Key Concepts
Exploration 7.1: Gender, Standardness, and Formality
What is the relationship between standardness and formality in the use of linguistic features such as the -in’ sufix, the quotative like, or the use of multiple negation? What social factors might contribute to girls or women being more likely to use more standard linguistic features in some contexts?
What dangers are there in making generalizations about what motivates girls/women as opposed to boys/men to speak in particular ways?
The fourth loor
Another irst wave study, perhaps the most well-known of all, is Labov’s small-scale investigation of the (r) variable (Labov 1966). Labov believed that r-pronunciation ater 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 (loor) than before consonants (fourth). He set out to test these hypotheses by walking around three New York City department stores (Saks, Macy’s, and S.
Klein), which were rather clearly demarcated by the social-class groups to which they catered (high, middle, and low, respectively), and asking the location of depart- ments he knew to be situated on the fourth loor. When the shop assistant answered, Labov would seek a careful repetition of fourth loor by pretending not to hear the initial response.
Table 7.1 shows the incidence of r use that Labov found among individuals employed in the three stores (Labov 1972, 51). he table shows that 32 and 31 percent of the personnel approached in Saks and Macy’s respectively used r in all
Table 7.1 Percentage of [r] use in three New York City department stores
Saks (%) Macy’s (%) S. Klein (%)
All [r] 32 31 17
Some [r] 30 20 4
No [r] 38 49 79
Number 68 125 71
Source: based on Labov (1972, 51)
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.
So far as the position of occurrence of r-pronunciation was concerned (i.e., before consonant vs. word inal, and irst response vs. repeated response), Labov found the distribution reported in igure 7.3. his igure shows that r-pronunciation was favored in Saks to a greater extent than in Macy’s but much less so in S. Klein.
Careful repetition of the utterance nearly always increased r-pronunciation, and pronunciation of the r was found more oten in loor than in fourth in all circum- stances. Labov did not test his indings for statistical signiicance but the data clearly reveal the patterns just mentioned.
A further analysis of the department store data showed that in Saks it was older people who used r-pronunciation less. However, the data from S. Klein on this point were quite inconclusive, and the results from Macy’s pointed in a direction com- pletely opposite to that predicted: r-pronunciation actually increased with age. his fact led Labov to conclude that members of the highest and lowest social groups tend not to change their pronunciation ater it becomes ixed in adolescence but members of middle social groups sometimes do, possibly because of their social aspirations. He tested this last hypothesis later in a more comprehensive study of New York City speech and found good conirmation for it.
Labov has noted that today in New York City pronunciations of words like car and guard with the r pronounced are highly valued. hey are associated with the upper middle class even though members of that class do not always use such Figure 7.3 Use of (r) pronunciation by department store
30 27
5 63
44
8 40
22
13
64 61
18
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70
Saks Macy's S. Kiein
% (r) in 'first', initial response % (r) in 'first', second response
% (r) in 'floor', first response % (r) in 'floor', second response
174 Inherent Variety
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 shit in attitude toward r-pronunciation, from apparent indiference to a widespread desire to adopt such pronunciation.
his desire to adopt a particular pronunciation is, according to Labov, inluenced by social class standing. Figure 7.4 shows the use of r by various social classes in diferent styles of speech, from the most casual type of speech (e.g., telling about a narrow escape from death) to the most formal type (e.g., reading aloud a list of pairs of words like bit and bid and pa and par) (Labov 1966, 240). As we can see, the amount of r use increases by social class and by formality of style. However, there is one noticeable exception: Labov’s lower middle-class speakers out-perform his upper middle-class speakers on word lists and pairs. Labov calls this a cross-over in the graph and explains it as an instance of hypercorrection. Hypercorrection occurs when individuals consciously try to speak like people they regard as socially supe- rior but actually go too far and overdo the particular linguistic behavior they are attempting to match. Here, lower middle-class speakers know how prestigious r-pronunciations are and, in reading word lists and lists of pairs, that is, when they are placed in situations which require them to monitor their speech closely, they out-perform their reference group, in this case the next highest social class, the upper middle class.
Figure 7.4 Pronunciation of (r) in New York City by social class and style of speech
r index scores
100
80
60
40
20
0A Casual speech
B Careful speech
C Reading
style Contextual style
D Word
lists
D′ Minimal
pairs Socioeconomic class (SEC)
0–1 Lower class 2– 4 Working class 5–8 Lower middle class 9 Upper middle class
SEC 6–8
9 4–5 2–3 1 0
Labov makes much of this phenomenon of hypercorrection, particularly because it appears to relate to changes that are taking place in the language. However, a word of caution is necessary. Such displays as we ind in igure 7.4 are displays of group means. We have no information about the amount of variance about the means so we cannot be sure how comparable they are. We do know they are based on quite small numbers of informants in each case. In addition, we cannot be sure that any two means which difer do so signiicantly in the statistical sense. he cross-over shown in igure 7.4 could, theoretically at least, be the result of the way the data have been treated. However, the fact that it occurs for both word lists and pairs provides us with some assurance of the correctness of Labov’s claims.