Three Waves of Variation Study

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Three Waves of Variation Study: The emergence of meaning in the study of variation Penelope Eckert Stanford University

Abstract

The treatment of social meaning in variation has come in three waves of analytic practice. The first wave of variation studies established broad correlations between linguistic variables and the macro-sociological categories of socioeconomic class, sex class, ethnicity and age. The second wave employed ethnographic methods to explore the local categories and configurations that inhabit, or constitute, these broader categories. In both waves, variation was seen as marking social categories. This paper sets out a theoretical foundation for the third wave, arguing that (1) variation constitutes a robust social semiotic system, expressing the full range of social concerns in a given community; (2) variation does not simply reflect, but constructs, social meaning, hence is a force in social change and (3) the meanings of variables are basic and underspecified, gaining more specific meanings in the context of styles (personae).

1. The fate of social meaning in the study of variation The first quantitative community study of variation was all about social meaning. Based on ethnographic observations and interviews on Martha 's Vineyard, William Labov (Labov 1963) established that the pronunciation of /ay/ had been recruited as an indexical resource in a local ideological struggle. This diphthong had a centralized nucleus in the Vineyard dialect, but for some years, island speakers had been following the mainland trend to lower the nucleus to [ɑ]. Labov found that some speakers were reversing this lowering trend, in an apparent move to recapture one of the most salient features of the distinctive island dialect. Led by the English ethnic fishing community whose control over the local economy was under threat from the mainland-controlled tourist industry, this revival of a ‘traditional’ local pronunciation constituted a claim to island

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In a few cases (Labov 1966, Laferriere 1979, Horvath 1985), ethnicity has been examined as a primary variable in a variation study. In most cases, however, the dialects of oppressed minorities (most particularly African Americans and Latinos) have been studied separately from their coterritorial white dialects. iii See Labov, Yeager and Steiner (1994) and Labov (1994) for detailed descriptions of this shift. 32 iv The y axis shows factor weights from multivariate analysis using GOLDVARB, developed by David Sankoff and David Rand, and (in the case of the vowel changes) controlling for phonetic constraints. v The boys form a network that corresponds to the girls’ network in general structure. vi Miyako Inoue (2006) details the analogous history of Japanese ‘women’s language’, in which features of this style are circulated in the dialogue of women’s managazines. vii A notable exception to this is Rickford et al 1995.