Some Findings

and
Yesicha Issues
Ryona
Some Findings and Issues
 An Early Study
 New York City
 Norwich and Reading
 A Variety of Studies
 Belfast
 Controversies
An Early Study
An Early Study
New York City
 Labov’s work in New York City is usually regarded as setting the
pattern for quantitative studies of linguistic variation. Labov
raised many of the issues that are still addressed and devised
many methods for tackling these issues. One of his earliest
studies of linguistic variation was a small-scale investigation of
the (r) variable (Labov, 1966).
 Labov believed that r-pronunciation after vowels was being
reintroduced into New York speech from above, was a feature
of the speech of younger people rather than of older people,
was more likely to occur as the formality level in speech
increased, and would be more likely at the ends of words (floor)
than before consonants (fourth).
New York City
Table 7.4 shows the incidence of r use that Labov found among
individuals employed in the three stores (Labov, 1972b, p. 51). The
table shows that 32 and 31 percent of the personnel approached in
Saks and Macy’s respectively used r in all possible instances but only
17 percent did so in S. Klein; 79 percent of the seventy-one
employees in S. Klein who were approached did not use r at all, but
only 38 percent of the sixty-eight employees approached in Saks and
49 percent of the 125 employees approached in Macy’s were r-less.
New York City
Figure 7.1 Percentage of (r); [r] in first
(I) and second (II) utterances of fourth
(white) and floor (solid) in three New
York City department stores
Source: based on Labov (1972b, p. 52)
New York City
Labov claims that today in New York City pronunciations
of words like car and guard with the r pronounced are
highly valued. They are associated with the upper middle
class even though members of that class do not always
use such pronunciations, nor do they use them on all
occasions.
We should note that r-pronunciation has not always been
highly valued in New York City. New York City was r
pronouncing in the eighteenth century but became r-less
in the nineteenth, and r-lessness predominated until
World War II.
At that time r-pronunciation became prestigious again,
possibly as a result of large population movements to the
city; there was a shift in attitude toward r-pronunciation,
from apparent indifference to a widespread desire to
adopt such pronunciation.
New York City
Norwich and Reading
Trudgill (1974) investigated sixteen different
phonological variables in his work in Norwich, England. He
demonstrates, in much the same way as Labov does in
New York City, how use of the variants is related to
social class and level of formality.
Trudgill’s analysis of the variables (ng), (t), and (h) shows,
for example, that the higher the social class the more
frequent is the use of the [º], [t], and [h] variants in
words like singing, butter, and hammer rather than the
corresponding [n], [?], and Ø variants.
Norwich and Reading
 However, whereas members of the lower working class almost
invariably say singin’, they do not almost invariably say ’ammer.
Moreover, although members of the lower working class say
singin’ when they are asked to read a word list containing words
ending in -ing, they pronounce the (ng) with the [º] variant on
the majority of occasions.
 The data also suggest that, so far as the (ng) variable is
concerned, its variant use is related not only to social class but
also to gender, with females showing a greater
 preference for [º] than males, regardless of social-class
membership.
A Variety of Studies
 The Detroit study (Shuy et al., 1968) and Wolfram’s follow-up to
that study (1969) have some findings which are worthy of
comment in the present context. For example, the Detroit study
investigated the use of multiple negation as a linguistic variable in
that city.
 The study showed that there is a very close relationship between
the use of multiple negation and social class. Whereas upper
middleclass speakers used such negation on about 2 percent of
possible occasions, the corresponding percentages for the other
three social classes were as follows: lower middle class, 11
percent; upper working class, 38 percent; and lower working class,
70 percent.
A Variety of Studies
 From such figures we can make a further observation: it is not that
members of the upper middle class always avoid multiple negation
and members of the lower working class always employ it; it may be
our impression that such is the case, but the facts do not confirm
that impression. No class uses one variant of the variable to the
exclusion of the other, regardless of circumstances.
 For example, as the situation becomes more formal, an individual’s
linguistic usage comes closer to standard usage, and the higher the
social class of the speaker, the more standard too is the speaker’s
behavior. Moreover, children are less standard in their linguistic
behavior than adults with similar social backgrounds, and males are
less standard than females.
Belfast
What we see in these working-class communities in Belfast, then,
is that the stronger the social network, the greater the use of
certain linguistic features of the vernacular. The results support
Milroy’s (1980, p. 43) hypothesis that ‘a closeknit network has the
capacity to function as a norm enforcement mechanism; there is
no reason to suppose that linguistic norms are exempted from this
process.
Moreover, a closeknit network structure appears to be very
common. . . In low status communities.
Controversies
In a previous section I noted that linguistic variables may show
correlations not only with social variables but also with other linguistic
features, i.e., they may be linguistically constrained too, as with the
deletion of l in Montreal.
Controversies
Constraints may also mix phonological and grammatical
features. Wolfram (1969, pp. 59–69) explains a situation in
Detroit in which black speakers also delete final stops in
clusters, but in this case make a distinction according to
the grammatical function of the stop. In the final cluster in
cold the d has no independent grammatical function – it is
part of a single unit of meaning – but in burned it marks
past tense and is grammatically the -ed ending, and
therefore has its own meaning.