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theorists-%E2%80%93-labov-trudgill-cheshire-millroy-bernstein/, em 12 de
janeiro de 2018.

i love english language

4.4 – The Basic Variation Theorists – Labov, Trudgill,
Cheshire, Millroy & Bernstein

1. William Labov – 1966 New York Study – individual speech patterns are “part
of a highly systematic structure of social and stylistic stratification”
– Labov studied how often the final or preconsonantal (r) was sounded in words like
guard, bare and beer. Use of this variable has considerable prestige in New York City.

– The speech of sales assistants in three Manhattan stores, drawn from the top (Saks),
middle (Macy’s) and bottom (Klein’s) of the price and fashion scale. Each unwitting
informant was approached with a factual enquiry designed to elicit the answer – “Fourth
floor” – which may or may not contain the variable final or preconsonantal (r). A pretence
not to have heard it obtained a repeat performance in careful, emphatic style.

– Frequency of use of the prestige variable final or preconsonantal “r” varied with level
of formality and social class – the sales assistants from Saks used it most, those from Klein’s
used it least and those from Macy’s showed the greatest upward shift when they were asked
to repeat.

– Of the four classes tested – Lower Class, Working Class, Lower Middle Class & Upper
Middle Class – it was the lower middle class that were most susceptible to the overt prestige
of the preconsonantal “r” – as they differed the most between the incidence in casual speech
style (4%) to most careful speech style (77%).

– That the Upper Middle Class cohort differed least between the casual and careful
speech styles – (19% in casual and 60% in careful), showed that they were least susceptible
to the prestige form, changing the way they spoke less than any other social class when
thinking carefully about how they spoke.

– All of the 3 lower classes: Lower Class, Working Class & Lower Middle Class are more
aware of the prestige of the preconsonantal “r” , and when they think about it are more
likely to change the way they speak to reflect “how they should sound” or how “post people
sound”
2. William Labov –Martha’s Vineyard Study – individual speech patterns are
“part of a highly systematic structure of social and stylistic stratification”
– Martha’s Vineyard is an island lying about 3 miles off New England on the East Coast
of the United States of America, with a permanent population of about 6000. However over
40,000 visitors, known somewhat disparagingly as the ‘summer people’, flood in every
summer.

– In his study, Labov focused on realisations of the diphthongs [aw] and [ay] (as in
mouse and mice). He interviewed a number of speakers drawn from different ages and
ethnic groups on the island, and noted that among the younger (31-45 years) speakers a
movement seemed to be taking place away from the pronunciations associated with the
standard New England norms, and towards a pronunciation associated with conservative
and characteristically Vineyard speakers – the Chilmark fishermen.

– The heaviest users of this type of pronunciation were young men who actively sought
to identify themselves as Vineyarders, rejected the values of the mainland, and resented the
encroachment of wealthy summer visitors on the traditional island way of life. Thus, these
speakers seem to be exploiting the resources of the non-standard accent. The pattern
emerged despite extensive exposure of speakers to the educational system; some college
educated boys from Martha’s Vineyard were extremely heavy users of the vernacular
vowels.

– A small group of fishermen began to exaggerate a tendency already existing in their

speech. They did this seemingly subconsciously, in order to establish themselves as an
independent social group with superior status to the despised summer visitors. A number of
other islanders regarded this group as one which epitomised old virtues and desirable
values, and subconsciously imitated the way its members talked. For these people, the new
pronunciation was an innovation. As more and more people came to speak in the same way,
the innovation gradually became the norm for those living on the island.

– Rather than the increased exposure to the standard New-England accent leading
to dialect / accent levelling, the islanders exaggerated the pronunciation of vernacular
vowels leading to a more pronounced difference and thus a greater level of variation
– This tendency noted by Labov – how covert prestige pronunciations can take hold
and further entrench themselves – can be noted with many current variants in England. For
example, the scouse accent is becoming more entrenched. Also, as young people are
seeking to define themselves more and more as a group, outside of their gender or class
types, the use of MLE can be seen to be getting more exaggerated, which happens either
consciously or subconsciously.
3. Peter Trudgill – 1974 Norwich Study – how gender affects dialect in each
social class

– Looking at “walking”& “talking” as the standard form and “walkin’,” “talkin’” as the
non-standard form peculiar to the local accent. Also considering at the presence or absence
of the third person –s ending, as in “he go to the shop” or “he goes to the shop”.

– differentiated between relaxed and careful speech in order to assess participants

awareness of their own accents as well as how they wished to sound – which saw the non-
standard pronunciation quickly decline

– Found that class is more of a determiner of non-standard usage than gender, though
women in all social classes are more likely to use the overt prestige or RP form

– Men over-reported their non-standard usage – implying that men wished to sound
more non-standard, assuming that they used more of the covert prestige forms

– Women over-reported their standard usage – implying that women wished to sound
more standard, assuming that they used more of the overt prestige forms

– Concluded that women are more susceptible to overt prestige than men (and men
more susceptible to covert prestige)

– In the “lower middle class” and the “upper working class” the differences between
men’s and women’s usage of the standard forms were greatest in formal speech, thereby
identifying these classes as most susceptible to the prestige of the RP form, with women
leading the way on this front

(-ng) in Norwich by social class and sex for Formal Style (Trudgill. 1974a)
Male Female
middle middle
96 100
class
lower middle
73 97
class
upper working
19 32
class
middle
9 19
working class
lower working
0 3
class
4. Jenny Cheshire – 1982 Reading Study – relationship between use of non-
standard variables and adherence to peer group norms
– Identified 11 non-standard features and measured their frequency of use in boys and
girls in a Reading playground, differentiating between those who approved or disapproved
of minor criminal activities

“They calls me names.”

“You just has to do what the teacher says.”
“You was with me, wasn’t you?”
“It ain’t got no pedigree or nothing.”
“I never went to school today.”
“Are you the ones what hit him?”
“I come down here yesterday.”
“You ain’t no boss.”
– All children who approved of peer group criminal activities were more likely to use
non-standard forms, but boys more so

– All children who disapproved of such activities use non-standard forms less
frequently, but the difference between the groupings of girls was more stark

– Suggests that variation in dialect is a conscious choice, influenced by (declared) social

attitude

– Males are more susceptible to covert prestige, but social attitude is more of a
determining factor than gender

– A more negative attitude to the peer group’s criminal activities can be seen as
aspirational, and therefore those children would be less susceptible to the covert prestige
forms (and more susceptible to the overt prestige of standard forms)

5. Milroy’s Belfast Study -Members of a speech community are connected to

each other in social networks which may be relatively ‘closed’ or ‘open’.
– A person whose personal contacts all know each other belong to a closed network.
An individual whose contacts tend not to know each other belong to an open network.
Closed networks are said to be of high density: open networks are said to be of low density.
Moreover, the links between people may be of different kinds: people can relate to each
other as relatives, as neighbours, as workmates, as friends. Where individuals are linked in
several ways, e.g. by job, family and leisure activities, then the network ties are said to be
multiplex.
– Relatively dense networks, it is claimed, function as norm-enforcement mechanisms.
In the case of language, this means that a closely-knit group will have the capacity to
enforce linguistic norms.
– She investigated the correlation between the integration of individuals in the
community and the way those individuals speak. To do this she gave each individual she
studied a Network Strength Score based on the person’s knowledge of other people in the
community, the workplace and at leisure activities to give a score of 1 to 5, where 5 is the
highest Network Strength Score. Then she measured each person’s use of several linguistic
variables, including, for example, (th) as in mother and (a) as in hat, which had both
standard and non-standard forms. What she found was that a high Network Strength Score
was correlated with the use of vernacular or non-standard forms.

– In most cases this meant that men whose speech revealed high usage of vernacular or
non-standard forms were also found to belong to tight-knit social networks. Conversely,
vernacular or non-standard forms are less evident in women’s speech because the women
belong to less dense social networks.

– However, for some variables, the pattern of men using non-standard and women
using standard forms was reversed. In the Hammer and the Clonard, for example, more
women than expected tended to use the non-standard form of (a) as in hat. Milroy’s
explanation for this finding is based on the social pressures operating in the communities.
The Hammer and the Clonard both had unemployment rates of around 35 per cent, which
clearly affected social relationships. Men from these areas were forced to look for work
outside the community, and also shared more in domestic tasks (with consequent blurring
of sex roles). The women in these areas went out to work and, in the case of the young
Clonard women, all worked together. This meant that the young Clonard women belonged
to a dense and multiplex network; they lived, worked and amused themselves together.

– The tight-knit network to which the young Clonard women belong clearly exerts
pressure on its members, who are linguistically homogeneous.
– Over and above gender differences, or class differences, Milroy discovered that it was
how closely or loosely knit a social group a person belonged to that determined their use of
the local dialect forms. The covert prestige of such forms works in a more complicated
way that previously thought.
– The idea of closed and open networks can be usefully applied to any case of
language variation – e.g. the spread of MLE. Whereas in the past working class London
children might have belonged to very closed networks, because of changes to society such as
high levels of immigration, exposure to the media and greater sense of identity as teenagers
as opposed to class.
6. Bernstein: Language and Social Class – Restricted code and Elaborated code
– 1971
– Rather than distinguishing between Standard English and Regional Dialect, a
distinction which carries an inherent bias towards the former, Bernstein wanted to look at
language variation in a different way

– Bernstein came up with the terms Restricted code and Elaborated code in order to
distinguish between what he saw as two distinct ways of using language as opposed to the
two distinct dialects of Standard English and the Regional Dialect

– The Elaborated code has a more formally correct syntax, having more subordinate
clauses and fewer unfinished sentences. There are also more logical connectives like “if”
and “unless”, as well as more originality and more explicit reference

– The restricted code has a looser syntax, uses more words of simple coordination like
“and” and “but”, there are more clichés, and more implicit reference so there are a greater
number of pronouns than the elaborated code

– The codes should not be confused with social dialects because there is nothing in a
dialect to inhibit explicit statements of individual feeling or opinion. While dialects are
identified by their formal features, and by who their speakers are, codes are identified by
the kinds of meaning they transmit and by what the words are used to do.

– An elaborated code arises where there is a gap or boundary between speaker and
listener which can only be crossed by explicit speech.

– A restricted code arises when speech is exchanged against a background of shared

experience and shared definitions of that experience; it realises meanings that are already
shared rather than newly created, communal rather than individual. The speech is “context
dependent” because participants rely on their background knowledge to supply information
not carried by the actual words they use.

– Whilst the elaborated code is used to convey facts and abstract ideas, the restricted
code is used to convey attitude and feeling.

– The elaborated code is the one which, in the adult language, would be generally
associated with formal situations, the restricted code that associated with informal
situations.

– E.g. Two five-year-old children, one working-class and one middle-class, were shown
a series of three pictures, which involved boys playing football and breaking a window. They
described the events involved as follows:

(1) Three boys are playing football and one boy kicks the ball and it goes through the
window and the bail breaks the window and the boys are looking at it and a man comes out
and shouts at them because they’ve broken the window so they run away and then that lady
looks out of her window and she tells the boys off.
(2) They’re playing football and he kicks it and it goes through there it breaks the window
and they’re looking at it and he comes out and shouts at them because they’ve broken it so
they run away and then she looks out and she tells them off.
– In the earlier articles it was implied that middle-class children generally use the
elaborated code (although they might sometimes use the restricted code), whereas working-
class children have only the restricted code. But Bernstein later modified this viewpoint to
say that even working-class children might sometimes use the elaborated code; the
difference between the classes is said to lie rather in the occasions on which they can use
the codes (e.g. working-class children certainly have difficulty in using the elaborated code
in school). Moreover, all children can understand both codes when spoken to
them.
– As well as avoiding the negative and positive stereotypes associated with regional
Dialect and Standard English, Bernstein wanted to understand when either code would be
used as well as the advantages conferred on the speakers through using one or other of the
codes.

– In situations where you don’t know the person you are speaking to and there is little
shared knowledge, most speakers, regardless of class or level of education, will default to a
variety of the elaborated code, as it is necessary to getting the message across. However,
where there is a lot of shared knowledge between interlocutors who are known to each
other, the restricted code is far more efficient, eliding unnecessary grammatical
constructions and logical connectives as well as the tiresome formulations of “polite
conversation”.
– The question is then: when to use the elaborated code? Is it that middle class
children are better judges of when to use which code, or that they are trained to
automatically default to the elaborated code? Or is it the case that Working Class children
aren’t fully comfortable with or knowledgeable of the elaborated code?

– This way of looking at the matter can make us look at the John Honey Standard
English Debate in a new light. If its not a question of teaching one dialect over any other
(Standard English over the local dialect), then who could disagree with the need to teach all
children the code they need for professional/working life?
– Might there be another issue with the elaborated code in the minds of the lower class
children? Might this way of speaking, be seen as somehow “other” and not of their place or
lives? Just as Standard English and Received Pronunciation might have negative
connotations, and the local dialect have covert prestige, might not the restricted code be
seen as distinctive of their group identity?

– However, if both codes have a neutral value but are used without prejudice in
different contexts by all levels of society and all ages, how can we account for society’s use of
how people speak to label them and subjugate them?

– Is there some kind of ‘cognitive deficit’ in an inability to use the elaborated code,
and thereby to think logically? Labov (1969) has argued that young blacks in the United
States, although using language which certainly seems an example of the restricted code,
nevertheless display a clear ability to argue logically. One example quoted by Labov is a boy
talking about what happens after death:
You know, like some people say if you’re good an’ shit, your spirit goin’
t’heaven…’n’ if you bad, your spirit goin’ to hell. Well, bullshit! Your spirit
goin’ to hell anyway, good or bad. (Why?) Why! I’ll tell you why. ‘Cause, you
see, doesn’t nobody really know that it’s a God, y’know, ’cause I mean I have
seen black gods, pink gods, white gods, all color gods, and don’t nobody
know it’s really a God. An’ when they be sayin’ if you good, you goin’
t’heaven, tha’s bullshit, ’cause you ain’t goin’ to no heaven, ’cause it ain’t no
heaven for you to go to.
The speaker is here setting out ‘a complex set of interdependent propositions’; ‘he can sum
up a complex argument in a few words, and the full force of his opinions comes through
without qualification or reservation’.

– In addition Labov notes the common faults of so-called middle-class speech: ‘Our
work in the speech community makes it painfully obvious that in many ways working-class
speakers are more effective narrators, reasoners, and debaters than many middle-class
speakers who temporize, qualify, and lose their argument in a mass of irrelevant detail.’
There is no clear relationship between language and logical thought.

– Cazden (1970) showed that lower class 10 year olds needed much more prompting to
give sufficient information for the interviewer to identify a picture from among a selection.
The lack of explicit speech, giving clear information, seemed to support Bernstein’s theory.

– Bernstein says that lower working class children do not use elaborated speech at all,
whereas others prefer to say that differences lie in the degree to which elaborated language
is used. Also it is unclear that the ability to use elaborated speech in one type of situation
guarantees its successful usage in other types.
Adapted from Cruttenden, A., Language in Infancy and Childhood, Manchester University
Press, 1979

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http://homes.chass.utoronto.ca/~cpercy/courses/6362-gregoire.htm, em 12 de janeiro de
2018.

Gender and Language Change:

The Case of Early Modern Women
By Suzanne Grégoire
© 2006

…whatever the particular sources of the change, and whether they are regarded as vernacular
or prestige innovations, women play an important role in establishing changes as components
of the standard language.

-Janet Holmes, 1997 (qtd. in Nevalainen & Brunberg 110)

1. Introduction
Sociolinguistic studies have long observed that women use more forms of
standard language than men, so much so that the stereotype of women’s
hypercorrect language has emerged as somewhat of a universal principle in
the field. By extension, sociolinguists have also recognized women’s
important role in the initiation and dissemination of language change. Earlier
studies identified women as the leaders of linguistic changes that that spread
from above the level of public consciousness and involved new prestige
forms emanating from the upper ranks of the social strata. In contrast, men
were found to lead changes in vernacular forms spreading below the level of
public awareness. However, recent studies have shown that women’s role in
language change is more complicated. William Labov’s theory of the gender
paradox asserts that while women adopt prestige forms of language
proceeding from the upper ranks and from above the level of public
consciousness at a higher rate than men, they also use higher frequencies of
innovative vernacular forms occurring below the level of public awareness
than men do (Labov 1990:213-15).
How have sociolinguists arrived at these theories about women’s central role
in language change, and further, can they be applied to a historical study of
the role played by women in the standardization of the English language
during the early modern period? Section 1 will introduce the subject of
gender and language variation, while section 2 will outline the major
sociolinguistic paradigms of gender and language change. Section 3 will then
consider the application of these modern sociolinguistic “universals” to
specific language changes taking place during the early modern period.

1.2 Gender as a Sociolinguistic Variable

In the 1960s, sociolinguists began to do research on gender and sex and its
relationship to language. Specifically, these studies have mostly centered
around the differences in speech behaviour of men and women at the
phonological level, and the conversational styles of men and women in
discourse. Studies of gender-specific variation are diverse and often
contradictory, depending on such factors as researchers’ assumptions about
sex and gender, the methodology, and the samples used. Eckert and
McConnell-Ginet have summed up the varied positions in stating:
women’s language has been said to reflect
their…conservativism, prestige consciousness, upward mobility,
insecurity, deference, nurture, emotional expressivity,
connectedness, sensitivity to others, solidarity. And men’s
language is heard as evincing their toughness, lack of affect,
competitiveness, independence, competence, hierarchy,
control. (qtd. in Wodak & Benke 127)
However, despite divergent claims, gender variation has emerged as a major
field of sociolinguistic study.

1.3.1 Gender and Linguistic Change

An important consequence of gender differentiation in language is linguistic
change. Aspects of linguistic variability are of interest to sociolinguists who
attempt to chart how the language used by individuals and groups in various
social situations can vary in patterned ways. Language variation serves to
distinguish the speech of different social groups (social variation), as well as
the speech of an individual in different contexts (stylistic variation). Over
time, these variations may lead to language change, which occurs when a
new linguistic form, used by a particular sub-section of a speech community,
is adopted by other members of the community and accepted as the norm.
Sociolinguists now recognize that not only linguistic variation between social
groups, but also gender differences in speech play an important role in the
promulgation of language change.

1.3.2 Early Assumptions

Early dialectologists were among the first to recognize that gender plays a
role in language innovation. Dialectologists were often trying to record a
rural dialect before it died out, and were thus aware that linguistic changes
were taking place; their observations about the social origins of these
changes are interesting with regards to gender. For example, in 1946 August
Brun, a specialist in the Provençal dialect, observed that older members of
the community over fifty spoke mainly Provençal, as did younger men,
but women under forty-five spoke mainly French. He claimed that because
younger women did not speak Provençal with their children, the dialect was
disappearing (Coates 172). Brun suggested that women play a crucial role by
adopting language change and using it to bring up the next generation.
Gauchat’s 1905 study of the dialect of Charmey, a remote village in
Switzerland, drew similar conclusions: younger members of the village were
beginning to use newer phonetic variants, and further, among the younger
generation, women used the newer forms more frequently. Gauchat argued
that women’s innovativeness was driving the changes (“women welcome
every linguistic novelty with open arms”) and that the changes were
propagated by women in their role as mothers (qtd. in Coates 173). The
examples from dialectology reveal that women have long been represented
as initiators of linguistic change. However, contemporary sociolinguistics has
shown that this is an overly simplistic scenario – some innovations are clearly
associated with men rather than women.

2. Sociolinguistic Methodology

2.1.1 The Standard Paradigm

Early sociolinguistic research was primarily concerned with social class
differences, but recent studies have addressed other social variables such as
ethnic group, age and gender to assess their role in language variation.
However, classic quantitative studies examined the relationship between
linguistic variation and social class and revealed clear social stratification in
language, giving rise to the related concepts
of prestige and stigma. Prestige is associated with the language used by the
social group from the highest standing. Members of a given speech
community will collectively acknowledge that a particular variety – the
standard dialect – is more ‘correct’ than others. Stigma is conversely
associated with non-standard forms, and may be overt, (e.g. ‘dropping’ initial
/h/) or it may be beneath the level of public consciousness. Non-standard
varieties are often referred to as the vernacular (Coates 47).

2.1.2 Stable Linguistic Variables

The classic pattern of social stratification in language is one in which the
upper middle class (UMC) uses the highest proportion of prestige variants,
and the lower working class (LWC) uses the least. Further, each social class
group is revealed to use a higher proportion of prestige forms
in formal speech and a lower proportion of prestige forms in informal speech.
In this type of model, social stratification is maintained, such that
proportional usage of the prestige form appears in a clearly demarcated and
descending order from UMC to LWC. This regular pattern is typical of a stable
social variable, that is, a linguistic variable not involved in change (Coates 50).

2.1.3 Linguistic Variables Undergoing Change

In the case of linguistic variables undergoing change, a different pattern
emerges: studies have shown that the lower middle class (LMC) uses more
prestige forms in formal speech than any other group, scoring even higher
than the UMC. However, in less formal styles the LMC uses less of the
prestige variant. This behaviour on the part of the LMC is known
as hypercorrection, and seems to result from the sensitivity of the LMC to
social pressures: their insecurity, caused by their position on the borderline
between the middle and working classes, is reflected in their concern with
speaking ‘correctly’. When a linguistic variable is undergoing a process of
change, the LMC is hypersensitive to the new prestige variant, and makes a
conscious effort to use it more in formal situations (i.e. when paying more
attention to speech) than any other class (Wodak & Benke 133; Coates 51).

2.2 The Sex/Prestige Pattern

In the case of gender, it has been established that in many speech
communities female speakers will use a higher proportion of prestige forms
than male speakers. Women tend to use fewer stigmatized forms than men,
and in formal speech they are more sensitive to prestige language than men.
In the case of linguistic variables in the process of change, it appears that
LMC women are particularly sensitive to new prestige variants, and exhibit an
even greater degree of hypercorrection than displayed by the LMC generally.
This phenomenon is referred to as the “Sex/Prestige Pattern” (Coates 53-4;
Wodak & Benke 133).

2.3.1 The Labovian Tradition

The Sex/Prestige pattern is most famously explored by William Labov in his
studies of New York City and Martha’s Vineyard. In New York, Labov found
that men’s pronunciation varied very little between formal and less formal
speech, while women’s pronunciation varied a great deal. Female speakers
displayed a greater degree of style-shifting, and moreover, women were
using new advanced forms in casual speech, and thus initiating change
(Coates 175). However, in Martha’s Vineyard Labov discovered a different
pattern: men, not women, were initiating change. Labov examined changes
in dipthongs (/aw/ as in house and /ay/ as in white were becoming raised and
centralized). He concluded that there was no conscious awareness among
the islanders that these sounds were shifting, since he found no variation
between different styles of speech (i.e. individuals did not vary their
pronunciation depending on the context). Labov found that the centralized
dipthongs were used mostly by men (specifically fishermen) aged 31-45, and
that the dipthongs were in fact a reversion to older and more conservative
phonological forms. Labov argued that the dipthongs were used by
fishermen as a sign of solidarity: use of the variants symbolized identification
with the island and its values, and a rejection of the new incoming summer
visitors (Coates 175).
2.3.2 ‘Change from above’ vs. ‘Change from Below’
In order to resolve his findings that both men and women initiate linguistic
change, Labov made the distinction
between conscious and unconscious change, or what he termed ‘change
from above’ and ‘change from below.’ In keeping with the Sex/Prestige
pattern, he argued that women lead changes that come from above the level
of social awareness, and involve the new prestige forms of higher-ranked
social groups, whereas men initiate changes which spread from below the
level of social awareness, and away from the accepted norms towards the
vernacular.

In Martha’s Vineyard the change in pronunciation was taking place below the
level of social awareness and was led by men responding to covert pressure
from their peers. Labov terms this phenomenon “covert prestige”: working-
class men were adopting nonstandard variants which served as “solidarity
markers” to emphasize certain group values such as “masculinity” (Wodak &
Benke 135). On the other hand, women in New York were using a higher
degree of prestige variants imposed from above.

Women’s greater use of prestige language has been differently explained by

sociolinguists, either in terms of economic and social factors, or for reasons
of status and power. Social and economic explanations look at social
networks and ‘market forces’ and compare the exposure of men and women
to standard speech forms. It has been suggested that working class women
may be more exposed to standard speech at work and have more incentive
to modify their speech than men. Alternatively, the “power and dominance
approach” suggests that because women are generally granted less status
and power than men, they attempt to secure or signal their social status
linguistically by using prestige language forms (Nevalainen & Raumolin-
Brunberg 111; Wodak & Benke 135-40).

2.3.3 The Gender Paradox

However, as more research became available, these conclusions have proved
less straightforward. Many sociolinguists argue that all social classes can be
innovative, and women’s influence cannot be limited to conscious processes
alone (Nevalainen & Raumolin-Brunberg 111). In an influential paper (Labov
1990), Labov qualified his original argument to suggest that gender
differentiation is independent of social class at the beginning of a change,
but that interaction develops as social awareness of the change increases. He
formulates two basic principles: 1. in linguistic change from above, women
adopt prestige forms at a higher rate than men; 2. in linguistic change
from below, women use higher frequencies of innovative forms than men do
(Nevalainen & Raumolin-Brunberg 111). These two principles show
contrasting tendencies in the way men and women advance linguistic
change. Labov calls it the gender paradox: “women conform more closely
than men to sociolinguistic norms that are overtly prescribed, but conform
less than men when they are not” (Labov 2001: 293; Nevalainen & Raumolin-
Brunberg 112).

Generally speaking, these two principles suggest that women are more active
in promoting linguistic change. Most research agrees that women play an
important part in supralocalization, i.e., “the spread of a linguistic feature
from its region of origin to neighbouring areas” (Nevalainen & Raumolin-
Brunberg 112). Strictly localized linguistic features tend to be preferred by
males, whereas variants used by females often gain supralocal status.

3. Gender and Language Change in the Early Modern Period

3.1 Historical Sociolinguistics and Gender

Sociolinguistic research has produced strong evidence for the influential role
of women in language variation and change in present-day speech
communities, however, the role of women in the historical development of
the English language is less clear. Recently, historical sociolinguists have
sought to assess the extent to which modern sociolinguistic “universals”
about gender and language change hold true in a historical context. To what
degree does the “Sex/Prestige” pattern or the “Gender Paradox” apply to
earlier English? Were localized forms preferred by men in the early modern
period the same way they tend to be today? Also, were high-frequency
variants preferred by women, and do these become supralocal? Did women
promote standard speech forms earlier than men?
3.2.1 The Corpus of Early English Correspondence (CEEC)
Historical studies of women’s role in language change have been conducted
by Terttu Nevalainen and Helena Raumolin-Brunberg, who in 1993, along
with the Sociolinguistics and Language History team at the University of
Helsinki, compiled an electronic collection of personal letters, the Corpus of
Early English Correspondence (CEEC). The corpus covers the period between
1417-1681 and contains 6,000 letters written by nearly 800 individuals
(Nevalainen & Raumolin-Brunberg 9). Through data drawn from the corpus,
Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg examine the supralocalization of a
number of grammatical features that became part of Standard English during
the period. Their study addresses the role of multiple social variables in
language change, one of which is gender.

3.2.2 Advantages & Disadvantages

Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg stress that this kind of historical study
provides the rare advantage of being able to study the process of language
change in real time (i.e. a diachronic study across time) as opposed to
modern sociolinguistic studies which must analyze present-day data
in apparent time, (i.e. a synchronic study of “differences in usage by
successive generations of speakers”) (Nevalainen & Raumolin-Brunberg 27).
Nevertheless, the study does present some challenges. In attempting to
assess the degree to which women instigated and spread language change,
women’s different social roles must be considered. In the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, women’s social position and access to the public
domain was often severely restricted. Most challenging to the study is
women’s lack of education; the average level of female literacy, and of
writing in particular, was extremely low. This inequality is clearly reflected in
the corpus: women represent only 20 per cent of the total letters, and the
vast majority are from the upper social ranks, the nobility, and the gentry
(115). However, the CEEC data does provide the opportunity to test the
theory of gender advantage in language changes that spread throughout the
country during the period.

3.3.1 The Results

Within the study, fourteen changes are analyzed and the general pattern
that emerges is one in which women are found to lead the process of
linguistic change in the majority of cases. In 8 out of 14 examples, women
adopt new language variants earlier than men and in 3 cases an initial male
advantage switches to female advantage; however, in 3 particular cases men
score ahead of women. Three changes led by women are discussed below:
the generalization of the object pronoun form you in the subject function,
the diffusion of the short possessive determiners my and thy, and the
diffusion of the third-person singular suffix -(e)s. In contrast, one change led
by men is also provided: the replacement of multiple negation with single
negation.

3.3.2 Women Ahead of Men:

Replacement of Subject ye by you

Until the later sixteenth century, the role of the second person plural
pronoun was shared by you and ye, with ye in the subject form, and you in
the object form (e.g. King James Bible: “Ye have not chosen me; I have
chosen you”). During the sixteenth century, the case distinction breaks down,
and ye is subsumed by the object form you. Nevalainen and Raumolin-
Brunberg’s data show that the fairly rapid decline of ye is markedly and
consistently promoted by women from the early sixteenth century onwards
(Nevalainen & Raumolin-Brunberg 118-19). However, Nevalainen and
Raumolin-Brunberg also indicate that you ‘spread from below’ the level of
public consciousness as a vernacular form. The origins of the change are
intriguing, as they do not fit into the Sex/Prestige theory that women self-
consciously adopt of changes ‘from above’.

My and Thy
A gender advantage also appears in the dissemination of the short possessive
determiners my and thy which replace mine and thine. However, in contrast
with the spread of ye, the difference between male and female usage
of my and thy is less stark, which may be explained by the fact that the
change progresses from the lower social ranks, which are overwhelmingly
represented in the data by men, especially for the period in which this
change takes place (Nevalainen & Raumolin-Brunberg 119-20). Within their
own group, upper-ranking women consistently spread the form as it arrived.

Third-person singular suffix -(e)s versus -(e)th

The early modern period witnesses the generalization of the third-person
singular present-tense suffix -(e)s (e.g. hath vs. has). This is a long process,
beginning as early as the tenth century when -s is first introduced, and
ending with the most resistant forms, hath and doth in Late Modern English.
The data reveals a clear gender differentiation by the sixteenth century, with
women leading the change (Nevalainen & Raumolin-Brunberg 122-24).
Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg point out that although they are using
the same sample of individuals, the change for -s is less striking than with the
subject you. The reason may be the difference in the social orientation of the
two processes. Unlike you which spread from the higher and middle ranks, -
s spread from the lower literate ranks towards the middle and upper ranks.
One of the significant characteristics of the two suffixes is that they became
associated with register differences in the evolving standard language: -
(e)th with formal and literate styles, and -(e)s with informal and oral
language. So for example the dental fricative -th was retained in the
Authorized Version of the Bible and the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. The
rise of -s is coming both from the lower ranks, and from informal speech,
however, it is interesting to observe that it is nevertheless being spread by
women.

3.3.3 Men Ahead of Women:

Decline of multiple negation

One instance of a change that is consistently promoted by men is the
disappearance of multiple negation (e.g. “I’l never be so lasie no more but
rise by five a cloke rather than mise wrighting any more” 1677, Mary Stuart)
(Nevalainen 2000: 50). By 1600 the change was completed for men, but only
nearing so for women. The process was socially stratified and was led by
professional men, and especially social aspirers. It was also a change from
above the level of social awareness. A gender difference also persisted within
the upper ranks, where upper-rank men used multiple negation significantly
less than upper-rank women. As Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg
observe, this presents an interesting difference from current linguistic
practice: in present-day speech communities where multiple negation is
found, it is more sharply stratifying for women than for men, and in all social
classes women use it less than men (Nevalainen & Raumolin-Brunberg 128-
29). They suggest that “when multiple negation became a stable social
variable in the late modern period, a switch in its gender affiliation must
have taken place resulting in the Sex/Prestige pattern we know today” (129).

3.4 Conclusion
Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg’s findings agree with other sociolinguistic
studies that have maintained that women are instrumental in language
change. However, some major differences with contemporary sociolinguistic
studies also emerge. The data suggest that in the early modern period
women lead language change regardless of the social origins of the process.
Some of the changes observed, such as the spread of my and thy and the
third-person singular -s, progress from the lower literate end of the social
hierarchy, rather than from the higher ranks. In these instances, the gentle
and noblewomen in their data must have been among the first to adopt
these forms and spread them within their own class. Nevalainen and
Raumolin-Brunberg propose that these findings could suggest that gender
was a more decisive influence on language change than social class
(Nevalainen & Raumolin-Brunberg 131).

In cases where the change seems to have occurred below the level of social
awareness, as with the word you, women also lead the change, in
contradiction with the Sex/Prestige pattern. However, when the change
proceeds from above the level of social awareness, as in the instance of
multiple negation, the process was systematically led by men in the upper
and middle sections of society. This indicates the most significant difference
between the early modern period and the present: early modern
Englishwomen did not promote language changes that originated from the
worlds of learning and professional use, which were beyond their access. The
contemporary sociolinguistic commonplace about women’s hypercorrect
language has emerged as a universal principle, such that Richard Hudson has
stated:
 In any society where males and females have equal access to
the standard form, females use standard variants of any stable
variable which is socially stratified for both sexes more often
than males do. (qtd. in Nevalainen 2002: 186)
Hudson’s qualification is significant: “where males and females have equal
access to the standard form,” women use more prestige forms. However, in
the early modern period, women’s access to learning and to the professional
world from which prestige forms were emanating was severely limited. The
Sex/Prestige pattern is thus a contemporary theory which reflects women’s
greater access to education. Women today may use more forms of standard
language, but this was not necessarily the case in the early modern period.
Nevertheless, women were still leading the way in language changes
emerging from outside of professional and public institutions.

Bibliography and Further Reading

Language and Gender

James, Deborah, “Women, men and prestige speech forms: a critical review.”
Victoria L.
Bergvall, Janet M. Bing & Alice F. Freed, eds. Rethinking Language and
Gender
Research: Theory and Practice Freed. London & New York: Longman,
1996, 98-
125.

Coates, Jennifer, ed. Language and Gender. Oxford: Blackwell, 1998.

------. Women, Men and Language: a Sociolinguistic Account of Gender

Differences In
Language. 3rd Edition. London & New York: Longman, 2004.
Eckert, Penelope. “The whole woman: sex and gender differences in
variation.”
Language Variation and Change 1 (1989), 245-267.

------. Linguistic Variation and Social Practice. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000.

Labov, William. “The intersection of sex and social class in the course of
linguistic
change.” Language Variation and Change 2 (1990), 205-254.

------. Principles of Linguistic Change. Volume 2: Social Factors. Oxford, UK &

Cambridge, USA: Blackwell, 2001.

Milroy, James & Milroy, Lesley. “Mechanisms of Change in Urban Dialects:

The Role of
Class, Social Network and Gender.” International Journal of Applied
Linguistics
3, no. 1 (1993), 57-77.

Wodak, Ruth & Benke, Gertrude. “Gender as a Sociolinguistic Variable: New

Perspectives on Variation Studies.” Florian Coulmas, ed. The Handbook
of
Sociolinguistics. Oxford: Blackwell, 1997, 127-150.

Early Modern Women and Language Change

Nevalainen, Terttu. “Gender Differences in the Evolution of Standard English:

Evidence
from the Corpus of Early English Correspondence,” Journal of English
 Linguistics 28, 1 (2000), 38-59.

------. “Language and Woman’s Place in Earlier English.” Journal of English

Linguistics
30, 2 (2002), 181-199.

Nevalainen, Terttu & Raumolin-Brunberg, Helena. Historical Sociolinguistics:

Language
Change in Tudor and Stuart England. London: Pearson Education Ltd.,
2003.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

William Labov
Matthew J. Gordon
Subject: Discourse Analysis, Historical Linguistics, History of Linguistics, Linguistic Theories, Linguists
(Biographies and Works), Sociolinguistics

Online Publication Date: May 2017

DOI: 10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.013.364 - em 12 de janeiro de 2018

Summary and Keywords

William Labov (b. 1927) is an American linguist who pioneered the study of
variationist sociolinguistics. Born and raised in northern New Jersey, Labov studied
English and philosophy at Harvard University (BA, 1948) and worked as an
industrial chemist for several years before entering graduate school in linguistics at
Columbia University in 1961. He completed his PhD in 1964, under the direction of
Uriel Weinreich. He worked at Columbia until 1971, when he joined the faculty of
the University of Pennsylvania, where he taught until his retirement in 2014.

Labov’s influence on the field began with research he conducted in graduate

school. His study of changing pronunciations on Martha’s Vineyard, the subject of
his master’s thesis, introduced a method for observing sound change in progress
and broke with tradition by exploring social motivations for linguistic innovations.
For his PhD dissertation, Labov carried out a study of dialect patterns on the Lower
East Side of New York City. Using a systematic, quantitative methodology, he
demonstrated that linguistic variation is socially stratified, such that the use of
pronunciation features (e.g., dropping of post-vocalic /r/) correlates with social
class, ethnicity, etc. in regular patterns. Labov’s early research was greatly
influential and inspired many scholars to carry out similar projects in other
communities. The paradigm came to be known as variationist sociolinguistics.
Much of Labov’s scholarship seeks to advance our understanding of language
change. Historical linguists traditionally study completed linguistic changes, often
long after they occurred, but Labov developed a method for examining active
changes through a quantitative comparison of speakers representing several
generations. This approach produces a new perspective on the change process by
revealing intermediate stages. Labov has brought insights from this research to
bear on theoretical debates within historical linguistics and the field more broadly.
His work in this area has also documented many active sound changes in
American English. Among these changes are innovations underway in particular
dialects, such as the vowel changes in Philadelphia, as well as broader regional
patterns, such as the Northern Cities Shift heard in the Great Lakes states.

Throughout his career, social justice concerns have fueled Labov’s research. He
has sought to demonstrate that the speech of stigmatized groups is as systematic
and rule-governed as any other. He led a pioneering study in Harlem in the late
1960s that shone new light on African American English, demonstrating, for
example, that grammatical usages like the deletion of the copula (e.g., He fast) are
subject to regular constraints. Labov has served as an expert witness in court and
before the U.S. Congress to share insights from his study of African American
English. He has also worked to promote literacy for speakers of non-standard
dialects, carrying out research on reading and developing material for the teaching
of reading to these populations.

Keywords: sociolinguistics, African American English, dialectology, language

change, narrative, discourse analysis, gender

1. Career Overview
William Labov is a leading scholar in the field of sociolinguistics. He has explored a
broad range of topics during his career, and he is widely known for the study of
language variation and change. The research paradigm that he pioneered is known
as variationist sociolinguistics.

Labov was born on December 4, 1927 and spent his childhood in New Jersey. He
attended Harvard University and earned his bachelor’s degree in English and
philosophy in 1948. After unsuccessful attempts to establish a career as a writer,
he took a position with his family’s firm, the Union Ink Company, as a chemist
specializing in the formulation of inks for commercial applications such as silk-
screening (Labov, 2001A). In 1961, he returned to academic pursuits and began
graduate work at Columbia University, choosing linguistics as his field of study.
Noam Chomsky and other theorists had recently reinvigorated the discipline, and
Labov was drawn by the opportunity to contribute new ways of thinking about
language. He completed a master’s degree and a doctorate under the direction of
Uriel Weinreich, a scholar of Yiddish who specialized in the study of language
contact (e.g., Weinreich, 1953).

Labov’s first major publication, “The Social Motivation of a Sound Change” (1963)
derived from his master’s thesis, a study of the dialect of Martha’s Vineyard. His
doctoral dissertation explored sociolinguistic patterns in New York City English and
was published by the Center for Applied Linguistics in 1966. After earning his PhD
in 1964, Labov worked as an assistant professor at Columbia. During this time he
directed research in Harlem that focused on the speech of young African
Americans. The report of this study appeared in Labov, Cohen, Robins, and Lewis
(1968).

Labov joined the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania in 1971. He led a large-
scale survey of Philadelphia speech known as the Project on Linguistic Change
and Variation. In addition to documenting the local dialect in extraordinary detail,
this research served as a training ground for students, many of whom became
prominent scholars in the field including John Baugh, Gregory Guy, Shana Poplack,
and John Rickford. In the 1990s, Labov directed the Telsur project, which sought to
record dialect patterns across all of English-speaking North America based on a
survey conducted over the telephone (hence “Telsur”) with speakers from every
U.S. and Canadian city with a population over 50,000. The results of this ambitious
study appeared in the Atlas of North American English (Labov, Ash, &
Boberg, 2006; see also Labov, 2012).

Throughout his career, Labov has published research on a range of topics within
sociolinguistics as well as in discourse analysis and historical linguistics. His
influence has also been felt in adjacent disciplines such as anthropology, sociology,
and education. He served as president of the Linguistic Society of America in 1979
and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1993. The Franklin
Institute recognized Labov’s accomplishments in 2013 with the Benjamin Franklin
Medal in Computer and Cognitive Science. In 2015, he received the Smith Medal in
Linguistics from the British Academy. Labov retired from teaching in 2014, but
maintains an active research agenda. He is co-editor of Language Variation and
Change, which he established in 1989, and of the Journal of Linguistic Geography,
which he co-founded in 2012.

2. Foundations of Variationist Sociolinguistics

Within the broad field of sociolinguistics, Labov developed a research paradigm
known as the study of language variation and change, or variationist
sociolinguistics. One of the hallmarks of this approach is its reliance on empirical
observation of language in use. The linguistic data analyzed come from more or
less authentic discourse contexts. Broadly speaking, the goal of variationist
research is to uncover patterns in the use of variable linguistic forms. Quantitative
methods are essential in revealing such patterns because usage is typically a
matter of the relative frequency of one form versus a competing form rather than a
categorical preference. Labov was not the first linguist to employ statistical analysis
in the study of linguistic patterns, but he introduced a systematic approach to these
issues that was well grounded in a broader theory about the inherent variability of
language.

2.1 Martha’s Vineyard

Labov carried out the research that became his master’s thesis on the island of
Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. This project focused on the pronunciation of the
diphthongs /ai/ (as in price or hide) and /au/ (as in mouth or loud). Labov noticed
that these phonemes are pronounced with varying degrees of raising of the nuclei
from a low [a] to a mid [ə]. To assess the social distribution of these variable
pronunciations among the local population, Labov sampled the speech of 69 native
Vineyarders representing several locales on the island, various occupations,
different ethnic groups, and a broad age range. He recorded each participant’s
speech in a semi-structured interview. The full details of this study are reported in
Labov (1963).

One of Labov’s methodological innovations in this study was the development of a

numerical index to measure a speaker’s pronunciation tendencies. He coded the
phonetic realizations of the two diphthongs on a four-point scale according to the
height of the nucleus. Then, for each speaker he calculated an average based on
their pronunciation of several tokens of each vowel during the interview. He also
grouped speakers by various demographic categories as a means of examining
sociolinguistic patterns. Among his most robust findings was the pattern related to
age: each generation favored raised diphthongs more than the previous one. Labov
interpreted this result as evidence of an active sound change; probing further, he
argued that the increasing use of the raised forms represented a way for locals to
assert their identity as Vineyarders in response to an influx of tourists and other
part-time residents.

In asserting that language change could be observed while it was in progress,

Labov challenged established thinking in historical linguistics (e.g.,
Bloomfield, 1933), which held that the change process involved chaotic fluctuations
rendering it difficult or even impossible to detect until after it had run its course. The
study also broke with more orthodox approaches by proposing that the change was
driven by social motivations. Traditional research emphasized the role of language-
internal, structural factors (e.g., ease of articulation, analogy) in spurring change.
Appeals to speakers’ attitudes and social attributes were uncommon and likely to
be met with skepticism. Nevertheless, Labov’s thorough documentation both of the
linguistic variation and of the socio-cultural context on the island made a strong
case, and broadened horizons in the study of language change.

2.2 New York City

Labov expanded the general framework he pioneered on Martha’s Vineyard in his
dissertation study of New York City speech. A slightly modified version of the PhD
thesis appeared as The Social Stratification of English in New York City, originally
in 1966 with a much expanded second edition in 2006. Several chapters
from Sociolinguistic Patterns (Labov, 1972B) come from this study and build on the
observations originally made there. The New York research rocketed Labov to
great prominence within linguistics and inspired many scholars to work in this new
sociolinguistic paradigm (see, e.g., narratives recorded in Tagliamonte, 2016).

The main part of Labov’s study involved a survey of the Lower East Side
neighborhood of Manhattan. As he had on Martha’s Vineyard, he sought a sample
that would represent the social diversity of the community, giving particular
emphasis to differences in socioeconomic class and ethnicity. He collected speech
data from 158 people, but his analysis focused on a core group of 81 native New
Yorkers. He again relied on semi-structured interviews for gathering samples of
speech though he expanded this protocol to record a wider stylistic range from
each interviewee (see section 3 below). The linguistic scope was similarly
expanded from the earlier study. Labov concentrated his investigation on five
phonological variables: the vowels /æ/ and /ɔ/, which are commonly raised in New
York City speech, the fricatives /θ/ and /ð/, which may be realized as stops, and
post-vocalic /r/, which is variably vocalized or dropped altogether. To assess usage
of these features, he drew on numerical indexes similar to those used to examine
diphthong raising on Martha’s Vineyard.

Much of the impact of Labov’s study stems from his success in countering the
popular impression that New York speech is haphazard, and that, for example, a
New Yorker pronounces the /r/ in park randomly or arbitrarily. He demonstrated
instead that underlying the apparent chaos were regular patterns of correlation
between linguistic forms and social factors. Among his most important findings
were those related to social class. The participants in the study were divided into
nine categories, ranging from lower to working to middle class. With all of the
pronunciation features he examined, Labov found clear patterns of stratification by
social class. For example, all New Yorkers pronounce words
like these and those sometimes with [ð] and sometimes with [d]. They differ,
however, in the relative frequencies with which they use each variant, and those
differences correlate with their social class such that the lower class use the [d]
variant at higher rates than the working class who use it at higher rates than the
middle class. Labov also discovered that the phonological variation is shaped by
speaking styles. Thus, New Yorkers use the [d] variant more frequently when
engaged in casual conversation than when answering direct questions or reading
aloud. Moreover, the patterns of stratification by social class generally hold across
speaking styles. All New Yorkers adjust their usage according to the speech
context, and they move in the same direction while maintaining the social
distinctions. Such observations led Labov to develop the concept of the speech
community as a group “not defined by any marked agreement in the use of
language elements, so much as by participation in a shared set of norms” (1972b,
p. 120).

In addition to the Lower East Side community project, Labov carried out a side
study that examined the pronunciation of post-vocalic /r/ among employees at three
department stores. The research sought to test whether the strong pattern of
stratification found with this feature in the speech of members of different social
classes could also be observed in the usage of New Yorkers of a single social class
whose jobs caused them to interact with different social strata. He chose stores
catering to different classes of customers: Saks for the upper class, Macy’s for the
middle class, and S. Klein’s for the working class. He developed an innovative
procedure for gathering examples of natural speech. Posing as a customer he
entered each store and approached the staff to ask where he would find a
department he knew to be on the fourth floor. When the employee answered “fourth
floor,” Labov pretended not to hear which elicited a repetition of the phrase. In this
way, he collected tokens of the /r/ variable in two different phonological
environments (pre-consonantal in fourth and word-final in floor) and two stylistic
contexts (the initial utterance and the more careful repetition). He followed this
procedure for 264 employees in the three stores. The results confirmed his
hypothesis about sociolinguistic stratification as he found the highest rates of
dropping post-vocalic /r/ at S. Kleins and the lowest rates at Saks, with Macy’s in
between the two. In addition to providing a fresh perspective on class-based
variation, the study serves as a model for a useful methodology that is known as
the rapid and anonymous survey.

2.3 Empirical Foundations for a Theory of Language Change

With the Martha’s Vineyard and New York City studies, Labov introduced new
methods for studying language variation and change. These works were informed
by a conceptualization of language that recognizes the influence of both linguistic
and social structures. Working with their mentor Uriel Weinreich, Labov and a
fellow student, Marvin Herzog, elaborated this line of thinking about language in a
1968 paper that serves as a manifesto for the variationist endeavor.

Weinreich, Labov, and Herzog (1968) observe that dominant theories of language
perceive a tension between linguistic structure and variation. Language is thought
to stand as a fundamentally homogenous object, one that depends on speakers
sharing a set of consistent rules for phonology, grammar, etc. The fact that
speakers actually vary in their use of a language seems to challenge the assumed
uniformity of the underlying system. The resolution of this apparent paradox,
according to Weinreich, Labov, and Herzog (1968), lies in the notion of orderly
heterogeneity (p. 100), which holds that variable structures can nevertheless be
rule-governed. Labov’s research, especially his New York City study, gives ample
evidence that variation is not random but highly patterned. The idea that a
speaker’s language competence involves a command of heterogeneous structures
became a fundamental tenet of variationist sociolinguistics, a discipline that is in
large part devoted to uncovering the patterns characterizing such structures.

The 1968 paper also lays out a series of problems inherent in the study of language
change. These include the Transition Problem, which concerns how a language
passes from one stage to another, and the Evaluation Problem, which deals with
social perceptions of changes as they move through a speech community. The
greatest challenges stem from the Actuation Problem, which asks, “Why do
changes in a structural feature take place in a particular language at a given time,
but not in other languages with the same feature, or in the same language at other
times?” (Weinreich, Labov, & Herzog, 1968, p. 102). The statement of these
questions set an agenda for the variationist investigation of linguistic change.

3. Speech Styles
Sociolinguists explore variation across speakers and groups as well as within an
individual speaker’s repertoire. The former includes differences in social and
regional dialects, while the latter involves speaking styles. Labov pioneered the
variationist study of stylistic differences in his New York City project. The
methodological key to this endeavor is the sociolinguistic interview as a data
collection technique. Linguists seeking to document a person’s stylistic range face
a dilemma known as the Observer’s Paradox: “the aim of linguistic research in the
community must be to find out how people talk when they are not being
systematically observed; yet we can only obtain these data by systematic
observation” (Labov, 1972B, p. 209). Labov designed the sociolinguistic interview
as a means of mitigating this problem.

A typical sociolinguistic interview engages the subject in a range of speech tasks.

There are basic demographic questions as well as items that probe personal and
family background. Often interviewees are asked to read aloud prepared materials
such as story passages or word lists. The greatest challenge comes in capturing a
person’s most informal speech, the style they would use in casual conversation
with close friends. This style, which Labov calls the vernacular, is highly prized and
felt to represent the most systematic speech because it is less affected by
normative pressures such as concerns about correctness (Labov, 1972B, p. 208).
One technique that Labov developed to draw out the vernacular style was the
danger-of-death question, which asks speakers to discuss a time that their life was
under threat.

The stylistic variation revealed over the course of a sociolinguistic interview is often
as regular as the variation across groups of speakers categorized by class,
ethnicity, etc. In New York City, for example, Labov found the highest rates of
dropping post-vocalic /r/ in casual (vernacular) speech, while in careful speech
(e.g., answering typical interview questions) the rates were lower. Rates of /r/-
dropping were lower still when reading prose passages, and the lowest rates were
associated with reading words in a list. Labov accounted for such patterns of style
shifting with a framework of varying awareness. This model explained the
differences as a matter of how much attention a speaker pays to their speech. With
a phonological variable, the task of reading, especially pronouncing words from a
list, prompts people to attend carefully to their usage whereas they are more
concerned with what they say than with how they say it when telling a personal
narrative. Several competing models have challenged Labov’s account of style
shifting, and the contributions in Eckert and Rickford (2001) represent the diverse
perspectives on the matter.

4. Language Change
Labov has devoted much of his scholarly attention to the study of linguistic change.
He has investigated sound changes in many varieties of English, from Martha’s
Vineyard and New York to Philadelphia and Chicago. His Atlas of North American
English (Labov et al., 2006) records several examples of changes throughout the
continent. He has also sought to contribute to broader theoretical conversations
about language change, as seen in his three-volume Principles of Linguistic
Change (1994, 2001b, 2010a). This interest aligns easily with the variationist
paradigm because change and variation go hand in hand. Languages do not
typically change through the immediate replacement of one form with another, but
rather experience periods of variation where innovative forms compete with existing
ones before eventually replacing them.

4.1 Language Change in Progress

Labov pioneered the study of language change in progress in his Martha’s
Vineyard study (see section 2.1). He drew on the fundamental insight that change
could be inferred from comparing speakers of different ages. This apparent-
time reasoning assumes that the speech of 60-year-olds represents the language
of half a century ago, when those people were acquiring their linguistic habits.
Thus, by examining usage across generations at a particular point in time we gain a
window into the recent history of a speech community. The accuracy of conclusions
drawn on the basis of an apparent-time comparison rests on a person’s speech not
changing significantly over the course of their life. Fortunately, longitudinal studies
tracking speakers over time show that such linguistic stability generally holds, at
least as regards the kinds of speech features studied by Labov (see, e.g., Sankoff
& Blondeau, 2007).

Studying active changes opens new perspectives on the process that has
traditionally been observed only after the fact. Labov’s approach offers a detailed
view of how changes become embedded and spread within the language system
and the speech community. For example, in the case of a sound change such as
the fronting of /uw/ in Philadelphia, variationist methods reveal that the innovation
takes hold first in certain phonological environments (following coronal consonants
as in too, noon, do) before spreading to others. Social differentiation is also evident
for this change as women show more advanced fronting of the vowel than do men
(see Labov, 1990; Labov, Rosenfelder, & Fruehwald, 2013). In the study of sound
change, progress can be tracked in minute detail with acoustic measurements.
Thus, the frequencies of the first and second formant provide a useful corollary of
vowel height and frontness, respectively. Labov championed the introduction of
methods of acoustic analysis into sociolinguistic research, and Labov, Yaeger, and
Steiner (1972) stands as an influential early demonstration of their value in
explorations of sound change.

Linguistic variables, including those undergoing change, differ in the degree of

social awareness they bear. Some are highly salient to members of a speech
community, while others fly under the perceptual radar. Labov (1972B) identifies
three main types of variables related to this parameter. Those bearing overt
awareness, as shown, for example, in popular comments or imitations (e.g., “pahk
the cah in Hahvahd Yahd” for /r/-dropping in Boston), count as stereotypes in
Labov’s typology. Features that are differentiated socially and across speaking
styles but are not the subject of conscious awareness are markers. The raising of
/æ/ in New York City is such a variable, as Labov found it was stratified by social
class, with raising more common at the lower end of the socioeconomic scale, and
subject to style-shifting, with the highest rates of raising in casual speech. Labov’s
third type, indicators, are characterized by social differentiation but they do not vary
stylistically. In this way, they reflect some degree of group membership, but
speakers are wholly unaware of their presence in the speech community and do
not adjust their usage across discourse contexts. Some phonological mergers such
as the one affecting the back vowels of cot and caught operate as indicators.

Labov draws on this typology in his theorizing about the life cycle of linguistic
change (1972b, 178–180). Thus, he suggests that changes typically begin as
indicators when the innovative usage comes to be adopted by certain groups of
speakers. As the change becomes more firmly embedded in the community it
attracts some degree of social awareness and people vary their use of it across
styles, making it a marker. In some cases the level of awareness rises and the
innovative forms become objects of explicit stigma or prestige as stereotypes.
Varying degrees of salience also pertain to another distinction Labov proposes,
between change from below and change from above. The directions refer to
conscious awareness. Most changes operate below the level of awareness. A
change from above might involve the adoption of a prestige feature from outside
the speech community. Post-vocalic /r/ in New York City stands as a well-known
example. Until the middle of the 20th century, /r/-dropping was the norm in the
speech of New Yorkers of all social classes, but it has been losing ground since
that time. Labov’s research demonstrated that retaining /r/ was increasingly
common among younger speakers and that this tendency was stronger in the
middle class than the working class. The style-shifting evidence, which showed
higher levels of /r/ pronunciation in more careful styles, supported Labov’s
interpretation that this was an incoming prestige feature operating as a change
from above.
Over the course of his career, Labov has continued to refine and elaborate his
thinking on the social and linguistic forces that drive language change. Particularly
influential in this regard is his 2007 paper, where he describes the transmission of
change within a community through a process of incrementation, by which
“successive cohorts and generations of children advance the change beyond the
level of their caretakers and role models, and in the same direction over many
generations” (p. 346). This process stands in contrast to one of diffusion, which
involves change spreading from one community to another via contact between
adults. Labov's account is grounded in theories of language learning including the
social context of that learning (see discussion of gender differences in section 4.2).

4.2 Principles of Linguistic Change

Through the fieldwork he personally conducted and the larger projects he directed,
Labov has amassed a rich database of observations of language changes. He
draws on this material to formulate general principles governing linguistic change.
As a sociolinguist, Labov naturally explores both linguistic and social factors in
seeking to understand the change process. His contributions related to linguistic
factors are summarized in the first volume (1994) of his landmark
collection, Principles of Linguistic Change, while he takes up the social factors in
the second volume (2001b). Volume 3 (2010) explores “cognitive and cultural
factors” and illustrates the complex interaction of a range of influences on the
change process.

One outgrowth of Labov’s research on language change has been the refinement
of concepts developed originally in historical linguistics (see Gordon, 2016). For
example, Labov has documented several examples of phonological merger, the
process by which a phonemic distinction is neutralized in some environments or
lost altogether. Previous work on the subject (e.g., Hoenigswald, 1960) identified
various patterns of merger by comparing pre- and post-change stages, but the
study of sound change in progress opens new perspectives on what happens in
between, revealing how mergers can be driven by different mechanisms
(Labov, 1994, pp. 321–323). Labov’s research on mergers also identifies an
unanticipated situation involving a discrepancy between what speakers say and
what they hear. This scenario, known as near merger, describes the case of a
speaker who consistently produces a distinction between sounds but fails to
perceive that distinction and reports hearing the sounds as the same (Labov, 1994,
pp. 349–390; Labov, Yaeger. & Steiner, 1972, pp. 229–257). The concept of a near
merger can shed light on historical reports of sounds merging and later unmerging.
Such cases present a dilemma, because ordinarily, mergers cannot be undone
(see Labov, 1994, pp. 311–312, on Garde’s Principle). If, however, the reported
merger was actually a near merger, its reversal seems more plausible, because the
distinction was never fully lost in speakers’ production.

Chain-shifting is another type of sound change that has figured prominently in

Labov’s research agenda. A chain shift describes a coordinated series of two or
more changes, most commonly movements of vowels. Labov et al. (1972)
presented the first detailed account of one such change, a pattern that came to be
known as the Northern Cities Shift, which involves changes to six vowels including
the /ɔ/ of thought, the /ɑ/ of lot, and the /æ/ of trap. The chain of events related to
these vowels, according to Labov (e.g., 1994, p. 184), began with the raising and
fronting of /æ/, creating an opening in vowel space which /ɑ/ fronted to fill, thereby
creating another opening which /ɔ/ lowered and fronted to fill. Taking these
movements together with evidence of many other contemporary and historical
shifts in English and other languages, Labov (1994) proposes several principles
that describe general patterns of chain-shifting. For example, he notes that
peripheral vowels (such as the English tense vowels) tend to become less open or
rise in vowel space, while non-peripheral vowels (such as the English lax vowels)
tend to move in the opposite direction.

Labov takes a similar approach in his consideration of the role of social factors on
language change. He has tended to frame his work in this area around broad
demographic categories like social class, ethnicity, and gender. One general
tendency he postulated with regard to social class is the Curvilinear Principle:
“Linguistic change from below originates in a central social group, located in the
interior of the socioeconomic hierarchy” (2001b, p. 188). This principle, which is
supported by evidence from his studies of New York City and Philadelphia, serves
as a corrective to popular beliefs about language change starting among the less
educated lower classes through ignorance or among the elites as an attempt to
separate themselves linguistically from the hoi polloi.

With respect to gender, one of Labov’s key observations is the tendency for women
to lead in language change (e.g., 2001b, pp. 279–93). This is the case with the
fronting of /uw/ in Philadelphia, where women shift the vowel more extremely than
do men, and many other such examples are reported in languages around the
world. The usual quantitative pattern shows men roughly one generation behind
women in their adoption of linguistic innovations. This observation has led Labov to
posit an explanation related to language acquisition and gender asymmetries in
child-rearing duties. Because women in most societies take primary responsibility in
caring for children, their usage serves as a linguistic model more than men’s.
Initially, both boys and girls adopt innovations at levels consistent with their
mothers’ usage, but incrementation (see section 4.1) operates differently for each
gender and girls advance the change beyond their mothers’ level, while boys
advance it much less, resulting in the one-generation lag (Labov, 2001B, pp. 446–
465; Tagliamonte & D’Arcy, 2009).

The principles that Labov has proposed have held with varying degrees of
generality. Counterexamples certainly exist for many of the principles. For example,
in some varieties of English (e.g., New Zealand), the lax (non-peripheral) front
vowels /æ/, /ɛ/, and /ɪ/ have raised, not lowered as Labov’s chain-shifting principle
would dictate. Similarly, there are several reported cases of men leading linguistic
changes, including the diphthong raising Labov found on Martha’s Vineyard. Labov
acknowledges that his principles are not without exception. Their value lies not so
much in establishing hard and fast rules as in stating tendencies, and in so doing,
Labov has helped to clarify many issues related to the sociolinguistic study of
language change and has effectively shaped the broader research agenda in the
field for many decades.

5. African American English

Labov has carried out research on a number of varieties of English during his
career, but perhaps nowhere has his work had more wide-ranging impact than in
his studies of African American English (AAE). Early on, his interest in this topic led
him to direct a project in Harlem that focused on language use among African
American children. Labov et al. (1968) offer a complete account of that research,
and Labov collected many insights from the project and related work in Language
in the Inner City (1972a). He has returned to central questions about the structure
and history of AAE in later publications (e.g., Labov, 1998). Beyond the scholarly
contributions, Labov’s work on AAE has sought to inform broader societal
conversations about this and other non-standard dialects (e.g., Labov, 1982).

Dialectologists and other linguists had investigated African American speech before
the 1960s, but the Harlem study stands apart from earlier work in its scale and its
implementation of the variationist methods that Labov pioneered in his Lower East
Side study (Labov, 1966). The main fieldwork in Harlem involved recorded
interviews with over 200 young people (mostly boys ages 10 to 17 years). While
some of these were one-on-one interviews, the team found that small-group
sessions were useful for putting children at ease and thus for eliciting casual
speech. The analysis considered phonological variables, including some like post-
vocalic /r/ examined in Labov’s earlier work. They give special attention to exploring
the complex variation associated with the simplification of final consonant clusters,
the phenomenon heard in virtually all varieties of English, whereby final /t/ and /d/
may be omitted at the end of words when preceded by another consonant
(e.g., west[wɛs] in west side; hand [hæn] in hand stand). They also studied several
grammatical features of AAE, including the rules of negation that generated the
memorable example sentence: “It ain’t no cat can’t get in no coop” (Labov et
al., 1968, p. 267). The scope of the project even extends to analyzing the broader
socio-cultural context of AAE use. In this regard, they describe various speech
events including the exchange of ritualized insults known as sounding or playing
the dozens.

Drawing on results from the Harlem project, Labov (1969) presented a landmark
study of copula deletion, the grammatical feature of variably
omitting is and are (e.g., he __ wild; you __ watching). He spelled out the
constraints on deletion and showed how rates of deletion varied by grammatical
context. For example, it is more common to omit the is/are before a progressive
participle than before a noun phrase complement. Seeking to integrate such
observations into contemporary syntactic theory, Labov developed the notion of
variable rules. Whereas rules in mainstream generative grammar were thought to
operate categorically, Labov proposed rules that were applied optionally, at
frequencies determined by variable constraints related to phonological and
grammatical environments. The variable rule concept did not gain much traction
among generative syntacticians or phonologists, though some of the core elements
are reflected in Optimality Theory. Within sociolinguistics, the idea had greater
influence. Cedergren and Sankoff (1974) developed Labov’s insights into a
complete mathematical model that resulted in VARBRUL, a statistics program for
calculating how various factors influence the application of a variable rule. The
formalism associated with variables rules has fallen out of favor though the basic
reasoning underlying the concept remains a core tenet of variationist
sociolinguistics (see Fasold, 1991).

As Labov (1969) observes, the constraints on the deletion of the copula in AAE
pattern very closely with those that govern copula contraction in all varieties of
English. Thus both deletion and contraction are disallowed at the end of sentences
(e.g., We know where she is, but not * We know where she __ / * We know where
she’s). These facts led Labov to consider the relationship between these
grammatical phenomena and suggest that deletion could represent a kind of further
step in the process of reduction that also produces contraction.

More broadly such observations raise questions about the relationship between
Standard English and AAE. One of the central debates in this regard is whether the
highly distinctive features of AAE represent a separate linguistic system in the mind
of a speaker similar to how bilinguals hold two different grammars in their heads.
Labov (1998) argues for such co-existent systems whereby an AAE speaker’s
mental grammar contains both a “General English” element and an “African
American” one. These seemingly abstract questions have relevance in scholarly
debates about the historical origins of AAE. Some researchers have noted
similarities between grammatical features found in AAE and those in regional
dialects like Irish English and have argued that AAE inherited them through dialect
contact in colonial America. Other scholars argue that distinctive features in AAE
reflect its roots in a creole language similar to Jamaican Patois. Labov favors this
creolist hypothesis, citing data related to copula deletion among other evidence
where the AAE patterns match closely grammatical constraints found in Caribbean
creoles (1998).

Labov’s research on AAE has had ramifications well beyond the field of linguistics.
The Harlem study was funded by the federal government’s Office of Education
because it was designed to have applications to the teaching of reading. Given the
paltry level of basic knowledge about AAE grammar and phonology at the time, a
thorough account of the linguistic structures based on authentic speech within the
community was needed to inform the development of strategies to improve literacy.
While the report of the Harlem project (Labov et al., 1968) did not dwell on such
implications of the work, Labov has since devoted much of his research attention to
these issues. He has shown how vernacular speech patterns affect reading
proficiency and has applied this knowledge to the design of more effective
pedagogical tools. He took up these questions in the opening chapter of Labov
(1972A), and more recent empirical investigations are reported by Labov and Baker
(2010). Labov (2010B) frames the problem of reading failure in a wider social and
historical context of residential segregation. Tagliamonte (2016, pp. 125–128)
reviews Labov’s efforts in the design of curricular materials.

The challenges that inner-city African American children face in school are
compounded by attitudes commonly held by teachers and other educators who
view AAE as a hindrance to academic success. Early in his career, Labov took on
established thinking among educational psychologists promoting a cultural deficit
theory. Essentially these scholars argued that African American children are raised
in a culturally impoverished environment lacking sufficient verbal stimulation, and
that this situation stunts not only their language development but their cognitive
growth as well. Labov countered this view in his essay “The logic of nonstandard
English,” which he first presented at a conference in 1968 and included as a
chapter in Labov (1972A). The work was reprinted for a general audience in
the Atlantic Monthly under the more pointed title “Black Intelligence and Academic
Ignorance” (1972c). Labov demonstrated how the claim of verbal deprivation
stemmed from researchers’ lack of understanding of AAE and ultimately their
unwillingness to consider that nonstandard dialects have rules and that these
linguistic systems serve well the complex communication needs of their users.

In 1977, Labov again rose in defense of AAE-speaking children who were

mistreated by the educational system (see Labov, 1982). He and other linguists, led
by Geneva Smitherman, served as expert witnesses in a legal trial in Ann Arbor,
Michigan. The case stemmed from a complaint filed by parents claiming the local
school failed to take into account the children’s cultural background as a way of
helping them succeed academically. Language took center stage in the trial and
Labov and others testified about the structure of AAE, demonstrating that ignorance
of such linguistic structure leads teachers to misjudge the intellectual abilities of the
children just as the deficit theory psychologists had earlier. The judge sided with the
parents (and the linguists) and ordered, among other remedies, training for
teachers so they might appreciate the phonological and grammatical patterns of
AAE. Unfortunately, this problem of devaluing people based on their language has
proven intractable over the years. The national uproar that followed a 1996
proposal by the Oakland, California school board to recognize Ebonics (another
label for AAE) as the language of many of their students illustrates how dominant
the stigma surrounding AAE is (see, e.g., Baugh, 2000). As it happens, when this
Ebonics controversy arose, Labov was once again called to testify about the
linguistic facts, this time before the U.S. Senate.

Labov’s efforts to counter popular misconceptions about AAE reflect a commitment

to promoting social justice that has motivated much of his work in sociolinguistics.
He encapsulated his thinking on the matter in two general principles. The “principle
of error correction” holds that scientists who encounter widespread beliefs that they
know to be invalidated by their data have an obligation to bring such errors to the
attention “of the widest possible audience” (Labov, 1982, p. 172). The “principle of
debt incurred” dictates that linguists should use the knowledge they gain for the
benefit of the speech communities they study (Labov, 1982, p. 173). These
principles have served as a call to action for sociolinguists promoting outreach
beyond the academy (e.g., Wolfram, 1998).

6. Discourse Analysis
While the bulk of Labov’s research across his career investigates small units of
language—sounds and grammatical structures—he has maintained an interest in
the study of larger stretches of discourse. On the surface, this work in discourse
analysis may seem tangential to Labov’s main research program, but in fact, it
pursues the same general goals and operates by similar principles. If, as Labov
holds, sociolinguists are fundamentally driven by “the need to understand why
anyone says anything” (1972b, p. 207), they must be willing to look beyond the
sentence level.

Within discourse studies, Labov’s strongest influence has come in the area of
narrative analysis. This line of research developed organically from his
sociolinguistic projects. The interviews he conducted for his studies of phonological
and grammatical variation sought to elicit personal stories of meaningful life
experiences (e.g. a time when one’s life was in danger). When he examined these
stories, he began to notice patterns. In 1967, he co-authored a paper with Joshua
Waletzky that set out to define what makes a narrative a narrative and to sketch the
core components of narrative structure. They observe, for example, that a
successful narrative is not simply a retelling of events but must involve an
“evaluation” element, in which the narrator reveals their attitude about the events
and their sense of what is important in the tale. Labov and Waletzky’s framework
derives from the analysis of hundreds of narratives recorded in sociolinguistic
interviews (from Labov, 1963, 1966, and Labov et al., 1968). The research broke
new ground in part because they studied the spontaneous narratives of everyday
people representing a range of backgrounds, whereas much of the prior research in
this area had examined stories from literature or oral traditional performances.
Labov has refined and elaborated the model in subsequent publications (e.g.,
1972a, 2013). In 1997, the Journal of Narrative and Life History marked the thirtieth
anniversary of the original Labov and Waletzky article with a special issue featuring
critical reflections on the work from a range of scholars (Bamberg, 1997).

The work on narrative illustrates one avenue Labov has explored in his pursuit of
identifying the principles underlying discourse structure. In other research, he has
focused on how speakers accomplish social actions through their talk. This
question drove the analysis presented in Therapeutic Discourse (1977), which
Labov co-wrote with David Fanshel, a professor of social work. This study
examines in great detail the language of a therapy session between a patient and
her psychotherapist. Labov and Fanshel look beyond the words that are spoken to
consider what was intended and how the message was received. As they view it,
“conversation is not a chain of utterances, but rather a matrix of utterances and
actions bound together by a web of understandings and reactions” (1977, p. 30). In
this way conversation operates by an unspoken code of conduct that Labov and
Fanshel seek to bring to light. They note, for example, that utterances phrased as
questions can function as requests for action (e.g., “When do you plan to come
home?”), and they formulate a “rule for indirect requests” that spells out the
conditions under which such an interpretation applies (1977, p. 82). In the
statement of such rules we see parallels to Labov’s other research where the
development of general principles serves as an overarching goal (e.g., 1994,
2001b, 2010a).

7. Critical Analysis of Scholarship

Labov’s influence on sociolinguistics is unparalleled. The variationist approach that
he developed was not created in a vacuum but rather builds on existing scholarly
traditions within linguistics and in adjacent disciplines such as anthropology.
Nevertheless, Labov introduced new methods of analyzing the complex picture of
sociolinguistic variation that appears in every speech community. He also
developed a theoretical framework to interpret the complex patterns emerging from
variationist analyses. Weinreich et al. (1968) first laid out the foundations of the
variationist program, and Labov’s later work has continued to explore dimensions of
a general theory of language variation and change (see especially 1972b, 1994,
2001b, 2010a).

Any researcher who puts forward bold claims on a wide range of scholarly topics is
bound to meet with criticism, and Labov is certainly no exception to this rule. For
example, his thinking on style-shifting has been challenged by several scholars
(see Eckert & Rickford, 2001), as has his work in narrative analysis (see
Bamberg, 1997) and aspects of his AAE research (see Wolfram, 2007). In the last
decade or so, a more sustained critique of Labov’s approach has emerged in the
form of “third-wave” variationist studies. This label comes from Eckert’s (2012)
delineation of trends within the field. The first wave of variationist studies, according
to Eckert, produced large-scale surveys like Labov’s New York City project (1966)
that explored correlations between linguistic forms and broad demographic
categories like class, ethnicity, and sex. In the second wave, more attention was
paid to social distinctions with local relevance, and the research had more of an
ethnographic orientation. Labov’s Martha’s Vineyard study (1963) represents a
precursor to this kind of study that grew more popular in the 1980s. Eckert’s third
wave marks a stronger break with variationist tradition by focusing on social action
rather than social structures. While previous research framed linguistic variants as
markers of static social categories (e.g., high rates of post-vocalic /r/ retention mark
a New Yorker as middle class or higher), third-wave variationists view linguistic
variables as resources that speakers draw on to construct social meaning through
their interactions. In this way, such research aligns with and draws inspiration from
linguistic anthropology, while at the same time relying on a fundamentally
variationist methodology.

The variationist sociolinguistics that Labov pioneered has grown tremendously over
the half century of its existence. It represents the dominant approach to
sociolinguistics in North America and the United Kingdom and perhaps elsewhere.
The annual NWAV (New Ways of Analyzing Variation) conference has showcased
variationist research since 1972, and in 2011 inspired a sister conference, NWAV
Asia-Pacific, that features sociolinguistic studies in that region. The
journal Language Variation and Change was founded specifically to promote
variationist research, though this work now regularly appears in a range of venues.

Links to Digital Material

Essay by William Labov (with audio). (2009) A life of learning: Six people I have
learned from. American Council of Learned Societies.

Interview with William Labov (2013, January 24), American English is changing
fast. The David Parkman Show.Find this resource:
Interview with William Labov (2006, February 16) American accent undergoing
Great Vowel Shift. All Things Considered.Find this resource:
Video tribute to William Labov. (2016, June 20). William Labov: 2013 Laureate of
the Franklin Institute in Computer and Cognitive Science. Franklin Institute

William Labov Home Page. University of Pennsylvania, Linguistics Laboratory.

William Labov. (2014). Oxford Bibliographies.

Further Reading
Gordon, M. J. (2006). Interview with William Labov. Journal of English
Linguistics, 34, 332–351.Find this resource:
Gordon, M. J. (2013). Labov: A guide for the perplexed. London: Bloomsbury.Find
this resource:
Hazen, K. (2011). Labov: Language variation and change. In R. Wodak, B.
Johnstone, & P. E. Kerswill (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of sociolinguistics (pp. 24–
39). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.Find this resource:
Koerner, K. (1991). Toward a history of modern sociolinguistics. American
Speech, 66, 57–70.Find this resource:
Labov, W. (1966). The social stratification of English in New York City. Washington,
DC: Center for Applied Linguistics.Find this resource:
Labov, W. (2006). The social stratification of English in New York City (2d ed.).
Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.Find this resource:
Labov, W. (1972b). Sociolinguistic patterns. Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press.Find this resource:
Labov, W., Ash, S., & Boberg, C. (2006). Atlas of North American English:
Phonology and sound change. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Find this resource:
Shuy, R. W. (1990). A brief history of American sociolinguistics, 1949–1989. In F.
P. Dinneen, & E. F. K. Koerner (Eds.), North American contributions to the history
of linguistics (pp. 183–209). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Find this resource:
Tagliamonte, S. A. (2016). Making waves: The story of variationist sociolinguistics.
Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.Find this resource:
Weinreich, U., Labov, W., & Herzog, M. (1968). Empirical foundations for a theory
of language change. In W. Lehmann, & Y. Malkiel (Eds.), Directions for historical
linguistics (pp. 98–188). Austin: University of Texas Press.Find this resource:

References
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Bloomfield, L. (1933). Language. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.Find this
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Cedergren, H., & Sankoff, D. (1974). Variable rules: Performance as a statistical
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Matthew J. Gordon
University of Missouri