Chapter 7: Correlational Sociolinguistic Studies

Fischer (1958)

• Variable studied: (ing) and [in’]

• Sample: 24 children (12 boys and 12 girls) aged 3-6 and 7-10 in New England

  • Included in the sample was a ‘model’ boy who was described as working well in school, popular, thoughtful, considerate, and a ‘typical’ boy described as strong, mischievous, unafraid of being caught

• Method: sociolinguistic interview of 3 separate tasks

  • Formal TAT task (making up a story)

  • Less formal questionnaire (older children)

  • Informal interview (subset of older group)

• Analysis

  • Divided children into who used more/less (ing) than [in’] and used a chi-squared test

• Results

  • In the formal situation, boys used [in’] more than girls (more equally divided in chi-squared test, girls more skewed toward formal)

    • 7 of 12 boys used [in’]

    • 2 out of 12 girls used [in’]

  • The ‘typical’ boy used [in’] more than the ‘model’ boy

    • Model boy showed overt prestige, typical showed covert prestige

    • Model boy started to use [in’] as the formality of the task decreased

  • Children of a lower SEC favored [in’]

    • Results in this category were less significant due to small homogeneous sample

    • In the case of this speech community, SEC was not much of a factor

  • Children in the most formal task started to use [in’] as they relaxed more

    • Describing everyday activities, using less formal verbs

• Conclusion

  • Choice between (ing) and [in’] is related to sex, class, personality, formality, and verb

  • Fischer calls (ing) and [in’] socially conditioned or socio-symbolic variants associated with different social functions

Labov (1966/72): department store

• Variable studied: (r)-deletion in NYC

• Sample: 264 employees from 3 NYC department stores associated with different SECs

  • Saks 5th Avenue (UMC)

  • Macy’s (LMC)

  • S. Klein (WC)

• Method: Rapid & anonymous study

  • Asked employees for items he knew to be on the fourth floor

  • Once the employee answered, he pretended he didn’t hear and asked them to repeat to elicit a careful repetition of the phrase

  • Coded presence (r-1) or absence (r-0) of /r/ in 4 conditions

    • Pre-consonantal (fourth) vs. final (floor)

    • First response (less careful) vs. second response after repetition (more careful)

  • Also coded independent variables

    • Store 

    • Floor of store

    • Age, sex, racial, and linguistic background of employee

    • Employee job (floorwalker, sales assistant, cashier, etc.)

• Results

  • Restored /r/ was closely correlated with

    • Higher class stores (Saks/Macy’s)

    • Higher floors

    • Higher-status jobs

    • Word-final position (floor)

    • Second response

  • Older people had more /r/ deletion in Saks, while the opposite in Macy’s

• Conclusion

  • Members of highest and lowest social groups do not change their pronunciation after it becomes fixed in adolescence

  • Sometimes middle-class social groups change their speech potentially due to social aspirations

Labov (1966/72): Lower East Side

• Variables: /r/ vocalization of non-pre-vocalic /r/ (start, force, etc), tensing and raising of short-a in words like “bath” and raising of /oh/ in words like “thought” and “cloth,” stopping of /th/ in words like thin (thin vs. tin), and of /th/ in words like “this” (this vs. dis)

• Sample: random sample of 70 Euro-American residents of the Lower East Side

• IV: age, sex, ethnicity, SEC

• Method: sociolinguistic interview

  • Interviewed each member of the sample by shifting from the most formal (D’) to most casual (A) interview style

• Results

  • Found that the group displayed orderly heterogeneity which correlated with SEC and speech style

    • Standard variants more frequent among higher SEC and most formal speech styles

• Conclusion

  • Variation is heterogeneous across a community

  • Orderly heterogeneity reflects the rules and constraints that govern speech production

  • Exception: hypercorrection

    • In the most formal styles, the second-highest SEC used more standard variants than the highest in order to outperform them as they are more focused on their speech, and are aware of the social value of /r/ pronunciation

Trudgill (1974)

• Variables: (ing), (t) glottalling, and (h) dropping

• Sample: 5 SEC groups in Norwich, England

• Method: sociolinguistic interview

  • Same as Labov in NYC, how variant use is related to SEC & formality level

• Results

  • The higher social class used the standard variants more (ng), (t), and (h)

  • Lower working class almost always used the [in] variable, but not always the (h) dropping one

    • Used (ng) more when asked to read a word list

  • (ing) variable is also related gender

    • Females prefer the standard (ng) over men bc they are more sensitive to social value of overt prestige of standard (regardless of SEC)

  • Orderly heterogeneity in a different speech community

  • Follow-up analysis of Trudgill’s own pronunciation with each informant showed that the more an informant used stops, the more he did

    • Convergent accommodation

  • When style is kept constant, LWC is more likely to use the nonstandard variant

  • Middle middle class us (ing) in the most formal styles but relax in the casual ones

• Conclusion

  • The use of standard variants shows stable variation correlated with gender and SEC 

Cheshire (1978)

• Variable: Extension 3rd singular verb (-s) ending into non 3sg endings (ex: I knows instead of I know)

• Sample: 13 boys and 12 girls aged 9-17 from 3 groups

  • All-male group

  • Small 3 boy group

  • All-female group

• Method: participant observation over 8 months

  • Created an Index of Vernacular Culture (IVC) based on 3 variables

    • Peer-group status 

    • Toughness

    • Ambition

• Results

  • Boys: IVC directly correlated with use of nonstandard (s)

  • Girls: ‘good girls’ used standard more than ‘other girls’

    • Decreased nonstandard use more than boys in formal interviews

  • Stable variation: non-standard variants are still used despite their stigmatization and correction in schools

  • Vernacular culture was more important for boys than for girls

• Conclusion

  • The use of non-standard (s) shows stable variation in boys and girls from Reading as they use it despite its stigmatization

Wolfram (1969)

• Variable: various grammatical and phonological features of African American English

• Sample: 48 black participants & 12 white participants

• IV: social class, gender, age, and racial origin

• Method: Sociolinguistic interview

• Results

  • Social status was closely correlated with linguistic differences

  • Women used more standard language than men

  • Older subjects used less stigmatized forms

  • Grammatical variables had sharp stratification with binary division between WC and MC speech

  • Phonological variants showed gradient stratification with more unclear division

Jahangiri (1980)

• Variable: vowel assimilation from [e] to [o] in Tehran Persian

• Sample: 40 speakers (20 male 20 female)

• IV: education level

• Method: sociolinguistic interview

  • Participants were divided into groups based on education 

• Results

  • Very little overlap between groups or specific gender

  • All members of university-level male and female group used less assimilation than of the next group (secondary), and those less than the next group (primary) and so on

  • Males always overlapped with the next lowest female group

• Conclusion

  • Sociolinguistic variation extends into non-western societies

  • Vowel assimilation is directly correlated with sex and education

Milroy & Milroy (1978)

• Variable: 8 linguistic variables in WC Belfast

• Sample: 46 speakers of both sexes of 3 stable inner-city WC communities in Belfast: Ballymacarrett (protestant) , the Hammer (protestant), and the Clonard (catholic), around ⅓ from each community

  • These areas stress importance of social networks, which originate in kinship ties and determine a person’s access to employment & other resources

• Method: participant observation

  • Milroy introduced to the community as a “friend of a friend”

  • Placed each informant on a six-point scale characterizing their participation in the social network 

• Results

  • Strong correlation between network strength and linguistic variable

    • Strongest with vowels in hat and grass being pronounced like father

    • Least strong with vowels in pull and shove being pronounced like shut

• Conclusion

  • The stronger a social network, the more variants will be found in Belfast vernacular

  • Dense multiplex social networks are “norm enforcement mechanisms” and reinforce vernacular norms