William Labov. Principles of linguistic change: Social factors. In the series, Language in Society 29. Most of the findings of quantitative sociolinguistics that support the principles put forward in this and the previous volume have been discovered and replicated by this method. The sociolinguistics of william labov created date: 0457z.
William Labov (b. 1927) is an American linguist who pioneered the study of variationist sociolinguistics.
Born and raised in northern New Jersey, Labov studied English and philosophy at Harvard University (BA, 1948) and worked as an industrial chemist for several years before entering graduate school in linguistics at Columbia University in 1961. He completed his PhD in 1964, under the direction of Uriel Weinreich. He worked at Columbia until 1971, when he joined the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania, where he taught until his retirement in 2014. Labov’s influence on the field began with research he conducted in graduate school. His study of changing pronunciations on Martha’s Vineyard, the subject of his master’s thesis, introduced a method for observing sound change in progress and broke with tradition by exploring social motivations for linguistic innovations.
For his PhD dissertation, Labov carried out a study of dialect patterns on the Lower East Side of New York City. Using a systematic, quantitative methodology, he demonstrated that linguistic variation is socially stratified, such that the use of pronunciation features (e.g., dropping of post-vocalic /r/) correlates with social class, ethnicity, etc. In regular patterns. Labov’s early research was greatly influential and inspired many scholars to carry out similar projects in other communities. The paradigm came to be known as variationist sociolinguistics.
Much of Labov’s scholarship seeks to advance our understanding of language change. Historical linguists traditionally study completed linguistic changes, often long after they occurred, but Labov developed a method for examining active changes through a quantitative comparison of speakers representing several generations. This approach produces a new perspective on the change process by revealing intermediate stages. Labov has brought insights from this research to bear on theoretical debates within historical linguistics and the field more broadly. His work in this area has also documented many active sound changes in American English.
Among these changes are innovations underway in particular dialects, such as the vowel changes in Philadelphia, as well as broader regional patterns, such as the Northern Cities Shift heard in the Great Lakes states. Throughout his career, social justice concerns have fueled Labov’s research. He has sought to demonstrate that the speech of stigmatized groups is as systematic and rule-governed as any other.
He led a pioneering study in Harlem in the late 1960s that shone new light on African American English, demonstrating, for example, that grammatical usages like the deletion of the copula (e.g., He fast) are subject to regular constraints. Labov has served as an expert witness in court and before the U.S. Congress to share insights from his study of African American English. He has also worked to promote literacy for speakers of non-standard dialects, carrying out research on reading and developing material for the teaching of reading to these populations.
Career Overview William Labov is a leading scholar in the field of sociolinguistics. He has explored a broad range of topics during his career, and he is widely known for the study of language variation and change.
The research paradigm that he pioneered is known as variationist sociolinguistics. Labov was born on December 4, 1927 and spent his childhood in New Jersey. He attended Harvard University and earned his bachelor’s degree in English and philosophy in 1948. After unsuccessful attempts to establish a career as a writer, he took a position with his family’s firm, the Union Ink Company, as a chemist specializing in the formulation of inks for commercial applications such as silk-screening (Labov, ). In 1961, he returned to academic pursuits and began graduate work at Columbia University, choosing linguistics as his field of study. Noam Chomsky and other theorists had recently reinvigorated the discipline, and Labov was drawn by the opportunity to contribute new ways of thinking about language.
He completed a master’s degree and a doctorate under the direction of Uriel Weinreich, a scholar of Yiddish who specialized in the study of language contact (e.g., Weinreich, ). Labov’s first major publication, “The Social Motivation of a Sound Change” (1963) derived from his master’s thesis, a study of the dialect of Martha’s Vineyard. His doctoral dissertation explored sociolinguistic patterns in New York City English and was published by the Center for Applied Linguistics in 1966. After earning his PhD in 1964, Labov worked as an assistant professor at Columbia. During this time he directed research in Harlem that focused on the speech of young African Americans.
The report of this study appeared in Labov, Cohen, Robins, and Lewis. Labov joined the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania in 1971. He led a large-scale survey of Philadelphia speech known as the Project on Linguistic Change and Variation. In addition to documenting the local dialect in extraordinary detail, this research served as a training ground for students, many of whom became prominent scholars in the field including John Baugh, Gregory Guy, Shana Poplack, and John Rickford. In the 1990s, Labov directed the Telsur project, which sought to record dialect patterns across all of English-speaking North America based on a survey conducted over the telephone (hence “Telsur”) with speakers from every U.S.
And Canadian city with a population over 50,000. The results of this ambitious study appeared in the Atlas of North American English (Labov, Ash, & Boberg,; see also Labov, ).
Throughout his career, Labov has published research on a range of topics within sociolinguistics as well as in discourse analysis and historical linguistics. His influence has also been felt in adjacent disciplines such as anthropology, sociology, and education. He served as president of the Linguistic Society of America in 1979 and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1993. The Franklin Institute recognized Labov’s accomplishments in 2013 with the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Computer and Cognitive Science.
In 2015, he received the Smith Medal in Linguistics from the British Academy. Labov retired from teaching in 2014, but maintains an active research agenda. He is co-editor of Language Variation and Change, which he established in 1989, and of the Journal of Linguistic Geography, which he co-founded in 2012. Within the broad field of sociolinguistics, Labov developed a research paradigm known as the study of language variation and change, or variationist sociolinguistics. One of the hallmarks of this approach is its reliance on empirical observation of language in use. The linguistic data analyzed come from more or less authentic discourse contexts.
Broadly speaking, the goal of variationist research is to uncover patterns in the use of variable linguistic forms. Quantitative methods are essential in revealing such patterns because usage is typically a matter of the relative frequency of one form versus a competing form rather than a categorical preference. Labov was not the first linguist to employ statistical analysis in the study of linguistic patterns, but he introduced a systematic approach to these issues that was well grounded in a broader theory about the inherent variability of language.
2.1 Martha’s Vineyard Labov carried out the research that became his master’s thesis on the island of Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. This project focused on the pronunciation of the diphthongs /ai/ (as in price or hide) and /au/ (as in mouth or loud). Labov noticed that these phonemes are pronounced with varying degrees of raising of the nuclei from a low a to a mid ə. To assess the social distribution of these variable pronunciations among the local population, Labov sampled the speech of 69 native Vineyarders representing several locales on the island, various occupations, different ethnic groups, and a broad age range.
He recorded each participant’s speech in a semi-structured interview. The full details of this study are reported in Labov.
One of Labov’s methodological innovations in this study was the development of a numerical index to measure a speaker’s pronunciation tendencies. He coded the phonetic realizations of the two diphthongs on a four-point scale according to the height of the nucleus. Then, for each speaker he calculated an average based on their pronunciation of several tokens of each vowel during the interview. He also grouped speakers by various demographic categories as a means of examining sociolinguistic patterns.
Among his most robust findings was the pattern related to age: each generation favored raised diphthongs more than the previous one. Labov interpreted this result as evidence of an active sound change; probing further, he argued that the increasing use of the raised forms represented a way for locals to assert their identity as Vineyarders in response to an influx of tourists and other part-time residents. In asserting that language change could be observed while it was in progress, Labov challenged established thinking in historical linguistics (e.g., Bloomfield, ), which held that the change process involved chaotic fluctuations rendering it difficult or even impossible to detect until after it had run its course.
The study also broke with more orthodox approaches by proposing that the change was driven by social motivations. Traditional research emphasized the role of language-internal, structural factors (e.g., ease of articulation, analogy) in spurring change. Appeals to speakers’ attitudes and social attributes were uncommon and likely to be met with skepticism.
Nevertheless, Labov’s thorough documentation both of the linguistic variation and of the socio-cultural context on the island made a strong case, and broadened horizons in the study of language change. 2.3 Empirical Foundations for a Theory of Language Change With the Martha’s Vineyard and New York City studies, Labov introduced new methods for studying language variation and change. These works were informed by a conceptualization of language that recognizes the influence of both linguistic and social structures.
Working with their mentor Uriel Weinreich, Labov and a fellow student, Marvin Herzog, elaborated this line of thinking about language in a 1968 paper that serves as a manifesto for the variationist endeavor. Weinreich, Labov, and Herzog observe that dominant theories of language perceive a tension between linguistic structure and variation.
Language is thought to stand as a fundamentally homogenous object, one that depends on speakers sharing a set of consistent rules for phonology, grammar, etc. The fact that speakers actually vary in their use of a language seems to challenge the assumed uniformity of the underlying system. The resolution of this apparent paradox, according to Weinreich, Labov, and Herzog , lies in the notion of orderly heterogeneity (p. 100), which holds that variable structures can nevertheless be rule-governed. Labov’s research, especially his New York City study, gives ample evidence that variation is not random but highly patterned.
The idea that a speaker’s language competence involves a command of heterogeneous structures became a fundamental tenet of variationist sociolinguistics, a discipline that is in large part devoted to uncovering the patterns characterizing such structures. The 1968 paper also lays out a series of problems inherent in the study of language change.
These include the Transition Problem, which concerns how a language passes from one stage to another, and the Evaluation Problem, which deals with social perceptions of changes as they move through a speech community. The greatest challenges stem from the Actuation Problem, which asks, “Why do changes in a structural feature take place in a particular language at a given time, but not in other languages with the same feature, or in the same language at other times?” (Weinreich, Labov, & Herzog, p. The statement of these questions set an agenda for the variationist investigation of linguistic change. Speech Styles Sociolinguists explore variation across speakers and groups as well as within an individual speaker’s repertoire. The former includes differences in social and regional dialects, while the latter involves speaking styles.
Labov pioneered the variationist study of stylistic differences in his New York City project. The methodological key to this endeavor is the sociolinguistic interview as a data collection technique. Linguists seeking to document a person’s stylistic range face a dilemma known as the Observer’s Paradox: “the aim of linguistic research in the community must be to find out how people talk when they are not being systematically observed; yet we can only obtain these data by systematic observation” (Labov, p. Labov designed the sociolinguistic interview as a means of mitigating this problem.
A typical sociolinguistic interview engages the subject in a range of speech tasks. There are basic demographic questions as well as items that probe personal and family background. Often interviewees are asked to read aloud prepared materials such as story passages or word lists. The greatest challenge comes in capturing a person’s most informal speech, the style they would use in casual conversation with close friends. This style, which Labov calls the vernacular, is highly prized and felt to represent the most systematic speech because it is less affected by normative pressures such as concerns about correctness (Labov, p. One technique that Labov developed to draw out the vernacular style was the danger-of-death question, which asks speakers to discuss a time that their life was under threat.
The stylistic variation revealed over the course of a sociolinguistic interview is often as regular as the variation across groups of speakers categorized by class, ethnicity, etc. In New York City, for example, Labov found the highest rates of dropping post-vocalic /r/ in casual (vernacular) speech, while in careful speech (e.g., answering typical interview questions) the rates were lower.
Rates of /r/-dropping were lower still when reading prose passages, and the lowest rates were associated with reading words in a list. Labov accounted for such patterns of style shifting with a framework of varying awareness.
This model explained the differences as a matter of how much attention a speaker pays to their speech. With a phonological variable, the task of reading, especially pronouncing words from a list, prompts people to attend carefully to their usage whereas they are more concerned with what they say than with how they say it when telling a personal narrative. Several competing models have challenged Labov’s account of style shifting, and the contributions in Eckert and Rickford represent the diverse perspectives on the matter. Labov has devoted much of his scholarly attention to the study of linguistic change.
He has investigated sound changes in many varieties of English, from Martha’s Vineyard and New York to Philadelphia and Chicago. His Atlas of North American English (Labov et al., ) records several examples of changes throughout the continent.
He has also sought to contribute to broader theoretical conversations about language change, as seen in his three-volume Principles of Linguistic Change (1994, 2001b, 2010a). This interest aligns easily with the variationist paradigm because change and variation go hand in hand. Languages do not typically change through the immediate replacement of one form with another, but rather experience periods of variation where innovative forms compete with existing ones before eventually replacing them. Discourse Analysis While the bulk of Labov’s research across his career investigates small units of language—sounds and grammatical structures—he has maintained an interest in the study of larger stretches of discourse. On the surface, this work in discourse analysis may seem tangential to Labov’s main research program, but in fact, it pursues the same general goals and operates by similar principles.
If, as Labov holds, sociolinguists are fundamentally driven by “the need to understand why anyone says anything” (1972b, p. 207), they must be willing to look beyond the sentence level. Within discourse studies, Labov’s strongest influence has come in the area of narrative analysis.
This line of research developed organically from his sociolinguistic projects. The interviews he conducted for his studies of phonological and grammatical variation sought to elicit personal stories of meaningful life experiences (e.g. A time when one’s life was in danger).
When he examined these stories, he began to notice patterns. In 1967, he co-authored a paper with Joshua Waletzky that set out to define what makes a narrative a narrative and to sketch the core components of narrative structure. They observe, for example, that a successful narrative is not simply a retelling of events but must involve an “evaluation” element, in which the narrator reveals their attitude about the events and their sense of what is important in the tale. Labov and Waletzky’s framework derives from the analysis of hundreds of narratives recorded in sociolinguistic interviews (from Labov, and Labov et al., ). The research broke new ground in part because they studied the spontaneous narratives of everyday people representing a range of backgrounds, whereas much of the prior research in this area had examined stories from literature or oral traditional performances.
Labov has refined and elaborated the model in subsequent publications (e.g., 1972a, 2013). In 1997, the Journal of Narrative and Life History marked the thirtieth anniversary of the original Labov and Waletzky article with a special issue featuring critical reflections on the work from a range of scholars (Bamberg, ). The work on narrative illustrates one avenue Labov has explored in his pursuit of identifying the principles underlying discourse structure. In other research, he has focused on how speakers accomplish social actions through their talk. This question drove the analysis presented in Therapeutic Discourse (1977), which Labov co-wrote with David Fanshel, a professor of social work. This study examines in great detail the language of a therapy session between a patient and her psychotherapist. Labov and Fanshel look beyond the words that are spoken to consider what was intended and how the message was received.
As they view it, “conversation is not a chain of utterances, but rather a matrix of utterances and actions bound together by a web of understandings and reactions” (1977, p. In this way conversation operates by an unspoken code of conduct that Labov and Fanshel seek to bring to light. They note, for example, that utterances phrased as questions can function as requests for action (e.g., “When do you plan to come home?”), and they formulate a “rule for indirect requests” that spells out the conditions under which such an interpretation applies (1977, p.
In the statement of such rules we see parallels to Labov’s other research where the development of general principles serves as an overarching goal (e.g., 1994, 2001b, 2010a). Critical Analysis of Scholarship Labov’s influence on sociolinguistics is unparalleled. The variationist approach that he developed was not created in a vacuum but rather builds on existing scholarly traditions within linguistics and in adjacent disciplines such as anthropology. Nevertheless, Labov introduced new methods of analyzing the complex picture of sociolinguistic variation that appears in every speech community.
He also developed a theoretical framework to interpret the complex patterns emerging from variationist analyses. Weinreich et al. first laid out the foundations of the variationist program, and Labov’s later work has continued to explore dimensions of a general theory of language variation and change (see especially 1972b, 1994, 2001b, 2010a). Any researcher who puts forward bold claims on a wide range of scholarly topics is bound to meet with criticism, and Labov is certainly no exception to this rule. For example, his thinking on style-shifting has been challenged by several scholars (see Eckert & Rickford, ), as has his work in narrative analysis (see Bamberg, ) and aspects of his AAE research (see Wolfram, ). In the last decade or so, a more sustained critique of Labov’s approach has emerged in the form of “third-wave” variationist studies.
This label comes from Eckert’s delineation of trends within the field. The first wave of variationist studies, according to Eckert, produced large-scale surveys like Labov’s New York City project that explored correlations between linguistic forms and broad demographic categories like class, ethnicity, and sex. In the second wave, more attention was paid to social distinctions with local relevance, and the research had more of an ethnographic orientation.
Labov’s Martha’s Vineyard study represents a precursor to this kind of study that grew more popular in the 1980s. Eckert’s third wave marks a stronger break with variationist tradition by focusing on social action rather than social structures.
While previous research framed linguistic variants as markers of static social categories (e.g., high rates of post-vocalic /r/ retention mark a New Yorker as middle class or higher), third-wave variationists view linguistic variables as resources that speakers draw on to construct social meaning through their interactions. In this way, such research aligns with and draws inspiration from linguistic anthropology, while at the same time relying on a fundamentally variationist methodology. The variationist sociolinguistics that Labov pioneered has grown tremendously over the half century of its existence. It represents the dominant approach to sociolinguistics in North America and the United Kingdom and perhaps elsewhere.
The annual NWAV (New Ways of Analyzing Variation) conference has showcased variationist research since 1972, and in 2011 inspired a sister conference, NWAV Asia-Pacific, that features sociolinguistic studies in that region. The journal Language Variation and Change was founded specifically to promote variationist research, though this work now regularly appears in a range of venues. Interview with William Labov. Journal of English Linguistics, 34, 332–351. Find this resource:.
Gordon, M. Labov: A guide for the perplexed.
London: Bloomsbury. Find this resource:. Hazen, K. Labov: Language variation and change.
Johnstone, & P. Kerswill (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of sociolinguistics (pp. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. Find this resource:. Koerner, K.
Toward a history of modern sociolinguistics. American Speech, 66, 57–70. Find this resource:. Labov, W. The social stratification of English in New York City. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics.
Find this resource:. Labov, W. The social stratification of English in New York City (2d ed.). Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press. Find this resource:. Labov, W. Sociolinguistic patterns.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Find this resource:. Labov, W., Ash, S., & Boberg, C. Atlas of North American English: Phonology and sound change. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Find this resource:. Shuy, R. A brief history of American sociolinguistics, 1949–1989. Dinneen, & E. Koerner (Eds.), North American contributions to the history of linguistics (pp. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Find this resource:. Tagliamonte, S. Making waves: The story of variationist sociolinguistics.
Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Find this resource:. Weinreich, U., Labov, W., & Herzog, M. Empirical foundations for a theory of language change.
Lehmann, & Y. Malkiel (Eds.), Directions for historical linguistics (pp. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Find this resource:. Oral versions of personal experience: Three decades of narrative analysis Special issue. Journal of Narrative and Life History, 7(1–4). Find this resource:. Baugh, J.
Beyond Ebonics: Linguistic pride and racial prejudice. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Find this resource:. Bloomfield, L. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston. Find this resource:. Cedergren, H., & Sankoff, D.
Variable rules: Performance as a statistical reflection of competence. Language, 50, 333–355. Find this resource:. Eckert, P. Three waves of variation study: The emergence of meaning in the study of sociolinguistic variation.
Annual Review of Anthropology, 41, 87–100. Find this resource:. Eckert, P., & Rickford, J. Style and sociolinguistic variation.
Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press. Find this resource:. Fasold, R. The quiet demise of variable rules. American Speech, 66, 3–21.
Find this resource:. Gordon, M.
Interview with William Labov. Journal of English Linguistics, 34, 332–351. Find this resource:.
Gordon, M. Labov: A guide for the perplexed. New York: Bloomsbury. Find this resource:.
Gordon, M. Exploring chain shifts, mergers, and near-mergers as changes in progress. Honeybone, & J.
Salmons (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of historical phonology (pp. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Find this resource:. Hazen, K. Labov: Language variation and change. Johnstone, & P.
Kerswill (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of sociolinguistics (pp. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. Find this resource:. Hoenigswald, H.
Language change and linguistic reconstruction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Find this resource:. Labov, W. Social motivations of a sound change. Word, 19, 273–309. Find this resource:.
Labov, W. The social stratification of English in New York City. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics. Find this resource:. Labov, W. Contraction, deletion, and the inherent variability of the English copula.
Language, 45, 715–762. Find this resource:.
Labov, W. Language in the inner city: Studies in the Black English vernacular. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Find this resource:. Labov, W. Sociolinguistic patterns. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Find this resource:. Labov, W. Academic ignorance and black intelligence.
Atlantic Monthly, 229: 59–67. Find this resource:. Labov, W. Objectivity and commitment in linguistic science. Language in Society, 11, 165–201.
Find this resource:. Labov, W. The intersection of sex and social class in the course of linguistic change. Language Variation and Change, 2, 205–254. Find this resource:.
Labov, W. Principles of linguistic change.
1: Internal factors. Oxford: Blackwell.
Find this resource:. Labov, W. Co-existent systems in African-American vernacular English. Baugh (Eds.), African-American English: Structure, history and use (pp. London: Routledge. Find this resource:.
Labov, W. How I got into linguistics, and what I got out of it. Historiographia Linguistica, 28, 455–466. Find this resource:.
Labov, W. Principles of linguistic change. 2: Social factors. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Find this resource:. Labov, W. The social stratification of English in New York City (2d ed.). Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press. Find this resource:.
Labov, W. Transmission and diffusion.
Language, 83, 344–387. Find this resource:. Labov, W. Principles of linguistic change. 3: Cognitive and cultural factors.
Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Find this resource:. Labov, W. Unendangered dialect, endangered people: The case of African American Vernacular English. Transforming Anthropology, 18, 15–27. Find this resource:. Labov, W.
Dialect diversity in America: The politics of language change. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press. Find this resource:. Labov, W.
The language of life and death: The transformation of experience in oral narrative. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press. Find this resource:. Labov, W., Ash, S., & Boberg, C.
Atlas of North American English: Phonology and sound change. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Find this resource:.
Labov, W., & Baker, B. What is a reading error? Applied Psycholinguistics, 31, 735–757. Find this resource:. Labov, W., Cohen, P., Robins, C., & Lewis, J. A study of the non-standard English of Negro and Puerto Rican speakers in New York City.
Cooperative Research Report 3288. Philadelphia: U.S. Regional Survey.
Find this resource:. Labov, W., & Fanshel, D. Therapeutic discourse: Psychotherapy as conversation. New York: Academic Press. Find this resource:.
Labov, W., Rosenfelder, I., & Fruehwald, J. One hundred years of sound change in Philadelphia: Linear incrementation, reversal, and reanalysis. Language, 89, 30–65. Find this resource:.
Labov, W., & Waletzky, J. Narrative analysis: Oral versions of personal experience. (Ed.), Essays on the verbal and visual arts (pp. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Find this resource:. Labov, W., Yaeger, M., & Steiner, R. A quantitative study of sound change in progress.
Philadelphia: U.S. Regional Survey. Find this resource:. Sankoff, G., & Blondeau, H.
Language change across the lifespan: /r/ in Montreal French. Language, 83, 560–588. Find this resource:. Tagliamonte, S. Making waves: The story of variationist sociolinguistics. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.
Find this resource:. Tagliamonte, S. A., & D’Arcy, A. Peaks beyond phonology: Adolescence, incrementation, and language change.
Language, 85, 58–108. Find this resource:. Weinreich, U. Languages in contact: Findings and problems. The Hague: Mouton.
Find this resource:. Weinreich, U., Labov, W., & Herzog, M. Empirical foundations for a theory of language change. Lehmann, & Y. Malkiel (Eds.), Directions for historical linguistics (pp. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Find this resource:. Wolfram, W. Scrutinizing linguistic gratuity: Issues from the field. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 2, 271–279. Find this resource:. Wolfram, W.
Sociolinguistic folklore in the study of African American English. Language and Linguistics Compass, 1, 292–313. Find this resource:.
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