The studies on the linguistic variation in Turkey date back to 1867. Following the Turkish Language Reform in 1932, there has emerged a growing body of literature on the regional aspects of linguistic variation within the boundaries of dialectology. On this vast literature, problems with the methodology of these studies have been noted and reviewed by various researchers working in the field since 1971. Although these review studies have focused on varied topics, no systematic overview and proposals have been laid out with respect to the conceptual framework, methodology and social aspects of the linguistic variation. In this respect, by focusing on the arguments about the methodological flaws yielded by the researchers, the current work provides a systematic analysis of these review studies. In addition, the study also tackles the problems associated with the overviews and the proposals asserted by these studies. Overviewing the review studies given in the literature and proposing a sociolinguistic basis, the present study pinpoints future research themes and forms a reference source for subsequent endeavours.

Keywords: Methodology, language variation, conceptual framework, dialectology, sociolinguistics