Language Change

1. LANGUAGE CHANGE
Part Two
Notes from
“Language Change: Progress or Decay?”
By Jean Aitchison

2. THE PROCESSES OF
LANGUAGE CHANGE

3. Diachronic and Synchronic Approaches
 Diachronic linguistics studies
change over time
 Many linguists believed that it is
impossible to observe change as
it is taking place: “the process of
linguistic change has never been
directly observed – such
observation is inconceivable.”
(Leonard Bloomfield, 1933)
 Historical or diachronic studies
used evidence from various
points in time and studied
changes which had taken place
 Synchronic linguistics studies the state
of a language at a given point in
time, usually the present day
 Two problems for synchronic studies:
1. Language variation:
geographical (local accents &
dialects); social (class, age, gender
differences); and individual (our
own varieties of styles in different
situations)
2. Language fuzziness: those
occasions when we are not sure if
an utterance is ‘right’ or not e.g.
“Who did the postman bring the
letter?”
 So it is difficult to accurately describe
the way language is used

4. CHANGE IN ACTION: 1
William Labov’s Study
In Three
New York Department Stores
(1966?)

5. New York Stores: 1
 Labov thought that the presence or absence
of the r sound in words like car, bear, beard
was linked to the social class of the speaker
 Previous studies showed that sales people in
stores unconsciously mimic the speech of
their customers, especially if the customers
are of a higher social class
 Labov selected 3 stores: Saks (high status);
Macy’s (mid-price, middle class); Klein’s (a
cheap store near notoriously poor area)
 Labov would pretend to be customer, asking
question which required sales person to say
“Fourth floor” and then repeat it with more
emphasis: he had 264 of these exchanges

6. New York Stores: 2
 Labov found that:
1. The overall percentage of r sounding was
higher in Saks than in Macy’s, and higher
in Macy’s than in Klein’s
2. The overall percentage of r sounding was
higher on the upper floors of Saks than on
the ground floor: the upper floors are
more spacious and are the high fashion
floors unlike the more crowded, less select
atmosphere of the ground floor
3. So Labov concluded that sounding or not
sounding the r in words like “fourth
floor” is related to social class – the
higher socio-economic groups tend to
insert the r in words like bear, car while the
lower groups omit it
 But what does this show about language change?
…….

7. New York Stores: 3
 Evidence of change was found in the
speech of the sales people at Klein’s
 There was a significantly higher proportion
of r insertion by the sales staff in their
more careful repetition of “Fourth floor”
than in their first, casual response
 They inserted the r when they were being
more careful and conscious of how they
were saying the words – they showed that
sounding the r had social prestige
 This was a sign of change since for most of
the 20th
century New Yorkers did not
usually sound the r: Labov seems to have
found a pronunciation change in process.

8. CHANGE IN ACTION: 2
William Labov’s
Wider New York Study
(1972?)

9. New York Study: 1
 Labov studied various linguistic variables such as use/non-
use of r in car etc.; sounds at the beginning of words like the,
this, that (sometimes pronounced by New Yorkers as de, dis,
dat); vowels in words like dog, coffee, more, door, bad, back
 Gathered data from a large sample of people, balanced by
gender, age, ethnic group, occupation, geographical origin,
social status
 Took samples from a range of situations, from informal,
casual speech to formal, very careful speech: spontaneous
exchanges, informal interviews, more formal interviews
about their language use, reading aloud a prose passage,
reading a word list

10. New York Study: 2
 Labov’s results included:
 The UMC (Upper Middle Class) pronounced r in words like bear, car about
20% of the time in casual speech, but over 30% in careful speech and about
60% in reading word lists.
 For the WC (Working Class) the figures were – 10% in casual speech, just
over 10% in careful speech, and about 30% in word lists
 These figures and other results he gathered suggest that use/non-use of the
linguistic variables Labov was studying is definitely related to the social
status or position of the people in his sample – which is what Labov
expected to find
 Labov’s methods since used for studying language change in progress but there
are weaknesses: (1) it is very difficult to record truly casual speech, since Labov
and his assistants were strangers; (2) Labov’s model of class structure was too
simple – needed more personal model of social networks like Milroys’ Belfast
study.

11. New York Study: 3
 In all social classes, the percentage of r-insertion rises significantly in the more
careful situations, especially the reading aloud tasks
 But the LMC (Lower Middle Class) showed an enormous difference between the
percentage of r-insertion in casual speech (under 10%) and the percentage in
reading word lists (about 60%!) – this was a higher score than the Upper Middle
Class people! Why?
 This hypercorrect behaviour by the LMC is an example of language change in
progress – the LMC are socially and linguistically insecure and are very aware of
the language of the social groups above them and consciously try to imitate and
even exaggerate prestige speech features such as sounding the r
 Until the 1940s, sounding the r was very uncommon in New York in all social
classes, even though it was common in other parts of the U.S. But during the
1950s and 1960s sounding the r became more prominent – no-one quite knows
why. But Labov showed that the LMC were playing a prominent and conscious
role in this change.

12. CHANGE IN ACTION: 3
William Labov’s
Martha’s Vineyard Study
(1972?)

13. Martha’s Vineyard 1
 Martha’s Vineyard is an
island in Massachusetts
and was the setting for the
film Jaws– it’s a popular
holiday resort for rich New
Yorkers: over 40,000
visitors ‘invade’ the island
each summer, especially the
eastern end, called Down-
island
 The western, Up-island
end is rural and where
most of the original
population liveUp-island
Down-island

14. Martha’s Vineyard 2
 On a preliminary visit to Martha’s Vineyard, Labov noticed an apparent shift in
the way some vowels were pronounced when compared with the observations of
a linguist 30 years earlier
 He decided to focus his study on the vowel sound in words like out, trout, house
and the vowel sound in words like white, pie, night, like.
 Each of these vowels is a diphthong, two sounds that glide together: [a] + [u]
making [au] in house; [a] + [i] making [ai] in night
 In each case, Labov suspected that the first part of the diphthong seemed to be
shifting from a sound like [a] as in car, toward a sound [] like that at the
beginning of ago.
 Labov interviewed a wide sample of native islanders, asking questions which
forced them to say words which featured the [ai] and [au] vowels; they also had to
read a passage containing such words: he also observed and noted lots of casual
conversations

15. Martha’s Vineyard 3
 Labov’s results included:
 The change in vowel sounds was least evident in over 75 year olds
 The change was most evident in the speech of 31 – 45 year olds
 The change was far more widespread in rural, western Up-island, especially
in the Chilmark area, which was the centre of the island’s fishing community:
the fishermen showed the highest use of the changed vowel sounds
 The change seemed to radiate from a small group of fishermen in area of
Up-island and had spread, particularly among 31-45 year olds in the local
population
 Martha’s Vineyard had once had a prominent whaling industry but at the
time of Labov’s study only a tiny proportion of the population (2.5%) were
involved in fishing at all: most Down-islanders were employed in service
industries related to tourism

16. Martha’s Vineyard 4
 The fishermen had not introduced a
new pronunciation but merely
started to exaggerate an old feature
of local speech
 They did this subconsciously to
distance themselves from the floods
of outsiders who dominated the
island in the summer and whose
presence had affected local speech
 Other people, especially the 31 –45
age group, identified with the
fishermen as representing the true
virtues and values of their
community and imitated their
speech; the change then spread to
much of the local community

17. Martha’s Vineyard 5
 Conclusions to draw about how change spreads
 A series of overlapping stages
1. An aspect of the speech of a particular social group differs from the
‘standard’ dialect of the area – in this case, the fishermen used ‘old’
diphthong sounds which no longer existed in the local standard dialect
[The change does not come out of the blue]
2. A second group admires and imitates the first group and subconsciously
adopts & exaggerates features of the first group’s speech – in this case,
younger adults saw the fishermen as representing true local values
opposed to the influence of the summer visitors [Change often occurs
when a group models its language behaviour on another group]
3. The new speech form takes hold among most of the local population and
becomes the norm – no-one is consciously aware of what is happening

18. SUMMARY
 Diachronic studies look at change over time; synchronic studies look at
change taking place at one given time
 Labov’s studies focus on change and variation in pronunciation e.g. post-
vocalic r or vowel diphthongs
 His studies show that variation and change are often related to social
position, insecurity and perceived prestige of certain speech features
 The wide New York Study showed a process of conscious change while the
Martha’s Vineyard study shows unconscious change
 Such changes do not ‘come out of the blue’ – they are usually related to
features which have previously existed in local speech
 Change often arises when a social group admires another group and then
adopts, mimics or exaggerates features of the admired group’s speech