FLHS-AC

Department of English Studies

Prof. Dr. M. Afkir

Chapter 3
Language variation

Outline:
1. Language Variation: Definition and History
2. Variables
2.1 The linguistic variable
2.2 The social variable
3. Data Collection
3-1 Types of data
3-2 Sampling
3-3 Time dimension
4. The Quantification of Variation

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1. Language variation: Definition and History

● Language variation and its social significance is one of the major areas in sociolinguistics.
Language variation studies the way language varies.

● Language variation gives an idea about the social organization of communities.

● Language variation is inevitably related to social forces.

● Linguists paid attention to the existence of variation before Labov’s work within
sociolinguistics.

● In the nineteenth century (in 1885) Schuchardt noted that speakers’ speech contains variation.

● In the twentieth century, Sapir (1921:147) also wrote,

Everyone knows that language is variable. Two individuals of the same generation and locality,
speaking precisely the same dialect and moving in the same social circles, are never absolutely at
one in their speech habits. A minute investigation of the speech of each individual would reveal
countless differences of detail —in choice of words, in sentence structure, in the relative frequency
with which particular forms or combinations of words are used, in the pronunciation of particular
vowels and consonants and of combinations of vowels and consonants, in all those features, such
as speed, stress, and tone, that give life to spoken language.

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● However, Language variation was firmly believed to be unsystematic. It was merely explained
as the existence of two different linguistic systems and as free variation.

Chambers (2003:13):

When variants attracted the attention of linguists at all, they were generally regarded either as
belonging to different coexistent systems or as unpredictably free substitutes.

● Fischer (1958) was the first to study variation systematically. He found that variation is
systematic and not free. He found in the children’s speech he analyzed that the occurrence
of ‘-ing’ and ‘-in’ is not random and that it is determined by the social variables of sex and
social status.

● It was, however, with Labov’s (1966) work The social stratification of English in New York city
that the concepts and methods of language variation became more refined and the field more
established.

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2. The variables

2-1 The linguistic variable

● The linguistic variable, which was postulated by Labov, is considered as the basic conceptual tool
in variationist sociolinguistics. It is the dependent variable that is examined.

Feagin (2013:22):
The linguistic variable, a concept originating with Labov (1963, 1966), is a linguistic entity
which varies according to social parameters (age, sex, social class, ethnicity), stylistic parameters
(causal, careful style).

Wardhaugh and Fuller (2015:149):

● The linguistic variable has alternate realizations, and a speaker can realize it in different ways
on different occasions.

Examples

● In some places in England, the linguistic variable (t) has two variants:
(Labov introduced the convention of placing variables between parentheses)

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 → [t] is the standard form.
→ [ʔ] is the non-standard form.

● In New York city, the linguistic variable (r) has two variants:

→ [r] (pronounced)
→ [ø] (not pronounced)

● In Casablanca, the linguistic variable (g) has two variants:

→ [q] is the prestigious form.

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 2-2 The social variable

● The social variables include social class, age, gender. They constitute the independent
variables that predict a given dependent variable.

● Social variables are important because variants of a linguistic variable are constrained by
social factors; that is, linguistic variation relates to social variation and has social significance.

● The hardest social variable to define is social class membership, which is used to stratify
societies.

● “Sociologists use a number of different scales for classifying people when they attempt
to place individuals within a social system” (Wardhaugh and Fuller, 2015:153).

● An occupational scale
● An educational scale

● Milroy and Gordon (2008) raised questions related to social class (comparison across communities).
She proposed social networks as having more power of predicting linguistic behavior.

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3. Data collection

3-1 Type of data

● Data collection and fieldwork are basic in language variation studies.

● The data consists of tape-recorded casual speech. “The unmonitored style—casual speech—
is the one that sociolinguists want most to study ” (Chambers, 2003:6).

Chambers (2003:6):

When the [interviewees] are asked to tell the interviewer about near-fatal car accidents
or fires in the toaster or other events that involved them, they are likely to get caught up
in the recollected urgency of the situation and forget their self-consciousness.

Labov (1966, 2006) proposed the danger of death question.

● The data may also consist of tape-recorded formal speech.

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 3-2 Sampling

● Sampling refers to the finding of a representative group of participants.

● There are two types of samples:

● A random sample
● A judgment sample (Quota sample)

3-3 Time dimension

● There are two types of studies:

● Real time studies in which data is collected after an interval of time.

● Apparent time studies in which the subjects who have different ages
are involved in data collection.

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4. The quantification of Variation

● The quantification of variation is done by recording a speaker and counting the number of
times he/she pronounces a given linguistic variable as one variant or the other in order to obtain
a score.

● Scores obtained for a given group on the basis of a social variable (age, sex or social class) are
compared with the scores obtained for other speakers who belong to another group.

● The quantitative paradigm has demonstrated the systematic nature of language variation and
its ‘orderly heterogeneity’.