ENGL3328/Language in society

Handout: Language variation & age: adulthood

Adulthood
 societal pressures to conform are intense
 move towards linguistic conservatism/ stability
 retrenchment of vernacular

 Sankoff & Laberge (1973):

 There is often a peak in use of the standard variant in people as they reach their early
twenties
 A subsequent decline in the frequency of that same variant among speakers in later
middle age.
 ‘linguistic marketplace’ (Sankoff & Laberge 1973)
Speakers’ employment might require them to use marketable/ prestigious linguistic variants.
 based on work of the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu
 ways of speaking assume value based on market conditions.
 standard language use associated with professional advancement
 ‘language constitutes symbolic capital which is potentially convertible into economic
capital’ (Milroy & Gordon 2003: 97)

 Linguistic stability in adulthood

 once features of a speaker’s social dialect are established, they tend to remain relatively
stable
 adults are resistant to change when they migrate as adults:
i. frequency of vernacular variants fluctuates
ii. language-internal constraints on variation are maintained

Beckham: from adolescence to adulthood

 Dahou & Hamlin (2016)
 Progressed from a working class teen to a multi-millionaire professional footballer

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 History:
 grew up in east London
 Working class family
 spoke Cockney
 socioeconomic status improved: highest paid athletes
 moved to US

 H-dropping:
 The deletion of word-initial /h/ in stressed syllables
 (h): [h], [Ø]
 T-glottaling: (t): [t], [Ɂ]
 Data collection:
 Interviews:
• 1994; 18 years
• 2013; 39 years

 Results: H-dropping
 A reduction in the use of H-dropping
• 18 years:
100%
• 39 years:
33%

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  Why?
• A stigmatized feature
• The change in Beckham’s socioeconomic status
 Results: T-glottaling
 Reduced use, but still maintains glottaling to a high rate

 Why is t-glottaling not affected in the same manner as h-dropping?

Old Age
 little variationist research of elderly speakers
 relaxation of orientation towards standard norms
 disengagement from marketplace
Language Variation & Time: Methodological Issues
 The approach for the detection of language change in a speech community may differ
 Apparent time studies vs. Real time studies

Apparent time studies

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 Focus on a comparison between the speech patterns of different age groups
 differences in their behavior are inferred to reflect diachronic linguistic changes
 apparent (not real) change
 (Sankoff, 2006): quotative in Canadian English

 Apparent-time hypothesis’:
“the linguistic usage of a certain group will remain essentially the same for that group as they
grow older” (Chambers, 2009, p.207)

Real Time studies

 The speech of different age groups is compared at different moments in time in order to
detect historical change in the community, i.e. to find out about linguistic change in a
community as it progresses through time.
 diachronic comparisons:
 compare results of study with results from previous studies
 E.g.: comparison of the variation in (r): Labov (1966), Fowler’s (1986) & Mather (2009)

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 Real Time studies
 Panel study: a study of variation across real time that compares data from exactly the
same speakers over a period of years.
 Trend study: a study of variation across real time that compares data from members of
the same speech community at different points in time who can be considered roughly
comparable to each other.