Key Concepts
Exploration 6.4: Research Design
Apparent time and real time
Investigations may also have a ‘time’ dimension to them because one purpose of sociolinguistic studies is trying to understand language change. hey may be apparent-time studies in which the subjects are grouped by age, for example, people in their 20s, 40s, 60s, and so on. Any diferences found in their behavior may then be associated with changes that are occurring in the language. Real-time studies elicit the same kind of data ater an interval of say ten, twenty, or thirty years. If the same informants are involved, this would be in a panel study; if diferent people are used it would be in a trend study. Obviously, real-time studies are diicult to do. he study of the Queen’s English is one such study (Harrington et al. 2000, mentioned in chapter 2), but she was the sole panel member. he study that repli- cated Labov’s work on Martha’s Vineyard (Pope et al. 2007) was a real-time trend study. As we will see in the following pages, most studies of change in progress are apparent-time studies for reasons which should now be obvious.
162 Inherent Variety
we look at it in relation to some factor we can manipulate, the independent variable, for example, social class, age, gender, ethnicity, and so on: as one of these changes, what happens to language? As Chambers (2003, 26) expresses it, ‘Socially signiicant linguistic variation requires correlation: the dependent (linguistic) variable must change when some independent variable changes. It also requires that the change be orderly: the dependent variable must stratify the subjects in ways that are socially or stylistically coherent.’
Quantitative sociolinguistics
his kind of sociolinguistic investigation is oten called quantitative sociolinguis- tics (or variationist sociolinguistics) and it is, as we have indicated previously, for some sociolinguists the ‘heart of sociolinguistics’ (Chambers 2003, xix). Quantita- tive studies must therefore be statistically sound if they are to be useful. Investigators must be prepared to employ proper statistical procedures not only in their sampling but also in the treatment of the data they collect and in testing the various hypoth- eses they formulate. hey must be sure that what they are doing is both valid and reliable. Validity implies that, as said by Lepper (2000, 173): ‘the researcher must show that what is being described is accurately “named” – that is, that the research process has accurately represented a phenomenon which is recognizable to the scientiic community being addressed.’ Reliability is how objective and consistent the measurements of the actual linguistic data are. Data collection methodology is part of this issue; if only one person collected the data, how consistent was that person in the actual collection? If two or more were involved, how consistently and uniformly did they employ whatever criteria they were using? Bailey and Tillery (2004, 27–8) have identiied a cluster of such issues, for example, the efects of dif- ferent interviewers, elicitation strategies, sampling procedures, and analytical strate- gies, and pointed out that these can produce signiicant efects on the data that are collected and, consequently, on any results that are reported. herefore, there may still be room for improving the reliability of our results.
Serious empirical studies also require experimental hypotheses to be stated before the data are collected, and suitable tests to be chosen to decide whether these hypotheses are conirmed or not and with what degree of conidence. (For more discussion of statistical analyses in sociolinguistics, see Bayley 2013 and Taglia- monte 2006.)
Petyt (1980, 188–90) points out how the kinds of igures that sociolinguists use in their tables may be misleading in a very serious way. Sociolinguists stratify society into sub-groups, the members of which are measured in certain ways, and then these measurements are pooled. Individual variation is eliminated. Hudson (1996, 181) ofers a similar criticism, declaring that such pooling
loses too much information which may be important. Information about the use of individual variants is lost when they are merged into variable scores, and information
about the speech of individuals is also lost if these are included in group averages. At each stage the method imposes a structure on the data which may be more rigid than was inherent in the data, and to that extent distorts the results – discrete boundaries are imposed on non-discrete phonetic parameters, artiicial orderings are used for variants which are related in more than one way, and speakers are assigned to discrete groups when they are actually related to each other in more complex ways.
Petyt (1980, 189) provides the data given in igure 6.3. hese data come from an investigation of h-dropping in West Yorkshire, and the igure shows the means for ive sub-groups, that is, social classes. As can be seen, these groups appear to vary quite a bit. However, Petyt points out that, if the range of variation within each sub- group is also acknowledged to be of consequence, there is a considerable overlap among the performances of individuals, so that ‘it is not the case that this continuum can be divided in such a way that the members of each social class fall within a certain range, and members of other classes fall outside this.’ He indicates the range of individual scores in igure 6.4, and adds that for Classes II and V, there was one individual in each group which provided the lowest and highest igure, respectively.
hese outliers could be eliminated and the groups would then be more uniform, but their presence shows that the groups are not discrete groups which are uniied in their linguistic behavior.
It is quite obvious that if we look only at means in such a case we are tempted to say one thing, whereas if we consider the distribution of responses within each class we may draw some other conclusion. he overriding issue is that there are approved procedures to help investigators to decide how far they can be conident that any diferences that they observe to exist among the various classes, that is, among the various means, are due to something other than errors in measurement or peculiari- ties of distribution. Such procedures require an investigator not only to calculate the means for each class, but also to assess the amount of variation in the responses
Figure 6.3 H-dropping means for ive social groups
96
64
43
21
17
I II II IV V
164 Inherent Variety
within each class, and then to test pairs of diferences of means among the classes using a procedure which will indicate what likelihood there is that any diference found occurs by chance, for example, one chance in twenty.
Most social scientists employing statistical procedures regard this last level of signiicance as a suitable test of a hypothesis. In other words, unless their statistical procedures indicate that the same results would occur by chance in less than one case in twenty, they will not say that two groups difer in some respect or on a par- ticular characteristic; that is, they insist that their claims be signiicant at what they call the 0.05 level of signiicance. We are also much more likely to ind two means to be signiicantly diferent if they are obtained from averaging a large number of observations than from a small number.
Whenever you look at results reported by sociolinguists, you should keep in mind the above-mentioned issues concerning the formulation of hypotheses and the col- lection, analysis, and interpretation of data. In examining individual sociolinguistic investigations, therefore, you must ask what exactly are the hypotheses; how reliable are the methods used for collecting the data; what is the actual signiicance of results that are reported on a simple graph or histogram; and what do the indings tell us about the initial hypotheses.
Milroy and Gordon (2008, 168) provide another perspective on the use of statis- tics in the study of language, asking: ‘should we equate failure to achieve statistical signiicance with sociolinguistic irrelevance?’ heir answer is that ‘statistical tests, like all quantitative procedures are tools to provide insight into patterning in vari- ation. hey must be used critically.’ Labov himself (1969, 731) has stated that statisti- cal tests are not always necessary: ‘We are not dealing here with efects which are so erratic or marginal that statistical tests are required to determine whether or not they might have been produced by chance.’ Dealing with a critic of Labov’s work, Milroy (1992, 78) says:
Figure 6.4 H-dropping: within-group ranges for ive social groups
100 100 100
86 81 80
7
2 0 0
I II III IV V
It is not surprising that an anti-quantitative linguist should advocate conirmatory statistical testing, but it is very important to understand the proposition put forward here is simply wrong. If Labov’s interpretations were suspect (and of course they are not), this would not arise from the fact that he failed to test for signiicance. here was no reason for him to do so because the claims he wished to make were quite simple . . . and because in his analysis the same patterns were repeated for every variable studied.
According to Milroy, since this kind of sociolinguistic inquiry is ‘exploratory’ in nature, it can be likewise ‘exploratory’ in its quantitative approach. Labov’s recent work (2001b) is still exploratory in nature but it is also extremely sophisticated in its sampling, data collection, and hypothesis-testing.
Chapter Summary
In this chapter we present an overview of the development of research on regional dialects, including methodologies used to create dialect maps and study the patterns in local vernaculars. We also introduce the concept of the linguistic variable, which is central to linguistics and variationist sociolinguistics in particular. We review some early important work on regional varieties of English by well-known socio- linguists who were responsible for the growth of the ield. Further, we look at social dialects and how they are studied, focusing in particular on social class, and what methodologies have traditionally been used to study this variation.
Exercises
1. As we have said, the (ng) variable, realized as [n] or [ŋ], is generally a noticeable phonological variable throughout the English-speaking world. his task requires you to do some ‘ield work.’ Devise a way of collecting instances of the use of (ng) in naturally occurring discourse. You may want to listen to song lyrics, recorded interviews, talk shows, news reports, and so on. he key is to access both unmonitored speech, that is, talk that is focused on ‘content’ rather than on ‘form,’ and more conscious varieties, in which speakers are clearly trying to speak Standard English. Ater you have collected some data and analyzed what you have, try to igure out how you might improve your results if you were to repeat the task. (You could then repeat it to see what progress you made.) You can be sure that none of the research indings reported in this chapter and in the following two came from irst attempts at data collection, but were preceded by such pilot studies!
2. In the following text, identify all of the contexts for the linguistic variable of the copula (that is, the verb to be). What are the variants which appear here? (Hint:
be sure to include the zero copula variant). Can you describe the contexts in which they occur? (You may wish to consult the description of AAVE from chapter 2, as some usages are from that social dialect.)
166 Inherent Variety
Further Reading
Chambers, Jack K. and Natalie Schilling (eds.) (2002). he Handbook of Language Variation and Change. Oxford: Blackwell.
his collection of papers on language variation and change presents articles by leading sociolinguistics which address issues of theory and method in sociolinguistic research.
Gordon, Matthew J. (2013). Labov: A Guide for the Perplexed. New York: Bloomsbury.
Written for a general audience, this is an especially good and accessible discussion of Labov’s inluential work and how it has shaped sociolinguistics.
Milroy, Lesley and Matthew Gordon (2008). Sociolinguistics: Method and Interpretation. 2nd edn. Oxford: Blackwell.
A comprehensive introduction to research in the ield of sociolinguistics, with especial foci on phonological variation and style-shiting and code-switching.
Schilling, Natalie (2013). Sociolinguistic Fieldwork. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
his is a thorough treatment on research methodology in sociolinguistics, with special attention given to research on speech style, addressing practical, ethical, and theoretical issues.
Tagliamonte, Sali (2012). Variationist Sociolinguistics: Change, Observation and Interpreta- tion. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
A research guide with a primary focus on quantitative research methods with both a treatment of social factors and detailed sections on the analysis of phonological and grammatical variation.
For further resources for this chapter visit the companion website at www.wiley.com/go/wardhaugh/sociolinguistics
Today movie prices are entirely too high. It doesn’t make no sense to pay that much, because the picture the people be showing is not worth it. If you going to pay that much for a movie you should at least have a cut on the prices of the food. Not only the food is high, but you cannot sit in a nice clean place.
But still you paying that very high price to get inside the place. Another reason you got against paying such a high price is that the people at the movies be throwing popcorn all in your head. You not paying that much money to come to a movie and get food stains all on your clothes and hair.
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Having looked briely at some of the problems investigators face in using the concept of the ‘linguistic variable’ to examine linguistic variation in society, we can now turn to some representative quantitative studies. We will look at this work within the perspective of three ‘waves’ of variation study (Eckert 2012). In these phases of research, there are diferent perspectives on the relationship between language and society, moving from looking at speech as being driven from the speaker’s position in social structure to viewing speakers as agents who construct their social realities.
In this chapter, we will look at research indings across all three waves of variationist studies which continue to inluence research today.
Key Concepts
First wave: correlations
Second wave: ethnographic information Third wave: identity
The role of agency
Social categories versus social networks Stance: positioning the speaker
Three Waves of Variation Studies
170 Inherent Variety
The First Wave of Variation Studies
Broadly speaking, the irst wave of studies sought to establish correlations between predetermined macro-level social categories – socioeconomic class, age, race/
ethnicity, and sex – and particular linguistic variables. he Labov (1966) study, discussed in chapter 6, and others carried out in the United States and Great Britain (e.g., Wolfram 1969, Trudgill 1974) showed socioeconomic stratiication and ‘greater regional and ethnic diferentiation at the lower end of the socioeconomic hierarchy as well as greater use of more widespread standard forms’ (Eckert 2012, 88). As we mentioned in chapter 6, the focus was on vernacular varieties and how speakers of these varieties moved increasingly toward the standard as they paid more and more attention to their speech. A key concept is that such individual stylistic repertoires mirror the hierarchy of varieties found in the larger society.
Early work on gender variation
One of the earliest studies which included a look at gender variation was Fischer’s study (1958) of the /n/ variable, that is, pronunciations like singing [ŋ] versus singin’ [n]. We should observe that there is a long history of both the [ŋ] and [n] variants in the language, with the [n] variant stigmatized, or at least associated with less loty pursuits. he author recalls a student in one of her sociolinguistics courses who claimed that he would use the two pronunciations to mean diferent things: the less formal ishin’ meant going out in a boat with a simple ishing pole, whereas the more prestigious-sounding ishing meant going ly-ishing. While such a distinction in meaning is by no means widespread (and may have been limited to this one speaker), it is indicative of awareness of this variable being part of communicative competence of many speakers of English.
As part of a study of child-rearing practices in a New England community, Fischer conducted interviews with young children, twelve boys and twelve girls, aged 3–10. He noted their use of -ing ([ŋ]) and -in’ ([n]) in a very formal situation during the administration of the hematic Apperception Test, in a less formal inter- view, and in an informal situation in which the children discussed recent activities.
In the most formal situation, 10/12 (83%) of the girls showed a preference for the -ing form, while only 5/12 (42%) of the boys did (Fischer 1958, 48).
Fischer also compared the use of [ŋ] and [n] of a boy described by his teachers as a ‘model’ boy with that of a boy described as a ‘typical’ boy. he model boy worked well in school and was described as being popular, thoughtful, and considerate; the typical boy was described as being strong, mischievous, and apparently unafraid of being caught doing something he should not be doing. In the most formal situation these two boys produced the percentages of -ing and -in’ reported in igure 7.1; note that the model boy used far more of the more formal variant. However, Fischer further observed that the model boy also used -in’ at a higher rate as the formality