LING 3P95 Lecture 9: 9
15 Jan 2016
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A linguistic variable is a linguistic form with identifiable alternative realizations. (1) a. farm [+/- r], fishing [n/ing], caught [a/o] (phonological) b. He don"t know nothin" / he doesn"t know anything. (grammatical/syntactically-double negative c. car, automobile; (lexical) and phonologically-nothin/anything) A linguistic variable related to a social factor (variation analysis) is a marker; if its not related, it is an indicator (ex. caught). Labov: variants [+/- r]: farm or fam (same linguistic environment: so free variation) But the use of r or not in that word is not random its sociolingistically conditioned. Distribution of markers is related to social grouping and styles of speaking. e. g. [+r], [ing]: (upper) middle class speech. Collect data that display social distribution of linguistic variants: ex. Labov: ses consists of 10 social classes (lower to upper middle) based on education, occupation, income. Form a hypothesis about relationship between social and linguistic variation.
