Sociolinguistic research projects as brands

Abstract

Sociolinguistic projects can benefit from brand management practices to meet their research goals. This is especially (but not exclusively) relevant for projects involving longitudinal relationships between the researcher and the community. Scholars may be skeptical of branding, because it can evoke the idea of institutions spending money on corporate image rather than on research or teaching support. Yet by curating their project's brand as an indexical field, sociolinguists can bring more intention to their project vision. This intentionality in turn helps to save time and energy by making all decisions easier, and by improving communication to project stakeholders. The paper offers an overview of relevant public sector brand theory and gives examples from four recent sociolinguistic projects: MI Diaries, Accent Bias in Britain, Manchester Voices, and Our Dialects.