Language Variation and Change
Language variation and change is the quantitative study of how the same meaning is expressed in systematically different ways across speakers and situations, and how those patterned alternations drive long-term linguistic change.
Definition
Language variation and change is the subfield of sociolinguistics that uses quantitative methods to describe structured heterogeneity in speech and to explain how patterned variation propagates through a community to become linguistic change.
Scope
This area covers the variationist or Labovian program: the definition of the linguistic variable, the correlation of variants with social factors such as class, age, gender, and ethnicity, and stylistic variation tied to attention and audience. It includes the mechanisms by which variation becomes change, the apparent-time and real-time methods used to observe change in progress, and the sampling and statistical techniques that make sociolinguistic patterns measurable. Purely structural accounts of change and historical-comparative reconstruction are treated in historical linguistics rather than here.
Sub-topics
Core questions
- What is a linguistic variable, and how is it correlated with social and stylistic factors?
- How does synchronic variation in a speech community turn into diachronic change?
- How can change in progress be observed through apparent-time and real-time study designs?
- Which social groups lead linguistic changes, and why?
Key concepts
- The linguistic variable and its variants
- Structured (orderly) heterogeneity
- Social stratification of variants
- Stylistic variation and attention to speech
- Apparent-time construct
Key theories
- Orderly heterogeneity
- Variation in a speech community is not free or random but systematically conditioned by linguistic and social factors, so that heterogeneity is itself structured and rule-governed.
- The apparent-time hypothesis
- Differences in the speech of speakers of different ages, sampled at one moment, can be read as a record of change in progress under the assumption that an individual's core vernacular is largely fixed after adolescence.
- Social stratification of variation
- The frequency of a linguistic variant correlates systematically with a speaker's social class and with speech style, producing regular stratified patterns across a community.
History
The area was founded by William Labov's 1960s studies of Martha's Vineyard and New York City, which showed that linguistic variation correlates with social structure and can reveal change in progress; Trudgill's Norwich study extended the method to British English, and the framework was consolidated in Labov's Principles of Linguistic Change.
Debates
- Does apparent time accurately track real change?
- Because apparent-time inferences assume speakers' vernaculars are stable across the lifespan, scholars debate how much age-grading and lifespan change distort the picture, motivating longitudinal real-time studies as a check.
Key figures
- William Labov
- Peter Trudgill
- Janet Holmes
Related topics
Seminal works
- labov2006
- labov1972
- labov1994
Frequently asked questions
- What is a linguistic variable?
- It is a unit of language, such as a particular vowel or the presence or absence of a sound, that has two or more variants whose use correlates with social or stylistic factors, allowing variation to be measured quantitatively.
- How can you study change that is still happening?
- Sociolinguists use the apparent-time method, comparing the speech of older and younger speakers recorded at the same time, and confirm the picture with real-time studies that re-sample a community years later.