UNIT 3

CHAPTER 3 – DISCOVERING AND DESCRIBING PATTERNS OF VARIATION AND CHANGE

Variationists take the view that methodology is inherent to theory and to the understanding of language.
Methods are in service of the questions we are asking about language, so these questions shape the
methodology. The main question we want to answer in any variationist study is: How does speech pattern in a speech
community – what is the order in its orderly heterogeneity? We must analyse language that is representative of the
community and not just the individual. By focusing on the speech community, we will want to record speech from many
members of the community in order to understand the language of that community.
First, we must identify a variable or variables. Then determine whether we think the variable is undergoing a
change or whether it is stable. There are the five main problems outlined by WLH, which can be turned into the
questions that might drive a research project:
1. the constraints problem: What are the linguistic, or internal, constraints on the variable? What linguistic
conditions have led to the change?
2. the transition problem: If the variable is changing, how is it spreading through the linguistic system and through
the speech community? At what stage is the change (eg. incipient, accelerating, slowing, almost completed),
and why? Who adopts the change first and who adopts it last? How does one generation move the change
forward?
3. the embedding problem: How is the variable patterning in the community and the language?
4. the evaluation problem: Does the change affect the communicative efficacy of the variety? How do speakers
evaluate other speakers who use one variant more than other? Why do they evaluate speakers this way? What
effect do these evaluations have on the change, if the variable is undergoing change?
5. the actuation riddle: How and why did the change begin?
The actuation riddle has been set aside because the methodology required to study it does not exist. However,
there are two likely mechanisms:
- there is always some variation in a language, especially in phonology, and so one generation could easily begin
to shift that variation to the point that it starts a change
- speakers use language creatively, using linguistic forms in new ways, and this expressive creativity may lead to
many changes
The actuation riddle is related to every other problem since actuation precedes everything else. Eg. a change
perhaps only really “takes off” when it gets evaluated in certain ways by some in a speech community, or once a certain
number of speakers have adopted it (the evaluation and embedding problems). We don’t really have a change until it
moves from one generation to the next, which is related to the transition problem. The constraints problem suggests that
there might be some changes that are more likely to get actuated.
Constraints and transition problems demand that we observe language in the speech community, and record
many other factors along with the status of any one token of a variable we find.
The constraints problem suggests that we need to know a lot about the entire variety we are concerned with,
i.e. we need to record many aspects of language that might affect the variable. Eg. the CSD, in which following
environment and morphological status are constraints on whether or not a coronal segment is deleted; what constraints
to record depends on our knowledge of linguistic theory and on likely effects previously documented.
The transition problem suggests that we want to try to find linguistic changes in progress, and be able to
identify which linguistic variables are involved in change and which are variable but not really changing. The way to do it
is to record speakers from the speech community at different times. This is a difficult task and there are few studies of

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this type. Sometimes is possible to use earlier records of the speech community even if performed using different
methods. Labov used records from the Linguistic Atlas of New England (LANE) in Martha’s Vineyard. Syntactic changes
seem to happen over a much longer time span than phonological changes, but they have the advantage that texts of
many languages exist over hundreds of years.
The studies that compare speech recorded at different times are called real-time studies, and give us the most
information about changes in a speech community. The vast majority of variationist work is done with apparent-time
studies, which are apparent because they compare speakers of different ages or age groups recorded at a single time. If
there are significant differences in the use of a variable from the older to the younger generation, then it is hypothesised
that we are seeing a change in progress in the direction of the younger generation’s usage. As speakers age they
change the way they talk, a pattern known as age grading. In general, these changes reflect generational changes, or
changes in the speech community, rather than age grading, especially for phonological systems. Labov presents
evidence from a number of real-time studies to suggest that phonological variables are fairly resistant to age grading.
Sankoff concludes that in none of the follow-up studies do we find age grading alone and that older speakers change in
the direction of overall changes in that community.
Eg. Sankoff and Blondeau (2007) investigated the (r) variable in Montreal French finding an age pattern in which
younger speakers used more of the dorsal [R] variant of the coronal [r]. They re-interviewed 32 speakers 13 years after
previously interviewing them (a panel study), and in addition recorded 32 new, younger speakers (a trend study). The
speakers from the panel study didn’t change their rate of [R] that they had 13 years before. This suggests that apparent-
time studies underestimate the rate of change, because if there is any age grading going on, it is happening in the
direction of the change.
These results show that ideally we triangulate how a transition is happening by using both apparent-time and
real-time evidence. If we find differences in variable usage by age, we are finding a change in progress and the study
can inform our understanding of the transition problem.
The embedding problem focuses on how the change is embedded, or moves through, the speech community.
We have to careful about which speakers we record, and that we keep track of the identities and practices of those we
record and their position in the community. Eg. we need to have speakers of different ages in order to make claims
about change in apparent time. More important is that some speakers of the same generation adopt linguistic changes
before others. Our goal is to discover these patterns and try to find the reason of their existence. This problem is one of
sampling a particular speech community in a way that represents the important types of person in it.
The final problem is the evaluation problem. Rather than focusing on how different people produce language, it
focuses on how people evaluate other speakers who use different variants we are interested in. It points to more
experimental methods of presenting language to members of the speech community and measuring their reaction to it
by various means.
The main issue in a research project is to move from these general questions to specific ones about a particular
speech community.

ETHICAL LINGUISTICS
Sociolinguists have been concerned with helping the people who agree to provide data. It begins with
permission to record someone’s speech, usually in written form. Ethics panel and internal reviews boards (IRBs) will
need to provide approval as well.
Informed consent means that speakers need to know more than the simple fact that they are being recorded. It
is usually best not to be too specific, for two reasons:
- speakers are probably not interested in the intricate details of the project

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 - if we tell them very specific things, then we have called attention to it and speakers may adjust their use of
variables
There are three principles that Wolfram outlines, the first two originate with Labov:
1. Principle of error correction: “A scientist who becomes aware of a widespread idea or social practice with
important consequences that is invalidated by his own data is obligated to bring this error to the attention of the
widest possible audience”
2. principle of debt incurred: “An investigator who has obtained linguistic data from members of a speech
community has the obligation to use the knowledge based on that data for the benefit of that community, when it
has need of it”
3. Principle of linguistic gratuity: “Investigators who have obtained linguistic data from members of a speech
community should actively pursue ways in which they can return linguistic favours to the community”.

FINDING LANGUAGE TO MEASURE

The basic outline of a variationist study is the following:
1. A speech community/ies to study is/are identified, and at least one linguistic variable, if this can be identified in
advance.
2. If the researcher is not already familiar with the community, preliminary ethnography and study should be
performed, focusing on understanding how members of the community understand its boundaries and what
identities and social practices are likely to correlate with variation in the linguistic variable/s. Exploratory
interviews may be performed.
3. The parameters of the speech community are defined, and a strategy for recording speech samples, attitudes,
and social practices of members of the community is designed.
4. The data, as outlined in stage 2, are collected.
5. Linguistic variables and factors are coded.
6. Significant factors affecting the linguistic variables are discovered using statistical tests.
7. Other data are brought to bear to explain the correlational patterns that are found. Follow-up studies might
include further interviews asking about speech, or experimental procedures to test attitudes towards language in
the community.

SPEECH COMMUNITIES AND SAMPLING

The first problem is to decide what counts as a speech community and what counts as the speech community
for a particular study. Some researchers have argued that the term speech community can be replaced or supplemented
by other concepts such as network or community of practice.
There are two central ideas that recur in many definitions:
- the notion of some kind of shared linguistic norm. It can refer to similar ways of producing speech, but also often
refer to language more generally. It does not entail everyone speaking alike, but could mean that speakers
produce language differently and at the same time evaluate speech in a similar manner.
- there are some kinds of communication lines that link the members of the community, i.e. a speech community
is a group of people who talk to each other more than other possible interactants, whether for social or physical
reasons.
There are many problems with both this central ideas: what if someone who has only recently moved to a city
and has regular and frequent interactions with others in the city – is this person a member of the community speech?

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The focus on norms assumes that everyone who is knowledgeable about speech norms agrees with them, whereas it
may actually be the case that there is conflict about norms in what we want to call a community.
There are practical issues that add to the problems with the speech community idea:
- sociolinguists have tended to use geographical boundaries of varying sizes and precision to define speech
communities and their members. In none of the definitions of speech community do we find an essential focus
on residence or provenance for inclusion or exclusion in a speech community. While space can be defined by
precise coordinates and boundaries, place – how people think about their physical surroundings – may not be
as precise and in fact different speakers in the same space may think of place differently.
- Another convenient way to label a speech community is by identity category such as race, ethnicity, class or
gender. Here we have the problem that some convenient external label is applied, which may not actually match
the speech community
The important question is: how do we know before we perform a study who should be included in the speech
community? The practice in most studies is to decide in terms of geographical residence, identity category, or other non-
speech property of individuals.
There are methods for determining how much speakers consider themselves to be from the same speech
community. Eg. Zelinsky (geographer): mapped regions of the US by recording regional names used by business in
different cities. One could also survey speakers as to their ties to a particular community, either by frequency of
interaction, by residence, or even by asking them a question: “Do you consider yourself a Pittsburgher?”
Such methods avoid the problem of circularity: one might argue that a speaker is not part of the speech
community because he/she has a different pattern of variable use form others originally in the speech community. We
avoid this problem by using objective methods such as the regional naming discussed above. We build it in by taking a
wide view of the speech community and declaring that one goal of our research is to discover the extent to which a
variant is used geographically or socially.
Some questions about speech communities to answer when beginning a variationist project:
o What are the precise characteristics of a person who is in (or out of) this speech community?
o What is the motivation for those criteria? That is, why are these criteria for membership?
o What are the benefits and drawbacks of defining the speech community in this way? How do the
benefits outweigh the drawbacks?
o If we are discovering the speech community, what criteria will count for being in or out of it (ways of
speaking, self-report of belonging, evaluative norms of language, etc.)?
Two of the most common concepts that serve to group people together:
o social networks
o communities of practice
Social networks (eg. Facebook) are groups of people who have some sort of social tie to one another. This way
of looking at a group of people is similar to the “mutual contact” criterion sometimes posited for a speech community,
and a network could be seen as a speech community. One could identify a network, or even a single speaker’s network
as the group from which to sample. One method used is network sampling: we start with a few individuals whom we
have already have met in the community, or introduce ourselves, and then ask them to introduce us to friends, and keep
asking for introductions. This “snowball” sampling strategy allows us to follow several networks within a particular
community.
Community of practice (Penelope Eckert) is a group of people that is organised around some practice or activity,
such as chess or book club. The practice can be explicitly socially oriented (people who dress similarly…); such
community is similar to a network with the difference that it is organised around a common practice, rather than around
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individual ties or other individuals. The network ties are very narrowly construed – people must engage with each other
through practice. Eckert argues: it is at this level of social organisation that social meanings arise and are negotiated.
About choosing speakers: the group of everyone is called population by statisticians. Since we cannot record
everyone, we have to record a small group of population called sample that is as close as possible to the population in
every characteristic. The most statistically rigorous is the random sample, in which a certain number of people are
chosen from a population completely at random. In sociolinguistic studies this type of sampling is almost impossible to
achieve, because the methods used to contact speakers are likely to bias the sample in one direction. Most studies use
a judgement sample, which is as random as possible but also determines ahead of time how many people of certain
characteristics should be included, often on the basis of the proportion of that characteristic in the population as a whole.
One problem with these samples is that they can bias the sample towards one group if the quota is not correct. They
may extend the time it takes to complete recordings because the last few speakers may take an inordinate amount of
time to track down. These problems are not as prevalent for snowball sampling.
If we are producing a survey of a speech community never studied a random sample might be desirable. If we
are studying the meanings attached to variants in interaction, then a snowball sampling might be the best choice.
The question of sample size: thirty people are generally assumed to provide a decent sample. If we want to
compare age groups, genders and social classes, we need a category for each combination. This is called cell.
How many people should be in a cell? Some opt for five, but the more the better. The sample doesn’t need to be
balanced, but we need a minimum for each cell.

GETTING SPEECH: INTERVIEWS AND OTHER TALK

Characteristics to take into account when we record speech:
o we might be trying to record the speaker’s most natural way of speaking
o we might be striving to record with the most fidelity possible
o we want to record enough speech so that we have a large number of tokens of the variable to study
For reasons of fidelity and ethics, the speakers need to know they are recorded and so natural speech is difficult
to record. Most variationist studies rely on the sociolinguistic interview, in which a researcher asks questions of a
speaker and records the answer. Recording truly “natural” occurring speech is even more difficult, as there will be long
stretches with no speech, and the fidelity will fall. Recording a meeting in a single room with one microphone only some
speakers can be identified.
The sociolinguistic interview has been thought to represent the best compromise among “naturalness”, fidelity,
and amount of speech. In designing and listening to interviews, we need to realise that a speaker will always be talking
in relation to the person they are talking to. Even though we hold the interviewer constant, the differences we find in
linguistic variable use among interviewees may not be differences in their “vernacular”, but rather in how they relate to
the interviewer.

RECORDING AND MANAGING RECORDINGS

Modern equipment makes it possible to record speech on one’s mobile phone, whereas before such recordings
required bulky reel-to-reel equipment. It is important to get the best fidelity possible, because one might later on wish to
perform phonetic analysis. The best way to record a speaker is by using a high-quality lavalier microphone (a small
microphone which clips onto clothes). Most recording is now digital. For a few years there were some critics of digital
recording, arguing that because digital recorders only sample the sound, we don’t know what we are losing. But if the
sampling rate is high enough, there is no noticeable loss of data.

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 Laptop computers with recording capability are no the first choice for field recording. The microphone is the first
filter the sound passes through, and even the best recorder cannot make up for a poor microphone. In general, XLR
connections (thick connections with three pins) are better than the more common ¼ - inch jacks (as long as the recorder
has XLR inputs).
Perform several “mock” interviews with the equipment before beginning the research, write out a checklist to
avoid problems of recording or oversights.
Keep track of all recordings and make more than one backup in at least two places. Recordings can be lost
because of theft, damage, or computer malfunction. Label the file names logically, and keep a catalogue of what is in
each file (date, place, participants – using pseudonyms – and field notes).

CODING VARIABLES
Coding the speech means measuring and recording each token of the linguistic variable and recording any
social or linguistic variables that go with that linguistic variable.
Eg. the monophthongisation of /aʊ/ in Pittsburgh; house is pronounced [ha:s]. The vowel varies from a

completely monophthongal, open [a:] to a more standard /aʊ/.

The first decision in coding is to determine what counts as a variable. Eg. from the previous example we could
pick vowels only from monosyllabic words, or at least only in stressed positions.
One important factor is to make sure that one kind of token does not dominate the coding. Eg. Limit the number
of tokens of “our” that can be used, or not count it at all. This is called determining or defining variable context being the
most important decision in performing a variation study.
The best way to measure the linguistic variable could be a numeric measurement. Eg. a phonetic analysis

program (eg.Praat) in order to measure formants in hertz at two points of each token of (aʊ), and use the difference
between the two measurements for each formant as the variable. This type of measurement will provide a fairly fine-
grained view of the variation, with theoretically an infinite number of measurements.
Or we could listen to each token and auditorily decide whether to categorise the variable as monophthong or
diphthong (or in-between category), so we could have a categorical or discrete variable.
Advantages to each approach:
o in the case of categorical version, the interval variable can presumably capture more subtle levels of
variation, and is more objective and not susceptible to uncontrolled biases of the analysis
o performing the coding for the continuous measurement could probably take longer
o it is only clearly monophthongal variants that make a difference in the speech community, and not subtle
changes in the diphthong, which argues in favour of using a categorical coding
We need measures that are reliable and valid. Reliability refers to the extent to which the measures will be the
same if repeated at another time or by another rate. Valid refers to whether the measurement is a “true” or accurate
representation of the thing being measured.
The goal is to balance validity and reliability against practicality, and any study should be explicit about how all of
these decisions were made and why. This concern will be hold for any kind of linguistic variable we have.
One very practical detail: how one sets up the record for coding. The easiest way is to use a spreadsheet
program such as Microsoft Excel or its open source (free) equivalent OpenOffice.org Calc, a data sheet in a statistics
program such as SPSS or SAS, or a database program such as FileMaker Pro. When setting up a spreadsheet, it is
best to have each row represent one token. Within that row, the first item should be the variant of the linguistic variable,
followed by any factors that you code for, such as linguistic environment or speaker characteristics.
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 Eg. Figure 3.1.
o because each row is a different token, tokens from the same speaker will have the same characteristics
o the rest of the details are not crucial but are useful
o the information is as independent as possible: not only the word that the vowel appears in is recorded,
but also the preceding and following phonological environments  we can explore the effect of the
following environment separately from the word, and we can investigate the preceding environment
separately from the following
o age is recorded as a number and as a category. We won’t include both in a statistical analysis, but by
coding for both it will be possible to explore which type of coding is more robust for the age factor
We always record for more factors than we think we need, and we always make as many distinctions or
categories as we can, within reason (not mood or weather, unless it has an effect).

DESCRIBING PATTERNS
After coding, we count the frequency of one variant for specific factors. Eg, count how often (a ʊ) is
monophthongal in Pittsburgh sample. In order to address the constraints, transition, and embedding problems, we’ll
count to find patterns. First, we describe patterns then test whether these patterns are significantly different from data
that have no discernible pattern.
The display of patterns: one of the primary patterns is one in which there is a difference in variant use by age
group, indicating a change in apparent time. In displaying a simple pattern (that represents one factor group), tables are

the most useful form. Eg. Table 3.2 - presents some data on (aʊ) in Pittsburgh by age group.

Guidelines to follow when creating tables:

o Everything should be labelled transparently: the use of abbreviations for the (aʊ) values (fig.3.1) but in
the table they are spelled out in each column and row.
o The data are represented as percentages foe each factor: eg. “Total” column is the rows, and not the
columns that are added to equal 100%.
o One should always show how the percentages total to 100, and also show the number of tokens in
parentheses. Eg. the number of tokens is placed in parentheses next to the percentage; another
possibility: to add a row of raw numbers under the row of tokens.
Tables are useful for relatively straightforward patterns when only one or two factors are involved. A simple
graph is often the best way to show patterns when two or more factors are involved. Eg. Fig. 3.2 – each graph
represents a separate comparison foe each age category.
If a variable has only two variants (a binary variable) then a graph showing the frequency of one of them is the
best way to present our data. Traditionally, it is the “new” or vernacular” variable, or the output of the variable rule that is
graphed.
Tables and graphs in many ways create the patterns we find in our data. When presenting the data in written
work, choose the display that contributes best to the pattern you see in the data. For example:
o to emphasise men’s dominance of the use of monophthongal variant  use the bar graph
o to point out the changes in the gender difference from the oldest to youngest age group  use a series
of line graphs
We must explicate the table or graph so that it fits into the patterns pointed out in the narrative.

FINDING STRUCTURE IN VARIABILITY

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 Types of significance of patterns:
o statistical significance
o practical significance
One important fact about statistics: given enough tokens or speakers of a variable, statistics always tells us
something that is significant.

TESTING STATISTICAL SIGNIFICANCE AND MODELLING VARIATION

Statistical tests tell us only how the variable patterns, what constraints there are on it, and how it is embedded in
the speech community.
Statistical procedures are only as useful as the user is knowledgeable, not only about statistics but also about
linguistics and social theory. Before we run statistics, we need to have coded for the most plausible factors to have a
large effect on the linguistic variable, and one the statistics have provided us with a numerical model of the variation, we
will need to add a qualitative, possibly theoretical, interpretation to those patterns that the model presents.
Regarding our pattern, if we find a difference between or among groups: is that difference likely to have been
found by chance or not? If we had measured the population - every utterance, or at least utterances of everyone in our
speech community – then the difference was not by chance, because we measured everything. To test for this, we need
to know how likely is that the mean of our sample is the mean we would measure if we measured the entire population.
If we have a certain number of observations (tokens), we can predict how likely our pattern is to be the one of the actual
population.
Ways to describe patterns in data:
o the mean
o the median
The mean is the average (all tokens added up and then divided by the number of tokens). The median is the
“middle” of the data. We often use these measures to compare groups and describe patterns.
Eg. We want to know whether the difference between men and women in the (a ʊ) data is the one that is just
because we are “lucky”, or because there is a real pattern. We determine the range of values that are most likely for the
“real” mean for each group (called the confidence internal), and then determine how much those two ranges overlap. If
they don’t overlap, or don’t overlap much, then we can be sure that the rates of the two groups are actually different. To
do this we need to know how many tokens we have for each group; if we have more tokens, then the likelihood that we
were just lucky is lower. This t-test is a process of comparing means between groups used in statistics.
Another way of testing data is to look how they are distributed, and to see if that distribution is different from
what would be expected if everything were left entirely to chance. This is the chi-square test. We work out what
distribution would be expected if the data were distributed by chance and find the difference between the observed and
expected distributions. On the basis of the number of factors, we can look up the probability that the difference is
significant.
A similar procedure for different kinds of data is the Analysis of Variance, or ANOVA: a chi-square test in which
we are trying to decide whether the pattern is not due to chance, but it is used when we have interval data for the
linguistic variable and categories for the factors. It is similar to t-test but it can handle more than two groups. This test
can say whether the different categories are distributed similarly or are different, and then we need to decide where the
difference is.
All these tests lack the ability to decide which factors are having effects on the linguistic variable.

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 The idea of modelling is to write an equation that uses the factors we have coded for to predict the rate of our
linguistic variable, and then compare the prediction and the real data. The best such equation will give us the size of the
effect of each factor.
Varbrul (the dominant statistical procedure used by variationists) works by creating a model, and then comparing
it to the real data. It then changes the model slightly to see if the second model is significantly different, and if it is, it
keeps this later model and tweaks it. This comparison goes on until the program can’t do anything to make the model fit
the data better. The output is a series of probability weights that tell us how important different factors are, and in what
direction they change the rate of our linguistic variable.
Mixed effect modelling is a technique like multiple regression, but it models factors differently depending on their
status as so-called fixed or random effects. The names “fixed” and “random” effects come from how they are seen in
experimental methods. A fixed effect is a factor that the experimenter controls, and suspects has an effect on the
linguistic variable. A random effect is one that might have an effect on the variable, but the effect is not predictable in the
way that fixed effects are. Random effect: individual speakers; fixed effect: the linguistic factors and social grouping
factors such as age, gender, and class. The mixed effect model factors out the effect of the individual speaker from the
effect of the speaker’s group.