Changing Patterns

1 Key excerpts on "Changing Patterns"

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  eBook - ePub

  Variationist Sociolinguistics

  Change, Observation, Interpretation

  • Sali A. Tagliamonte(Author)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-Blackwell

    (Publisher)

              The changing temper of the period in which we live is reflected in a changing language. (McKnight 1925: 16)

  Summary

  Patterns in language data can implicate language external influences or language internal processes or both. The frequency of linguistic variants examined accountably with careful circumscription of the variable context and arrayed according to the age of the individual can reveal much about the nature of the linguistic variable. Is the pattern of distribution of a feature flat, sloping, peaking, or otherwise? This will inform the interpretation of language usage in the community. What type of linguistic change is in evidence? The patterns provide an important clue. The study of linguistic change in progress has repeatedly demonstrated that several key characteristics of the social context are crucial to understanding language change. Three features pointing to the social nature of linguistic change are the following (from Labov 2001a: 75): (1) the unpredictability of change, (2) the unrestricted directionality of change, and (3) the existence of stable variation.

  The classic sociolinguistic patterns are based on independent variables which were defined according to major sociological categories such as class, education, style, and sex. When sociolinguistic surveys are based on large-scale samples such as the city studies of the 1960s and 1970s, speakers were categorized based on these gross social categories. There are, of course, innumerable (if not infinite) ways of delineating groups in society. Other correlates that have also been considered include ethnicity, race, mobility, network, register, interactional context, attribute of the interlocutor, and group affiliation, among many others. At the same time it has become increasingly obvious that speakers utilize the variation within their linguistic repertoires to accomplish plenty of other social meanings (e.g. Eckert 2000). All of these external, socially defined, characteristics may influence the choices people make when speaking or writing.

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