Table of Contents

Blackwell Handbooks in Linguistics

Title page

Copyright page

Dedication

Illustrations

Contributors

Preface to the Second Edition

Studying Language Variation: An Informal Epistemology

1 Sociolinguistics as a Discipline

2 Language as a Social Phenomenon

3 Linguistics and Sociolinguistics

4 Communicative Competence and the Language Faculty

5 Interdependence of Language and Communication

6 The Sociolinguistic Enterprise

Part I: Data Collection

1: Entering the Community: Fieldwork

1 Planning the Project

2 The Sociolinguistic Interview

3 Participant Observation

4 Rapid and Anonymous Observations

5 Life after Fieldwork

2: Data in the Study of Variation and Change

1 A Brief History of Data in Sociolinguistics

2 Sociolinguistics, Corpora, and Data Sharing

3 What You Put In Impacts What You Get Out

4 Processing and Storing Speech Data

5 Moving Ahead

3: Investigating Historical Variation and Change in Written Documents: New Perspectives

1 How to Listen without Hearing

2 Assessing the Sources: Text Types and their Relative Proximity to Speech

3 Problems

4 Conclusion: Pitfalls and Advantages

Part II: Evaluation

4: The Quantitative Paradigm

1 Theoretical Principles

2 Quantitative Analysis

3 General Logistic Regression Models

4 Multivariate Analysis: Summary

5 Future Directions

Acknowledgment

5: Sociophonetics

1 Scope of Sociophonetics

2 Vowel Analysis

3 Consonantal Analysis

4 Prosodic Analysis

5 Voice Quality

6 Perception

7 The Bigger Picture

6: Comparative Sociolinguistics

1 Variationist Sociolinguistics

2 The Comparative Method

3 Target of Investigation – Sisters Under the Skin?

4 The Importance of Proportional Analysis

5 Constrasting Constraints Across Varieties

6 Using Constraint Hierarchies to Disentangle Source Dialects

7 Contextualizing Variation in Diachrony

8 Operationalizing Constraints on was/were Variation

9 Grammatical Person

10 Type of Subject

11 The Effect of Negation

12 Interpreting Similarities and Differences

13 Using Factor Weights to Measure Grammatical Change

14 Contextualizing Variation in Grammatical Change

15 Operationalizing Constraints on Grammaticalization

16 Language Change Across Varieties

17 Language Change in Apparent Time

18 Validating Accountability and Proportional Analysis

7: Language with an Attitude

1 Language and People

2 The Linguistic Detail

3 Attitudes and Folk Perceptions

4 Toward a General Folk Theory

Part III: Linguistic Structure

8: Variation and Syntactic Theory

1 Sentences and Utterances

2 Wh-Movement and Pied Piping

3 Verb Cluster Word Order in Dutch

4 Optional Processes and Variable Processes

5 Sentence-Grammars and Utterance Variation

9: Investigating Chain Shifts and Mergers

1 Chain Shifts and Mergers as Alternatives

2 The Study of Mergers

3 The Study of Chain Shifting

4 Shifts and Mergers in Progress

10: Discourse Variation

1 Ethnographic Studies

2 Sociolinguistic Studies

3 Qualitative Sociolinguistic Studies of Discourse

4 Quantitative Studies of Discourse Features

Part IV: Language and Time

11: Real Time and Apparent Time

1 Apparent-time Evidence in Martha's Vineyard

2 The Use of Apparent-time Evidence

3 The Use of Real-time Evidence

4 Progress with Caution

Acknowledgment

12: Child Language Variation

1 History of Child Language Variation

2 Current Issues in Child Language Variation

3 Variable Input: Child-directed Speech (CDS)

4 Looking Forward

13: Adolescence

1 Defining Adolescence

2 The Role of Adolescents in Language Change

3 Adolescence and Social Categorisation

4 Adolescence and Social Meaning

5 Future Directions

14: Patterns of Variation including Change

1 Change Entails Variation But Not Vice Versa

2 Phonological Variables Tend to Be Socially Diffuse

3 Speech Communities Share Evaluations, Not Usage

4 Grammatical Variables Tend to Be Class Markers

5 Women Use Fewer Nonstandard Variants than Men

6 Real Time Change Compares Two (or More) Historical Moments

7 Variation Is Discernible at Every Stage

8 Apparent Time Usually Mirrors Real Time

9 Change Diffuses Down the Urban Hierarchy

10 Change Is Gradual Between Contiguous Age Groups

11 Impetus For Change Is Usually Social, Not Linguistic

Part V: Social Differentiation

15: Investigating Stylistic Variation

1 Attention to Speech

2 Audience Design

3 Speaker Design

4 Cautions regarding third wave studies

16: Social Class

1 Sociological Background

2 Treatments of Social Class

3 The Linguistic Market

4 Subcommunities

5 Social Class and Linguistic Variation

6 Understanding Social Class

17: Gender, Sex, Sexuality, and Sexual Identities

1 History

2 Meaning

3 Sex as an Independent Variable

4 Interactional Discourse

5 Perception

6 Connections

18: Ethnicity

1 What Is Ethnicity?

2 Linguistic Resources and Ethnic Identity

3 The Role of Interethnic Contact

4 Language Change and Ethnicity

5 Myths, Realities, and Directions for the Future

Acknowledgments

Part VI: Domains

19: Social Networks

1 The Concept of Social Network

2 Social Networks and Language Variation: Methods and Findings

3 Language Maintenance and Shift in Bilingual Communities

4 Weak Ties and Theories of Language Change

5 Social Network, Social Class, and Mobility

20: Communities of Practice

1 Defining the Community of Practice

2 The Community of Practice in the Analysis of Variation and Change

3 The Community of Practice in Broader Perspective

Acknowledgments

21: Constructing Identity

1 Identity Constructed

2 How Language Is Used to Construct Identity

3 Constructing Identity on Multiple Levels

4 Reconstructing Identity

Part VII: Contact

22: Space, Diffusion and Mobility

1 Space

2 Dialect Cartography

3 Innovation Diffusion

4 Dialect Boundaries and Transitions

5 Mobility

23: Linguistic Outcomes of Bilingualism

1 A Sociolinguistic Perspective on Language Contact

2 The Sociohistorical Context

3 Linguistic Outcomes of Contact

4 The State of the Art

24: Koineization

1 Regional Koines, Immigrant Koines, and Regional Dialect Leveling: Some Definitions

2 Outcomes of Koineization: “New Dialects”

3 The Pre-koine: The First Migrants in a New Settlement

4 Focusing: The Language of the Koineizing Generation(s)

5 Social Factors in Koineization

25: Supraregionalisation and Dissociation

1 Supraregionalisation

2 Dissociation

3 Common Ground: Moving Away from the Vernacular

Part VIII: Sociolinguists and Their Communities

26: Community Commitment and Responsibility

1 The Community of Engagement

2 Representing Linguistic Research in the Community

3 Principles of Engagement

4 Initiating Opportunity

5 Themes for Public Sociolinguistics

6 Venues of Outreach and Engagement

7 The Collaborative Effort

8 The Research Mission

Acknowledgments

Postscript

Index

Blackwell Handbooks in Linguistics

This outstanding multi-volume series covers all the major subdisciplines within linguistics today and, when complete, will offer a comprehensive survey of linguistics as a whole.

Already published

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Edited by Mark Baltin and Chris Collins

The Handbook of Discourse Analysis
Edited by Deborah Schiffrin, Deborah Tannen, and Heidi E. Hamilton

The Handbook of Language Variation and Change, Second Edition
Edited by J.K. Chambers and Natalie Schilling

The Handbook of Historical Linguistics
Edited by Brian D. Joseph and Richard D. Janda

The Handbook of Language and Gender
Edited by Janet Holmes and Miriam Meyerhoff

The Handbook of Second Language Acquisition
Edited by Catherine J. Doughty and Michael H. Long

The Handbook of Bilingualism and Multilingualism, Second Edition
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This second edition first published 2013

© 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Inc

Edition History: Blackwell Publishing Ltd (1e, 2002)

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The handbook of language variation and change / Edited by J.K. Chambers and Natalie Schilling. – Second Edition.

pages cm

Includes index.

ISBN 978-0-470-65994-6 (cloth)

1. Language and languages–Variation. 2. Linguistic change. I. Chambers, J. K. editor of compilation. II. Schilling-Estes, Natalie, editor of compilation.

P120.V37H365 2013

417'.7–dc23

2013004420

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Cover image: Brian Whelan, Cityscape, 36 x 48 '', mixed media on board. © Brian Whelan 2008, www.brianwhelan.co.uk

Cover design by Workhaus

For William Labov

whose work is referred to in every chapter and
whose ideas imbue every page

Illustrations

2.1 Screenshots from SLAAP

5.1 Spectrogram with superimposed LPC formant track

5.2 Formant plots of older and younger Mexican-American women

5.3 Low back vowel tokens with trajectories for the two speakers from Figure 5.2

5.4 Spectrograms of clear and dark /l/

5.5 Narrowband spectrogram with superimposed pitch track, showing measurement points for peak alignment

6.1 Overall distribution of nonstandard was by community

6.2 Distribution of nonstandard was by GRAMMATICAL PERSON and variety

6.3 Distribution of nonstandard was by FULL NPs vs. PRONOUNS in third person plural

6.4 Distribution of nonstandard was by NEGATIVE vs. AFFIRMATIVE contexts

6.5 Conditional inference tree of the main statistical predictors on going to in York

7.1 Three social status group judgments of lower “occupational suitability” of “inconsistent r” production

7.2 Results of ratings of “They gave the award to Bill and I”

7.3 Differences in regional (north-south) placement of male and female voices

7.4 A Michigan respondent's hand-drawn map

7.5 Another Michigan hand-drawn map

7.6 Computer-assisted generalizations of hand-drawn maps showing where southeastern Michigan respondents believe speech regions exist in the USA

7.7 Means of ratings for language “correctness” by Michigan respondents for US English

7.8 Means of ratings for language “pleasantness” by Michigan respondents for US English

7.9 Means of ratings for language “correctness” by Alabama respondents for US English

7.10 Means of ratings for language “pleasantness” by Alabama respondents for US English

7.11 Folk and “linguistic” theories of language

8.1 Wh-Move in Who did she speak to? Auxiliary did is moved in a subsequent Move

8.2 Structure for whose son

8.3 Derivation of moet hebben gemaakt (1-2-3 order)

8.4 Derivation of moet gemaakt hebben (1-3-2 order)

8.5 One-move derivation of gemaakt moet hebben (3-1-2 order)

8.6 Two-move derivation of gemaakt moet hebben (3-1-2 order)

9.1 A view of the Northern Cities Shift

9.2 A different view of the Northern Cities Shift

11.1 Centralization Index by age group for (aw) and (ay) on Martha's Vineyard

11.2 Centralization of (aw) and (ay) and orientation towards Martha's Vineyard

11.3 Apparent-time distributions of innovative features in PST and GRITS

11.4 Apparent-time distributions of recessive features in PST

11.5 Real-time comparison of PST/GRITS data with LAGS data

11.6 Apparent-time distributions of might could and [a:] in night in PST/GRITS

11.7 Apparent-time distribution of [a:] in night among native Texan respondents in PST

11.8 Distribution of quotatives over six cohorts of Springville speakers (totals include say, be like, go, zero, and other)

11.9 be like and say as a percentage of all quotative forms over time for Sheila b. 1979

11.10 be like and say as a percentage of all quotative forms over time for Brandy b. 1982

11.11 Real-time distribution of three AAVE features in the speech of an African-American male, b. 1913

11.12 Real-time distribution of three AAVE features in the speech of an African-American female, b. 1961

11.13 Real-time distributions of four AAVE features in the speech of an African-American female, b. 1979

11.14 Real-time distributions of four AAVE features in the speech of an African-American female, b. 1982

11.15a Age stratification of (r) in Saks in 1962 and 1986

11.15b Age stratification of (r) in Macy's in 1962 and 1986

14.1 Percentage of the glottal stop variant for post-tonic /t/ in adults and 15-year-olds in three social classes in Glasgow

14.2 Multiple negatives used by three social classes in Anniston, Alabama

14.3 Multiple negation by African-American women and men in four social classes in inner-city Detroit

14.4 Glottal stops by male and female adults and 15-year-olds in three social classes in Glasgow

14.5 Percentage of speakers with [w] not [hw] in words like which and whine in central Canada by age

14.6 Percentage of speakers with [w] not [hw] in words like which and whine in four Canadian regions: Montreal (M), Golden Horseshoe (GH), Ottawa Valley (OV), Quebec City (QC)

14.7 Seven changes in progress in Canadian English, illustrated by 12 variants as used by different age groups in the Golden Horseshoe

14.8 Rate of change for the seven changes in progress in the Golden Horseshoe, the first derivative of Figure 14.7

15.1 Stylistic and social class variation for postvocalic r in New York City English

19.1 High-density, multiplex personal network structure, showing first and second order zones

19.2 Low-density, uniplex personal network structure

19.3 Ballymacarrett men's and women's scores for (th), plotted against network scores

22.1a Pronoun presence in first person contexts in central France, southern Switzerland, and northern Italy

22.1b Pronoun presence in second person contexts in central France, southern Switzerland, and northern Italy

22.1c Pronoun presence in third person contexts in central France, southern Switzerland, and northern Italy

22.2a (æ) in Brunlanes, Norway, among speakers aged 70 or over

22.2b (æ) in Brunlanes, Norway, among speakers aged 25–69

22.2c (æ) in Brunlanes, Norway, among speakers aged 24 or under

22.3 Two major isoglosses of England, marking the southern limit both of [ʊ] in some and [a] in chaff

22.4 The ʊ/ʌ transition zone in the Fens: speakers aged 15–30

22.5a The a/a: transition zone in the Fens: speakers aged 45–65

22.5b The a/a: transition zone in the Fens: speakers aged 15–30

22.6 [eɪ] variants of /ei/ among friendship networks in a London Youth Club

22.7a The King's Lynn–Wisbech functional zone in the Fens: the dialect boundary and the major roads, rail and waterways

22.7b The King's Lynn–Wisbech functional zone in the Fens: population density

22.7c The King's Lynn–Wisbech functional zone in the Fens: the density of bus routes

24.1 Association of Milton Keynes children's (ou) scores with those of their caregivers

24.2 Percent front/non-front offset of (ou) (goat), Milton Keynes women and girls

25.1 Direction of heteronymy on the German-Dutch border

25.2 Direction of heteronymy on the North-South Irish border

Contributors

Sharon Ash

University of Pennsylvania, USA

ash@mail.med.upenn.edu

Guy Bailey

University of Alabama, USA

guy.bailey@ua.edu

Robert Bayley

University of California, Davis, USA

rjbayley@ucdavis.edu

David Britain

University of Bern, Switzerland

britain@ens.unibe.ch

J.K. (Jack) Chambers

University of Toronto, Canada

jack.chambers@utoronto.ca

Patricia Cukor-Avila

University of North Texas, USA

pcavila@unt.edu

Ralph W. Fasold

Georgetown University, USA

fasoldr@georgetown.edu

Crawford Feagin

Arlington, Virginia, USA

feagin@starpower.net

Carmen Fought

Pitzer College, USA

cfought@pitzer.edu

Matthew J. Gordon

University of Missouri at Columbia, USA

gordonmj@missouri.edu

Raymond Hickey

University of Duisburg and Essen, Germany

raymond.hickey@uni-due.de

Tyler Kendall

University of Oregon

tsk@uoregon.edu

Paul Kerswill

York University, England

paul.kerswill@york.ac.uk

Scott F. Kiesling

University of Pittsburgh, USA

kiesling@pitt.edu

Sam Kirkham

Lancaster University, England

s.kirkham@lancaster.ac.uk

Carmen Llamas

University of York, England

carmen.llamas@york.ac.uk

Ronald Macaulay

Pitzer College, USA

ronaldmacaulay@cs.com

Miriam Meyerhoff

University of Auckland, New Zealand

m.meyerhoff@auckland.ac.nz

Lesley Milroy

University of Michigan, USA

amilroy@umich.edu

Emma Moore

University of Sheffield, England

e.moore@sheffield.ac.uk

Dennis R. Preston

Oklahoma State University, USA

dennis.preston@okstate.edu

Robin Queen

University of Michigan, USA

rqueen@umich.edu

Julie Roberts

University of Vermont, USA

julie.roberts@uvm.edu

Gillian Sankoff

University of Pennsylvania, USA

gsankoff@comcast.net

Natalie Schilling

Georgetown University, USA

ns3@georgetown.edu

Edgar W. Schneider

University of Regensburg, Germany

edgar.schneider@sprachlit.uni-regensburg.de

Anna Strycharz

The Meertens Institute, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

anna.strycharz@meertens.knaw.nl

Sali A. Tagliamonte

University of Toronto, Canada

sali.tagliamonte@utoronto.ca

Erik R. Thomas

North Carolina State University, USA

erthomas@ncsu.edu

Walt Wolfram

North Carolina State University, USA

wolfram@gw.ncsu.edu

Preface to the Second Edition

Publication of the first edition of The Handbook of Language Variation and Change in 2002 obviously filled a gap in the field. It was widely adopted as a learning, teaching, and reference tool for researchers and students in sociolinguistics, and it was also well used by scholars in numerous related fields seeking authoritative overviews of central topics and methods on language variation and change. The publication of this second edition, slightly more than a decade later, is necessitated by the continuing vigor of the field. In order to ensure that the Handbook remains the authoritative source on this vital approach to language study, we prepared a new edition that reflects the state-of-the-art in sociolinguistic studies.

Our goal remains exactly the same: we see the book as a convenient, hand-held repository of the essential knowledge about the study of language variation and change. We have maintained the core structure, the rationale and the focus that made the first edition so successful. The contributors, now as then, are leading researchers in their fields. About three-quarters of the original chapters have been retained but have been updated to reflect developments and new directions in each topic area. The extent of updating is suggested, perhaps, by the fact that two of the revised chapters have undergone title changes to mark new emphases, and three of the original authors have conscripted co-authors to work with them on new developments.

Seven chapters are entirely new, an appropriate reflection of the continuing vitality of the discipline in the intervening decade. Inevitably, some chapters from the first edition were discontinued in order to accommodate the new directions within manageable space limits. Those discontinued chapters remain valid, incisive treatments of their topics, and we expect that many of them will continue to be cited and referenced in their special areas for years to come.

We have invited the authors of the chapters to discuss the ideas – hypotheses, axioms, premises, probabilities – that drive their branch of the discipline, and to illustrate them with empirical studies, their own or others, that not only demonstrate their applications but also their shortcomings and strengths. We expect that these areas will continue to attract ingenious researchers and engage curious students and other scholars.

After the “informal epistemology,” which immediately follows, the book is organized in eight broad subject areas beginning with data collection (Part I). It proceeds through methods for evaluating data (Part II) and categorizing it (Part III). From there, it moves into the main spheres of social influence including the complexities of time (Part IV), social distance and difference (Part V), and communal interactions, individual identities, and their interrelations (Part VI). The pervasive effect of mobility, both geographical and social, has implications for the social uses of language in diverse contact situations (Part VII). We end the book with Walt Wolfram's forward-looking consideration of the ethical and social roles of sociolinguists in the communities they work in (Part VIII), a topic of increasing engagement among responsible scholars.

The contributors of the chapters make a distinguished international roster. Our invitations went to scholars with recognized expertise, either established or potential, with no thought to anything but their insightfulness and mastery of their research areas. As in the first edition, the final reckoning gives an accidental profile of the culture of sociolinguistics: 26 chapters by 30 scholars, 14 women and 16 men, from six nations. These numbers are all the more striking in the historical context. From its inception in a few rather isolated studies on the Atlantic seaboard of the United States, variationist sociolinguistics has spread globally in a few decades and established its stature inexorably among the language sciences. It is our hope that this new edition of The Handbook of Language Variation and Change will aid and abet its spread, as the first edition did, and deepen both the understanding of its goals and the appreciation of its results.

In light of the subject matter of the book, the publishers have acknowledged the diverse backgrounds of the contributors by retaining the mixture of US and UK style conventions across their various chapters.

J.K. Chambers and Natalie Schilling

Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and to obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologizes for any errors or omissions in the text, and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in reprints or future editions of this book.

Studying Language Variation

An Informal Epistemology

J.K. Chambers

Societies can obviously exist without language, as witness the social organizations of carpenter ants, honey bees and great apes. But languages cannot exist without societies. Language is quintessentially social, and throughout recorded history, normal human beings have shown unbounded capabilities for social intercourse, conversational interaction, repartee, self-expression, and tale-telling both real and imagined, all governed by intricate sets of conventions normally beneath consciousness.

Before language existed, our hominoid ancestors organized bands for food-gathering and habitats for sheltering their young; and probably, by analogy with the great apes, not much more. In the absence of language, finding daily sustenance and preventing yourself and your young from becoming sustenance for others are pretty much full-time activities. Since survival and propagation can be achieved in the absence of language, it was obviously not survival and propagation that called language into being. Rather, language is the tool for virtually every human aspiration beyond plain survival and propagation.

Sociolinguistics is the study of the social uses of language, in its many guises. In this chapter, I sketch an informal epistemology of sociolinguistics by outlining its historic development as a linguistic discipline (in Section 1), the persistence of social evaluation in language matters (in Section 2), the place of sociolinguistics among the linguistic sciences (in Section 3), and its relation to communicative competence (in Section 4) and to communicative intelligence (in Section 5).

1 Sociolinguistics as a Discipline

Studying the social uses of language proceeds mainly by observing language use in natural social settings and categorizing the linguistic variants according to their social distribution. The most productive studies have emanated from determining the social evaluation of linguistic variants. These are also the areas most susceptible to scientific methods such as hypothesis-formulation, logical inference, and statistical testing.

Notwithstanding the pervasive effects of the social milieu on the accents and dialects which are its medium, the study of socially conditioned variation in language is relatively recent. Variationist sociolinguistics became an internationally recognized branch of the linguistic sciences in the 1970s. Its effective beginnings as a movement can be quite specifically traced to the early 1960s, when William Labov presented the first sociolinguistic research report at the annual meeting of the Linguistic Society of America (December 1962) and published “The social motivation of a sound change” ( 1963). Those events were not the first public airings of socially relevant linguistic studies, as we shall see, but they were far and away the most influential. Unlike the ones that came before, Labov's initiatives inaugurated a discipline. One reason for their success, though probably not the most important one, was the relative maturity of the sociolinguistic framework that Labov had devised. His analyses introduced three striking innovations into the prevailing linguistic culture: (i) correlating linguistic variants with class, age, sex, and other social attributes, (ii) incorporating style as an independent variable, and (iii) apprehending the progress of linguistic changes in apparent time. All three are hallmarks of the sociolinguistic enterprise to this day.

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Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

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Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

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Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

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Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!