ANTH 217 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Sociolinguistics, Social Group, Hypercorrection
Document Summary
Pinker: important to understand his take on continuity/discontinuity debate. He did a good job of providing a criticism, questions what the scientific value is. Responsible for all hockett"s universals(important ones are the ones that we talked about in class) New york city study(1946: incidence of final and post-vocalic /r, labov showed that rhotic use of /r/ reflected social class and aspiration, and was more widespread in younger speakers, objective of his research: Particular linguistic idea: observer paradox: as soon as people know they are being observed, their behavior changes, illicit rhotics in people"s speech. Asking and repeating, so that people reemphasize their speech: shows difficulties in linguistic research. Method: not practical to interview speakers extensively, instead, needed to quickly elicit possible /r/ prouncisations in both spontaneous and careful speech, 3 stores catering for distinct social groups: Saks(upper), macy"s (middle) and s. klein(lower: informants were shop workers a different grades, giving a further possible stratification, floors represented different demographics, results:
