Transcript LING 432-532 – Sociolinguistics – Spring 2011 Slide 1 Wardhaugh Ch 8 Wardhaugh – Chapter 8 – CHANGE Language Change Not all variation that shows.

LING 432-532 – Sociolinguistics – Spring 2011
Slide 1
Wardhaugh Ch 8
Wardhaugh – Chapter 8 – CHANGE
Language Change
Not all variation that shows a relationship with age of speaker is change age grading (when a certain group adopts a ling form but drops it later in life)
Age grading hard to distinguish from change
Need real time data = trend study resamples the same community at 2
different points in time (What I did with Labov’s Philadelphia study)
Panel study re-interviews the same subjects later in life to see if they have
changed
from http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~gillian/PAPERS/Sankoff.Age,AT,RT.pdf
LING 432-532 – Sociolinguistics – Spring 2011
Slide 2
Wardhaugh Ch 8
Wardhaugh – Chapter 8 – CHANGE
Language Change
Apparent time = an analysis of the data that proposes lingusitic variation
which shows a relationship with age projects that this is change. That is, if
younger speakers are using more of a variant than older speakers, this
represents change. Presupposes stability of individual’s ling systems (an 80
year old speaker represents how people spoke when he/she acquired the dialect
roughly 60 years earlier)
from http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~gillian/PAPERS/Sankoff.Age,AT,RT.pdf
LING 432-532 – Sociolinguistics – Spring 2011
Slide 3
Wardhaugh Ch 8
Wardhaugh – Chapter 8 – CHANGE
Labov, Martha’ Vineyard 1963
See http://coral.lili.uni-bielefeld.de/~ttrippel/labov/node5.html
2 variables (ay) and (aw) as in high and how
Finds that there is change in progress - backs this up with previous data from
LANE
Findings show that there is not a monotonic relationship with age (higher use
of variant increases as age of speaker decreases)
It is the middle-aged speakers with highest centralization
Also, the fishing-related areas highest centralization
Finally, directly shows that attitude toward the island is the reason behind
use of a ling form that symbolically links them to the island - strong
connection between ling variation and identity!
LING 432-532 – Sociolinguistics – Spring 2011
Slide 4
Wardhaugh Ch 8
Wardhaugh – Chapter 8 – CHANGE
Labov
Connects prestige with the LMC and use of hypercorrection
Also with women (being socially the second highest social group with
respect to gender)
Changes are related to prestige
Change from above the level of consciousness vs. below are different
There are many connections between gender, class and change
LING 432-532 – Sociolinguistics – Spring 2011
Slide 5
Wardhaugh Ch 8
Wardhaugh – Chapter 8 – CHANGE
Trudgill, Norwich
Shows connections between working class forms and non-standard use
Women use more overt prestige forms
In self-reports, men overreport their non-standard use and women underreport
Trudgill’s restudy of Norwich shows that real time trend study shows things
not predicted by previous study (1988)
LING 432-532 – Sociolinguistics – Spring 2011
Slide 6
Wardhaugh Ch 8
Wardhaugh – Chapter 8 – CHANGE
Milroys
Show that network strength keeps change from affecting tight networks
Looser networks show more use of outside forms
Linguistic marketplace - different interactions based on jobs will affect
person’s position in language change situation
LING 432-532 – Sociolinguistics – Spring 2011
Slide 7
Wardhaugh Ch 8
Wardhaugh – Chapter 8 – CHANGE
The Process of Change
 Change from below - led by interior social classes (LMC and UWC) and by
women
Labov’s Philadelphia study support this - different systems for black and
white speakers
Eckert’s study of Jocks and Burnouts - girls range was wider than boys;
burnouts associated with Detroit so more advanced in Northern Cities Shift
LING 432-532 – Sociolinguistics – Spring 2011
Slide 8
Wardhaugh Ch 8
Wardhaugh – Chapter 8 – CHANGE
The Process of Change
Lexical Diffusion - sound change spreads 1 word at a time - S-shaped curve
in time - see p. 220 - every word has its own history
Lexical diffusion and wave theory similar - how change spreads through
language/community (wave theory shown by changes in different geographic
space in England - (r) versus (STRUT) p. 140)
Some sound change is regular and all sounds are changing in every phonetic
environment
Some sound change has exceptions - mad, bad, glad and swam, ran and
began in Philly
LING 432-532 – Sociolinguistics – Spring 2011
Slide 9
Wardhaugh Ch 8
Wardhaugh – Chapter 8 – CHANGE
The Process of Change
Lexical diffusion versus regular (Neogrammarian) sound change
Two types of sound change: 1 is that it is phonetically regular and
predictable - although certain environments may promote/inhibit the change
Lexical diffusion states that each word that contains the sound change is
affected individually
Reality is that the more common sound change is regular, while lexical
diffusion does also play a factor (plaid)
New theories about word frequency shows that there is more to this than
originally thought - Exemplar theory (Joan Bybee)
LING 432-532 – Sociolinguistics – Spring 2011
Slide 10
Wardhaugh Ch 8
Conn 2005
The Process of Change
I replicated Labov’s Philadelphia study to test his ideas about language
variation and change
Let’s look at NWAV presentations