The purpose of this paper is to look into theoretical features of the three leading sociolinguists, Dell Hymes, William Labov, and John Gumperz.On the basis of meta-theoretical terms, which help one to see the differences and similarities of given theoretical viewpoints, this study attempts to delineate main characteristics of the sociolinguistic approaches of the scholars.They are discussed by getting answers to questions such as how they see language or language use, how they perceive sociolinguistics as a discipline in relation to linguistics,to what extent they differ regarding their sociolinguistic approaches and where they can be positioned in the tradition of the philosophy of science as well as that of language study.Dell Hymes' approach, along with his view on the ethnography of speaking, is characterized as featuring sociolinguistic relativism. His major concern is to understand and describe socioculturally-bound ways ofspeaking or communication.In contrast, William Labov's approach,along with his study of sound change at social and regionallevel,is characterized as featuring sociolinguistic realism. This means that he is concerned with scientific description of language shifts as they happen as a whole in the context of actual language use. In addition,John Gumperz's approach is characterized as sociolinguistic interactionism. Unlike the previous two scholars, his sociolinguistic approach is uniquely microscopic in thathis main focus is placed on communicative interactions at the level of individual encounter, like interviewsorface-to-faceconversation.