Case Studies of major linguists
1- William Labov
2- Peter Trudgill
William Labovs biography
William Labov
His name
Rutherford , New Jersey , 1927
His birth
Discipline of variationist
.Sociolinguistics
His field
Studies at Harvard , Columbia ( His education
1948 )
An industrial chemist
First ( 1949 1961 )
He became a linguist
Then
MA ( 1963 ) and PhD ( 1964 ) at
Columbia Uni : Studying
verities of English in New York
.City
.Cont
an enormously original and
According to people
influential figure who has
created much of the
methodology" of sociolinguistics
Cont.
He became a professor later in ( 1971 ) at University
of Pennsylvania .
Then he became a director of the university's
Linguistics Laboratory (1977).
Marthas Vineyard study ( 1963 )
It is an island about 3 miles off New
England on the US East Coast .
Permanent population about : 6000 .
In Summer : 40,000 visitors .
Eastern part of it called Down Island
and favoured by the visitors .
Western Up Island has more original
inhabitants , residents and it is strictly
rural , which refers to a geographic area
that is located outside cities and towns.
Marthas Vineyard demographics
The permanent population consists of Yankees
( descendants of early settlers ) .
Portuguese ( recent immigrants ) and native Americans
, especially around Chilmark , because of the fish
industry : 2.5% of population that still involved in
fishing .
Other islanders considered as independent , skillful ,
physically strong .
Labovs study
He focused on pronunciation of /au/ : out , house , how
and /ai/ : while , pie , tie .
He noticed that locals had a tendency to pronounce these
diphthongs with a more central start point
( i , a ) .
He collected date by interviewing 69 informants , talking
randomly by using words with these vowels .
He got some recordings of school pupils reading text.
He brought data from 30s of Linguistic Atlas of New
England .
He said about the Degree of centralization that is fairly
subjective .
Initial results :
The usage of the centralized vowel against various
factors :
Age.
Population group.
Occupation.
Location .
Summary the results :
Centralization most occurred in age group ( 31-45 ) .
Origin : By the Yankees . ( less )
Occupation : Fishermen , less in people working in
tourist industry .
Location : Up islands residents around Chilmark .
How?
Labovs
explained how the centralizing tendency was actually
diminishing at time of 1930s survey , but it remind as a dialect in the
middle-aged rural fishermen.
The
factor tourism had an effect on unconscious change in accent among
those who most closely identified with the island .
Labov
tested his theory by assessing informants attitudes and feelings
about the island .
By asking : Why 31-45 years old most marked groups?
The younger ones were unsure and the older ones were more set in their
ways .
Why is this study significant?
Because dialect studies had focused on rural
speakers and had ignored social factors .
The Urban accents were thought to be too diverse
and too heterogeneous to study .
Labovs conclusion was that social factors were in
fact significant and important .
Social Stratification of (r) in
New York City
William Labov worked on a classic study on social
stratification for New York City speech. He was able
to illustrate the social stratification of (r) in N.Y.C.
department stores. The variants of the phonological
variable (r) are either presence or absence of postvocalic /r/. That is, in expressions such as fourth
floor, whose pronunciation was tested by Labov, /r/
was either pronounced or omitted.
. Historically, New York City speech had been
known as r-less, i.e. it featured a non-rhotic accent.
However, the general attitude towards this accent
feature was rather negative and the pronunciation
of /r/ seems to have been reintroduced to New
York City speech. Labov found that in New York
City the pronunciation of /r/ occurred and its
frequency of use depended on the speakers
membership to particular socioeconomic status
groups, i.e. social classes
Three Large
Department Stores
Differential ranking
Location
Advertising
Price of goods and emphasis on price
Physical plant
Saks Fifth Avenue (Highest)
Macys (Middle)
S. Klein (Lowest)
Gathering Data Through Observation
Tape recorded interviews
Speech is formal
Alternatives
Natural social context
No explicit observation
Overall Stratification of (r)
Three Categories
All (r-1)
Some (r-1)
No (r-1)
Results
62% Saks
51% Macys
20% Kleins
Emphatic Results
(r-1) is most appropriate for emphatic speech
Linguistic security
Result
The results illustrated that (r) in New York City was
stratified by class. The pronunciation of /r/
depended on the social-class of the employees:
Those with higher socioeconomic status pronounced
/r/ more frequently than those with lower
socioeconomic status.
Q. Give a similar situation where linguistic variance
associated with socioeconomic factor occurs in KSA ?
Peter Trudgill
Trudgill Biography:
Born in 7 November 1943.
He is a sociolinguist, academic and author.
He was born in Norwich, England, where he
attended the City of Norwich School from
1955.
Trudgill studied modern languages at Kings
Colllege, Cambridge and obtained a PhD from
the University of Edinburgh .
He become a professor of sociolinguistics at
the University of Essex and retires in 2005.
Norwich speech was studied by Peter Trudgill
in the 1970s to find out how and why people's
ways of speaking varied.
Trudgill studies
One of the variables Trudgill studied was the final consonant in words like
walking, running.
For Example: In standard British English, the sound spelled-ng is a velar
nasal.
In Norwich,however, the pronunciation waikin', talkin' is frequently heard.
Trudgill notes that this feature is not unique to Norwich:
"nearly everywhere in the Eng- speaking world we find this alternation
between higher-class formal ng and lower class informal n. it goes back to
fact that in Old English (and later) there where two forms, a gerund ending
in ing ( walking is good for you) and a present participle ending in end
(he was walking). The end form was the ancestor of n' and ing
(obviously) of ing.
The two merged though the storing out of the two forms in terms of
prestige and "correctness" is something which occurred in the last 300
years. The famous "hunrin' shootin' of upper class Edwardians shows just
how recent this storing out has been.
Trudgills study discovered the following
In all social classes, the more careful the speech, the more likely
people were say walking rather than walkin'.
The proportion of walkin' type forms was higher in lower social
classes.
The nonstandard in' forms occurred much more often in men's
speech than in women's, and this was true for all social classes.
When women were questioned about what they thought they
were saying, they tended to say they used the standard ing
forms more often than they really did.
When men were questioned about what they thought they were
saying, they tended to say they used the nonstandard in' forms
more often than they really did.
* Trudgill's figures for social class and sex differences
in the use of the standard, prestige ing form in
Norwich when people used a formal style of speaking
are as follows:
(-ng) in Norwich by social class and sex for Formal
style .
* Linguistic Insecurity:
Real pronunciation vs. perceived pronunciation
Seeking the prestigious pronunciation
Consequence of linguistic insecurity
More studied:
Prestigious pronunciations:
Tune, student, music
These words have variants in Norwich: ju: et u:
tju:n (considered more prestigious)
tu:n (considered less prestigious)
Two steps in this study:
Trudgill interpretation (1)
Women:
are more preoccupied with the desire to adopt what is promoted as a more socially
acceptable behavior, in this case, language.
" women are more likely to have social class aspirations than men"
Men:
Do not tend to desire to adopt what is promoted as a more socially acceptable
behavior, in this case, language.
Trudgill interpretation (2):
Linguistic security vs. insecurity.
The anxiety experienced by speakers and writers who believe that their use of
language does not conform to the principles and practices of (e.g. Standard
English).
Thank you !
Done by :
Naeemah Al-Sharikh.
Bashayar Al-Malkey .
Bashayar Al-Ammari.
