LANGUAGE AND SOCIAL CLASS | WILLIAM LABOV

William Labov is an American socio-linguist and professor of linguistics at the Pennsylvania University.

Socio-linguistics is the study of all the social variables affecting language (gender, ethnicity, social class...).

Labov was interested in finding the links between social classes and language.

His studies are settled in USA, so they focus on the American population. This is a weakness, because it can't be generalized, but Labov's findings are thought to be similar to the ones regarding the British population.

Martha's Vineyard Study

Martha's Vineyard is an isle on the East Cost, near New York. For an half of the year, the isle is occupied only by the local population; for the other half, summer, the isle is frequented by prestigious tourists.

Those tourists are called "summer people", and they represent effectively a social class on the island. All of them come from the New York upper middle class.

The second social class is the one for the islanders, the working middle class of Martha's Vineyard, that lives on the Eastern part of the isle.

The last social class is the working class of fishmen. The majority of the islanders really respected fishmen, who were seen as a desirable social group, with old fashioned values.

Fishmen spoke with an old, non standard pronounciation, especially for vowels and diphtongs.

Labov found that the young generations were deliberately tending to speak like fishmen, using the old fashioned pronunciation.

They used divergence to distinguish themselves from the summer people and to retain a sense of identity. Even the more educated islanders started speaking like fishmen.

The Department Store Study (1966)

The study is settled in New York, Manhattan. The stereotype around the people living there is that they are all upper middle class.

Labov considered 3 stores:

Saks 5th Avenue (highest classes customers)

Macy's (upper classes customers)

Klein's (lower classes customers)

Labov used the criteria of "the social stratification of the post-vocalic r": the final r at the end of words such as guard, beer...

He tested the word "fourth"in his study. Labov asked questions to the employees that implied "fourth" in the answer. Then he pretended to not understand and asked to repeat.

The results depended on the pronunciation or not of the post-vocalic r, considered as prestigious.

Labov found that the pronunciation depended on the social class membership of the employees.

Those with higher socio-economic status pronounced /r/ more frequently than those with a lower one (62% Saks, 51% Macy's, 20% Klein's).



Labov approached language through a rigorous, scientific, empirical method, and rejected contemplation and intuition.

GEORDIE REGIONAL VARIATION | ANALISYS

Geordies, people from the city of Newcastle-upon-Tyne and its surrounding area, are generally thought as friendly, folks and fanatical football supporters.

The word "Geordie" has an ancient origin: it derives from the early 18th century, when Newcastle was supporting king George I and then George II, while the rest of the population of Northumberland supported the Scottish Jacobite rebellions.

The name only includes the Newcastle area, but the dialect has been influenced by the Northumbrian and Scottish dialects from the north and Durham and Yorkshire varieties from the south.

A broad accent such as Geordie is generally difficult to understand to other English-speakers. 

This obstacle is caused by variations on sounds, especially vowels, and the use of distinctive words and non-standard grammatical structures. 

Today most of the Geordies know both standard English and the regional variation and use them depending on the context.

It happened that Geordies were penalised for their use of language and accent. One episode is the layoff of a Geordie female officer cadet from the British Army's Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst. The Sandhurst administration denied the accuse of discrimination, but the officer cadet in question claimed that fellow cadets taunted her with shouts of “Whey aye, man!”, and she was told by her instructor that use of the word “knackered” ('exhausted') should be replaced by "pooped".

Even though that episode, there are signs of a growing pride, with Geordie dictionaries, versions of bible stories and so on.

The majority of words come from the languge of the Anglo-Saxon immigrants of the first millennium, from southern Denmark.

Some other word can be considered effectively as truly Geordie words: pet (term of address for females – e.g. “thanks, pet”), deek (see, look at), marra (friend, mate), lowp (jump), ten o’clock (morning snack), kiff (very good), get (stupid person).

Geordie accent has a particular sound: the"burr", similar to the French pronunciation of "r".

The u vowels tend to be short, so that the vowel sounds in the words "foot" and "bus" are the same.

Geordie grammar is, for a native English-speaker, a mess, especially with pronouns. The term “us” is used to indicate "me", while the plural form for "us" is “wu”, or“wuz”. So “give us it” means “give me it” and “give wu it” means “give us it”. "Our" is pronounced “wor”.

In many cases, what is the simple past form in standard English is also used as a participle in the Geordie variety.

Another grammatical feature is a combination of modal verbs, as "might" and "could", which are not used together. E.g. "He might could arrive before tea."

Another difference from standard English is that “but” can be said at the end of the sentence. E.g. “You’ll be late, but”.

The object pronoun can be put at the end for emphasis: “I love skiing, me”.

COMMON PHRASES!

Hoo ye gannin?  'How are you?'
Hoo's ya fettle?  'How are you?'
Y'areet, hinny? 'Are you all right, kid?'
Champion. 'Very good, very well'
Bonny day the day.  'It's nice weather'
Cowld the day, mar.  'It's cold today.'
Whey aye, man.  'that's right'
Give ower, y'a kiddin.  'Come on, you're joking'
Hadaway man.  'I'm still not convinced'
Ya taakin shite.  'I really disagree with that'
Ootside!  'Let's settle this outside'
Hoo's the Toon gannin?  'How is the Newcastle United match progressing?'
Tara now, pet.  'Goodbye (to female)'
Wee's yon slapper?  'Who's the young lady?' (derogatory)