founder of variationist sociolinguistics, which applies quantitative analysis to study variation and change within languages. His research on the pronunciation of the post-vocalic /r/ in the Northeastern United States showed that a single sound could carry social prestige or stigma.
The observer's paradox is the problem that a researcher tries to record how people speak in casual, everyday settings, but the researcher's presence makes the situation formal and alters the speech being studied. Researchers address this by eliciting emotionally charged personal narratives or interviewing multiple subjects together.
Basil Bernstein described two language codes in his book Elaborated and Restricted Codes: Their Social Origins and Some Consequences. The restricted code relies heavily on extraverbal communication and shared context, while the elaborated code relies on explicit verbal expression and a broader vocabulary. Bernstein cautioned that studies linking the codes to specific social classes used small samples.
The SPEAKING method was developed by Dell Hymes, one of the founders of linguistic anthropology and founder of the journal Language in Society. It is an acronym for setting, participants, ends, act sequence, keys, instrumentalities, norms, and genres, and provides a framework for analyzing speech events within their cultural context.
Covert prestige refers to the positive social value attached to non-standard language varieties in certain communities, particularly traditional working-class neighborhoods where the local dialect functions as an in-group marker of solidarity and neighborhood identity. It explains why speakers may use non-standard speech in relaxed social settings while switching to standard speech in formal ones.