Sociolinguistic theory has been developed to account for, among other things, language change (or maintenance), though most of the research has been conducted in urban speech communities. Pedersen’s (1991) and Lippi-Green’s (1989) studies of rural communities have not yielded the same results as, for example, Milroy’s (1980) study of urban Belfast speech. The Huntly study was conceived as a test of the various social factors involved in language change. The question of whether an individual’s degree of integration into social networks is a reliable predictor of language maintenance in rural speech communities has been asked, as well as whether attitudes to the local variety, national pride, and orientation to the local speech can throw more light on the problem of accounting for resistance to change.