AA. VV. (Oxford University Press) - Sociolinguistic Variatio

Sociolinguistic Variation:Critical Reflections

CARMEN FOUGHT,Editor

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Sociolinguistic Variation

OXFORD STUDIES IN SOCIOLINGUISTICSGeneral Editors:Nikolas CouplandAdam JaworskiCardiff University

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Critical Reflections

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataSociolinguistic variation/critical reflections / edited by Carmen Fought.p. cm.. . . this volume grew out of a conference held at the Claremont Colleges to honor RonaldMacaulayPreface.Includes bibliographical references and index.ISBN 0-19-517039-31. Language and languagesVariationCongresses. 2. SociolinguisticsCongresses.I. Macaulay, Ronald K. S. II. Fought, Carmen, 1966

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Chapter 11, Spoken Soul copyright 2000 by John Russell Rickford and Russell John Rickford.This material is used by permission of John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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SERIES EDITORS PREFACE

We are delighted to introduce Sociolinguistic Variation: Critical Reflections as the firstvolume to appear under our general editorship of Oxford Studies in Sociolinguistics.

Carmen Fought has assembled a set of important, original commentaries on thestudy of sociolinguistic variation that push the variationist enterprise forward. As weknow, intellectual progress is not to be equated with generating more knowledge offamiliar sorts. Progress often demands stocktaking and reflexive review. This bookpresents many of the field leaders in the study of language variation who are takinga dispassionate, critical look at several of the key assumptions and conventions ofvariationist research. How secure are our ways of generalizing from the data of lan-guage variation? How can we enrich our interpretations of interview talk and of nar-rative accounts? How should we theorize place as a correlate of variation, beyondthe conventional but ultimately troublesome concept of speech community? How canwe be more open to subjective factors in variation such as language attitudes andlanguage ideologies, and where should we locate the traditional boundary betweensociolinguistics and psycholinguistics?

We take it as an index of the maturity of variationist sociolinguistics that this setof questions can now be posed and debated. The volume represents two sorts of criticalreappraisal and challenge: how can we strengthen the middle ground of our ownresearch practice, but also how can we engage more directly with topics and agendaof shared interest in other fields of research in the humanities and social sciences?The study of language variation and change has perhaps been the most containedand autonomous subfield of sociolinguistics up to now. But this volume shows itswide potential reachin this case into theories of social identity, community, con-flict, politics, cognition, and human development. Variationist sociolinguistics, and

sociolinguistics generally (where it will become less relevant to differentiate betweenits component parts), will undoubtedly become more and more important as an in-tellectual space where multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary themes relevant to lan-guage and social life can be productively entertained.

Under Ed Finegans expert guidance for more than a decade, Oxford Studies inSociolinguistics has played a leading international role in disseminating excellent in-terdisciplinary sociolinguistic research. The backlist is daunting for incoming editors.It is certainly one of our ambitions to maintain the seriess commitment to publishingexcellent research of whatever methodological design and to extend its impressivelybroad reach into important empirical domains of language use. The phrase languagein society has, nevertheless, tended to have a rather selective application in the disci-pline: it is almost a Whorfian cryptotype. The family, and especially childhood, peergroups, social class networks, gender, health and counseling, education, workplace,politics, and mass media have been uncontroversial fields for sociolinguistics. Fieldslike forensics, religion, sport, leisure, communication technologies, tourism, and thearts have been less so. Historical sociolinguistics still seems a minority concern. Taste,globalization, consumerism, and authenticity are some of the potent interdisciplinarythemes that sociolinguistics has yet to contribute to substantially.

Older sociolinguistic themes such as performance, style, mobility, reflexiv-ity, ritual, ageing, sexuality and desire, and even sociolinguisticss staple of socialclass are ripe for reinterpretation. Sociolinguistics needs to model and assess the im-plications of profound global shifts in the organization of social life and communi-cative interaction. Shifting patterns of work and leisure, the rise of the service sector,transnationalism, neonationalism and neocolonialism, the drive toward multimodaland multisensory communication, and the changing nature of the public sphere aresome of them. With a consciously open agenda, we will seek to publish books on allaspects of sociolinguistics that offer new insights into older and newer social con-figurations and problems. We firmly expect to maintain sociolinguisticss long-standing commitment to the study of social inequalities and conflicts, as well as tobridge the gap between social critique and policymaking. Books that help to reas-sess sociolinguistics itself and the nature of sociolinguistic theory will also be wel-come. To reflect the widening readership for sociolinguistic research, it will also bea priority for us to ensure that books in the series are written as accessibly as pos-sible. It should therefore be possible for books in the series to be used as higher-leveltextbooks or secondary readings in advanced courses. Authored monographs, editedanthologies, and indeed other formats can be considered.

It is particularly appropriate that Carmen Fought has presented SociolinguisticVariation: Critical Reflections in part as a tribute to Ronald Macaulays sociolinguisticcareer. Ronalds research into language variation, style, and discourse has been genu-inely pioneering. His voice has been among the most persuasive in arguing thatsociolinguistics must respect the dignity and humanity of people we risk treating onlyas informants and must show no respect for the unnecessary boundaries that divideschools and theories. We warmly endorse the dedication of this volume to him.

NC, AJSeptember 2003

viii SERIES EDITORS PREFACE

The idea for this volume grew out of a conference held at the Claremont Colleges tohonor, upon his retirement, Ronald Macaulay, the founder of the linguistics programthere and a pioneer in the field of variationist sociolinguistics. We saw this event asa chance to bring together prominent researchers in the field of sociolinguistics,giving them the opportunity to highlight the directions they felt were central tocurrent and future research. The conference began with the topic of sociolinguisticmethods, and a number of chapters do address methodological issues, particularlythose in the first part. But most of these chapters go beyond this theme, revisitingsome traditional areas of sociolinguistic study in new ways or moving into areasthat have received little attention in the past but reflect emerging trends in linguisticresearch.

All established conferences have a kind of rhythm that develops over the years,shaping the types of work researchers choose to present. Perhaps because this confer-ence was unique, many of the impressive roster of scholars who responded to our in-vitation brought research in areas that were new to them or simply new in general. GillianSankoff, for example, an expert on language contact and bilingualism, presented workon how dialect can change after puberty. John Rickford talked about AAVE (African-American Vernacular English), his area of long-standing expertise, but included a veryrecent source of data: internet chat rooms and the attitudes expressed there. The papersoverall had an intimate tone, different from those at the usual, established conferences,which this smaller, celebratory setting seemed to facilitate.

This is not a tribute volume in the usual sense. The presenters were told that itwas not necessary for their work to tie in specifically with Ronald Macaulays

PREFACE

x PREFACE

research, and most do not make this connection explicitly. An exception is WilliamLabovs chapter, which reanalyzes a narrative from Macaulays fieldwork in lightof theories of the linguistic correlates of interest in narratives. However, many of theauthors did mention in their introductory remarks the influence of Macaulays re-search on their own career paths and on the field in general. These personal expres-sions of gratitude have been edited out of this volume. However, I will reproducehere the preamble to the presentation given by John Rickford, which summarizeswell the sense of what the various presenters had to say about Macaulays work andinfluence:

[Ronald Macaulay] is, I think, an underheralded pioneer and leader in socio-linguistics, and I thank Carmen Fought, whom I taught as a Stanford undergraduate,for bringing us together to honor and celebrate him. I first discovered his (1976,1977) work on language and social class in Glasgow when I was writing my 1979dissertation. In a field where this central topic has still received far less criticalconsideration than it merits, I found his work on class-based variation extremelyinsightful, and it is certainly still very relevant and important.

His several papers on attitudes to language and dialect, especially Scots English,and its conflicted evaluation as remarkable eloquence or tongue-tying badge of shame(e.g., 1975, 1995/1996) are inspirations to all of us who work on nonprestige varieties.They are similar to work that Elizabeth Traugott and I did some years ago on contra-dictory attitudes to pidgins and creoles (Rickford and Traugott 1985). And they relatedirectly to what my son Russell and I have written about Americas love/hate rela-tionship with the African-American vernacular (Rickford and Rickford 2000), thesubject of my paper today.

Macaulays 1988 paper on the ambiguities of the term vernacular is one ofthe most valuable discussions of the topic in sociolinguistics; I have referred manystudents to it, and still pull it out for clarification when I find myself uncertain aboutits meaning. His work on narrative and discourse analysis (1987, 1991) is penetrating,and he has also made valuable contributions to the study of style (2001).

Finally, there is an element of his research that I have always vaguely admired,but only clearly identified when I heard him presenting his paper at the 1999 NWAVconference in Toronto last month. This is the fact that he derives intense pleasureboth from the content and the language of his Scots English speakers, as if a life-time of recording, analyzing, and writing about them were not a burden or profes-sional responsibility but a joyous privilege. Those of us who have our own groupsof favorite speakers elsewhere can resonate with him (as Haj Ross would put it) onthis point. But we sometimes forget it. Thank you for helping to remind us of thispleasure, Ronald, and for helping us to convey it to our students.

I, too, thank Ronald Macaulay for his contributions to the field and for bringing to-gether the group of extraordinary linguists in this volume. In addition, he has playedan important role in my life personally, as a colleague and a mentor; for this I amprofoundly grateful.

Finally, the completion of this volume would not have been possible withoutthe patient assistance of Lea Harper (whose work was funded by a grant from PitzerResearch and Awards), Ken Olitt, and my husband, John Fought. A special thanksalso to Peter Ohlin for standing by this project.

PREFACE xi

ReferencesMacaulay, Ronald. 1975. Negative Prestige, Linguistic Insecurity, and Linguistic Self-hatred.

Lingua, 36(23):147161.. 1976. Social Class and Language in Glasgow. Language in Society 5(2):173188.. 1977a. Language, Social Class, and Education: A Glasgow Study. R. K. S. Macaulay,

assist. G. D. Trevelyan. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.. 1987. Polyphonic Monologues: Quoted Direct Speech. In Oral Narratives IPrA

Papers in Pragmatics 1(2):134.. 1988. The Rise and Fall of the Vernacular; Festschrift for Robert P. Stockwell from

His Friends & Colleagues. In On Language: Rhetorica, Phonologica, Syntactica, ed.Caroline Duncan-Rose and Theo Vennemen, 106115. London : Routledge.

. 1991. Locating Dialect in Discourse: The Language of Honest Men and Bonnie Lassesin Ayr. New York: Oxford University Press.

. 1995/1996. Remarkably Common Eloquence: The Aesthetics of Urban Dialect. Scot-tish Language, 1415, 6680.

. 2001. The question of genre. In Style and Sociolinguistic Variation, ed. PenelopeEckert and John R. Rickford. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.

Rickford, John, and Elizabeth Closs Traugott. 1985. Symbol of Powerlessness and Degeneracy,or Symbol of Solidarity and Truth? Paradoxical Attitudes towards Pidgins and Creoles. InThe English Language Today, ed. S. Greenbaum, 252261. Oxford: Pergamon.

Rickford, John Russell and Russell John Rickford. 2000. Spoken Soul: The Story of BlackEnglish. New York: Wiley.

CONTENTS

Contributors xv

Introduction, Carmen Fought 3

Part I: Sociolinguistic Methods

1. Some Sources of Divergent Data in Sociolinguistics, Guy Baileyand Jan Tillery 11

2. Ordinary Events, William Labov 31

3. Exploring Intertextuality in the Sociolinguistic Interview,Natalie Schilling-Estes 44

Part II: The Exploration of Place

4. Place, Globalization, and Linguistic Variation, Barbara Johnstone 65

5. The Sociolinguistic Construction of Remnant Dialects, Walt Wolfram 84

6. Variation and a Sense of Place, Penelope Eckert 107

Part III: Influences on Adult Speech

7. Adolescents, Young Adults, and the Critical Period: Two Case Studies fromSeven Up, Gillian Sankoff 121

8. Three Kinds of Sociolinguistics: A Psycholinguistic Perspective,Dennis R. Preston 140

Part IV: Attitudes and Ideologies

9. Language Ideologies and Linguistic Change, Lesley Milroy 161

10, The Radical Conservatism of Scots, Ronald Macaulay 178

11, Spoken Soul: The Beloved, Belittled Language of Black America,John R. Rickford 198

Index 209

xiv CONTENTS

CONTRIBUTORS

xv

Guy BaileyProvost and Vice President for

Academic AffairsUniversity of Texas, San AntonioSan Antonio, TX 78249-0603

Penelope EckertDepartment of LinguisticsStanford UniversityStanford, CA 94305-2150

Carmen FoughtDepartment of LinguisticsPitzer CollegeClaremont, CA 91711-6101

Barbara JohnstoneDepartment of EnglishCarnegie Mellon UniversityPittsburgh, PA 15213-3890

William LabovDepartment of LinguisticsUniversity of PennsylvaniaPhiladelphia, PA 19104-6305

Ronald MacaulayDepartment of LinguisticsPitzer CollegeClaremont, CA 91711-6101

Lesley MilroyDepartment of LinguisticsUniversity of MichiganAnn Arbor, MI 48109

Dennis R. PrestonDepartment of Linguistics and Germanic,

Slavic, Asian, and African LanguagesMichigan State UniversityEast Lansing, MI 48824-1027

John R. RickfordDepartment of LinguisticsStanford UniversityStanford, CA 94305-2150

Gillian SankoffDepartment of LinguisticsUniversity of PennsylvaniaPhiladelphia, PA 19104-6305

Natalie Schilling-EstesDepartment of LinguisticsGeorgetown UniversityWashington, DC 20057-1051

Jan TilleryDepartment of English, Classics, and

PhilosophyUniversity of Texas San AntonioSan Antonio, TX 78249

Walt WolframDepartment of EnglishNorth Carolina State UniversityRaleigh, NC 27695-8105

xvi CONTRIBUTORS

3CARMEN FOUGHT

Introduction

The chapters in this volume bring together some of the most prominent research-ers in the field of sociolinguistic variation, both established names and newer voices,for thoughtful reflections on the field. The chapters cover a wide range of core is-sues, but within this diversity is a common theme: the critique of conventional wis-dom in the sociolinguistic study of variation and the extension of important conceptsin variationist research to new areas. This volume is the kind of work that engagesthe reader in dialogue, challenges assumptions, and unveils new perspectives.

Many of these chapters begin by attempting to define (or redefine) our commonlanguage, to explore the terms and concepts that unite us as sociolinguists. For in-stance, what characteristics are typical of (or necessary for) a remnant dialect? Whatexactly do we mean by language ideologies? When we propose to do ethnography,what might (or must) that encompass? Several chapters explore the concept of thespeech community, directly or indirectly, in new and more dynamic ways. Presum-ably, there have been speech communities for as long as talking humans have bandedtogether into social groups, but our understanding of how such communities work iscontinuously expanding. Some of the concepts explored here are relatively new toour field: intertextuality, for example, as it relates to the sociolinguistic interview, orpostvernaculara term for varieties acquired later in life, envisioned as part of aspecific psycholinguistic model of variation.

The field of sociolinguistics is in a process of rapid evolution, in the sense ofboth uncovering more information about previously documented linguistic patternsand studying new patterns that have only recently come into existence. In the formercategory is our evolving understanding of how social contexts and the processes of

4 INTRODUCTION

linguistic change interact. Johnstones and Milroys chapters, for example, revisitLabovs classic Marthas Vineyard study in this light, looking at it from the vantagepoint of current perspectives. In the category of completely new patterns are phe-nomena related to the Internet, which did not exist when many of the linguists in thisbook began their research careers. Rickfords chapter, for example, shows us howthe internet can reveal important information about language attitudes that might behard to access in a less anonymous setting.

One theme that runs through a majority of the chapters is the exploration of iden-tityhow people conceptualize, construct, and perform who they are. In exploringit, the researchers touch on a variety of perspectives from linguistics and other fields.Schilling-Estes, for example, draws on the theoretical ideas of Bakhtin, whereasMilroys and Johnstones chapters refer to the acts of identity model of Le Page andTabouret-Keller. Many disciplines encompass the study of identity: sociology, an-thropology, psychology, womens studies, and so forth. It enhances the work ofsociolinguists to incorporate research from these other fields. The relatively new andgrowing field of sociolinguistics, however, makes a unique contribution to the sci-entific understanding of identity and its role in social organization, and these chap-ters illuminate the nature of that contribution.

The four main parts of the book provide different perspectives from which par-ticular topics in sociolinguistic research are reappraised and explored. The first partfocuses on sociolinguistic methods. These chapters address diverse aspects of thesociolinguistic interview, the base from which variationist data have traditionally beencollected. Techniques for the study of narratives feature in these chapters as well since,within the interview, narratives have often been seen as the primary locus for therevelation of the self.

Guy Bailey and Jan Tillery emphasize the need to reexamine methods of col-lecting and classifying data, particularly as a way of improving the applicability ofdata from one small sample to a larger population. Challenging traditional socio-linguistic methods, they illustrate how elements such as the identity or even the de-gree of experience of the fieldworker can affect data collection. They stress the needfor an in-depth understanding of the community before the representativeness orimplications of particular data can be accurately assessed.

William Labov presents a framework for analyzing oral narratives on death, sex,and moral indignation. Working with a narrative from Ronald Macaulays fieldworkin Scotland, he reveals how ordinary events within such narratives may highlight theextraordinary (or reportable) events, by building suspense, suggesting that at leastin this respect, such narratives have more in common with film than with works ofliterature. In unpacking the linguistic and structural elements that accompany theassignment of praise and blame in the narrative, Labov provides a useful tool fornarrative analysis.

Natalie Schilling-Estes examines intertextuality in narratives and other highlyinvolved sections of the interview, focusing particularly on the role of material re-membered from other, earlier narratives, whether it was produced by the speaker orsomeone else. Her chapter calls attention to crucial issues about identity since, asshe points out, a speakers voice is presumed to be his or her own but may containpieces drawn from other people, written sources, and so forth. This intriguing ques-

INTRODUCTION 5

tion of the ownership of styles has crucial repercussions for our understanding ofnatural speech, the traditional target of sociolinguistic research, and for interpretingthe results of quantitative analyses, where distinctions between such styles are oftennot made. All three of these chapters seek to improve our collection and analysis ofdata, so that it is informed by and in turn informs our understanding of the socio-linguistic context.

The second part presents a number of perspectives on placethe communitiesin which people live and the different settings, physical and psychological, in whichthe events of their lives occur. The term community is commonly found throughoutthe sociolinguistic literature, but it is not often explicitly defined or studied in its ownright. Taken together, these three chapters present a critical reappraisal of a crucialissue: the social context in which individual identities are created and against whichthey are evaluated. They present a view of both places and communities as dynamicrather than static, interwoven rather than isolable, constantly being reevaluated andreshaped by factors in the external world, as well as by the changing worldviews oftheir speakers.

Barbara Johnstone analyzes the importance of both physical and psychologicalnotions of place as significant factors in language variation, drawing on recent dis-cussions of place in geography and social theory. Paralleling the chapter by Schilling-Estes, she raises important questions about issues of the ownership and definition ofstyles and varieties, and she encourages variationists to see the analysis of discourseas a dialogue. Johnstone also stresses the important role of the identification of a formas local by speakers in influencing processes of sociolinguistic variation and change.

Walt Wolfram sets out the characteristics of a particular kind of place: the rem-nant dialect community. Remnant dialect areas are interesting, among other reasons,because they allow us to look at a community where the relationship between indi-vidual identity and the social context is shifting and changing. Wolfram presents acomprehensive consideration of the social and linguistic features of remnant dialectareas, in relation to their origins and the changes that have occurred within them,including a rethinking of what terms like remnant and relic actually mean. He alsoprovides variationist researchers with a clear articulation of testable claims aboutvariation and change in such communities.

Penelope Eckert demonstrates how local value is expressed in language that isembedded in the community by examining the behavior of adolescents in Detroit.Again, the focus is on both social setting (the local and wider communities and theirvalues) and individual identity (the way the adolescents in her study present them-selves to, and perceive, the world). She cites the need for studying not only the groups(regional, social, etc.) that can be delimited in some clear way but also the borderswhere groups come into contact and categories are more fluid. She challenges per-spectives that emphasize homogeneity, and she argues strongly for a more integra-tive perspective on the sociolinguistic study of communities.

The third part explores influences on adult speech, including variations in reg-ister and the acquisition of grammatical and other features after puberty. These chap-ters draw new connections between sociolinguistics and psycholinguistics, lookingat the cognitive and developmental side of social variation. Many of the other sec-tions of the book focus outward, suggesting more fruitful ways of exploring the larger

6 INTRODUCTION

community connections that form the context for speech. The authors of these chap-ters direct their inquiries toward developments within individual speakers and ex-plore how language variation in the individual emerges and changes against the socialbackdrop of community norms.

Gillian Sankoff makes use of the longitudinal evidence contained in a series ofBritish TV programs (the Seven Up film series) featuring a group of 7-year-olds (ini-tially), who are reinterviewed at seven-year intervals. Using this real-time data onthe development of speakers from very different backgrounds, she shows how thespeech of individuals can change after the formative years, challenging to some de-gree the conventional assumption in the variationist tradition of uniformity over thelifespan. The relation of the life histories of the boys she studies to their use of lo-cally relevant variables illuminates the value of focusing on the practices of indi-viduals within the context of a particular community, and in some ways echoes thethemes of Eckerts chapter, in the second part of the volume.

Dennis Preston outlines the basis for a psychologically plausible model of varia-tionist grammar, providing evidence that separate grammars are more likely than aswitching mechanism in a unified grammar. He emphasizes the parallels between asecond language acquired as an adult and the later varieties acquired in ones firstlanguage, through formal education or other means. In particular, his discussion ofthe acquisition of the postvernacular grammar dovetails with Sankoffs work in high-lighting the importance of looking at changes over the lifespan. Much work onsociolinguistic variation and identity has focused on adolescents, but this chapterdemonstrates that following linguistic development farther into the age continuumimproves our understanding of variation.

The final part includes three chapters that focus on the crucial role of attitudesand ideologies in sociolinguistic research and theory. Though variationists have col-lected data on language attitudes from the beginning, these data have often beentreated as secondary to the variation itself. The authors in this section give newweight to the attitudes and ideologies of communities, treating them as worthy ofstudy in their own right and as intimately tied in with the processes of linguistic varia-tion and change.

Lesley Milroy emphasizes the need to integrate the study of attitudes towardlanguage with the general investigation of variation. She discusses the particular roleof the standard as a part of the linguistic repertoire of a community, as well as lan-guage ideology in general as an element of the social context. She begins with theperspective of ideology as a semiotic process, and she shows how different types ofsociolinguistic variables reflect the effects of ideological construction. She also pro-vides evidence that changes in a communitys ideologies may be directly reflectedin linguistic variation.

Ronald Macaulay examines the role of language in creating and maintaining apersistent sense of national identity in Scotland, particularly among working-classspeakers. This chapter challenges the notion found in much previous work thatworking-class speakers of nonprestige varieties necessarily orient toward some ide-alized, standard way of speaking. Macaulay provides critical insights into somelimitations of the traditional interviewing practices for collecting data on languagevariation, echoing the chapter by Bailey and Tillery. He also urges us to listen more

INTRODUCTION 7

carefully to the views on language variation of the speakers in the communities westudy since their attitudes can be a crucial factor in the linguistic varieties they chooseto use.

Finally, John Rickfords chapter examines changing views of the language ofblack America, from the positive attitudes found from the 1960s until the mid-1980s,to the very negative comments heard during the Ebonics controversy. He uses a widevariety of sources, from literature to online chat rooms, again emphasizing, as do manyof the other chapters, the possibilities inherent in data collected from sources otherthan traditional interviews. From these data, he draws a picture of how schisms withinand across communities have shaped our debates about language. All three of thesechapters demonstrate the need for a better integration of research on attitudes intothe variationist model.

Taken together, the chapters in Sociolinguistic Variation are a kind of road mapof the field: where we have been and where we hope to go. As mentioned in the pref-ace, the conference from which these chapters emerged seemed to bring out the au-thors voices in an unusually intimate and direct way. They speak to issues in thefield critically and contemplatively, looking back at the established practices of thevariationist tradition and looking forward into how the future of this relatively youngfield may develop.

PART I

SOCIOLINGUISTIC METHODS

11

1

GUY BAILEY AND JAN TILLERY

Some Sources of Divergent Data

in Sociolinguistics

1. Introduction

Quantitative sociolinguistics emerged more than thirty years ago with a flurry ofinterest in methodology. In fact, the work of William Labov and of other first-generation variationists such as Walt Wolfram, Ralph Fasold, Peter Trudgill, and RonaldMacaulay is largely responsible for introducing the serious consideration of issuesof reliability and validity to the study of dialect.1 During the first decade of its existence,ameliorating the observers paradox, choosing representative samples of informants,and developing analytical approaches that accounted for linguistic variability allbecame major foci of quantitative sociolinguistics.

Over the last twenty years, however, the concern for methodological rigor haslessened considerably. Unfortunately, the diminished focus on methodological is-sues seems to have had a detrimental effect on the discipline. As Wolfram (thisvolume) points out, a basic goal of sociolinguists is to produce results that can begeneralized to the behavior of a larger population. Generalizability implies both re-liability (i.e., that the same results would be obtained in repeated observations of thesame phenomenon) and intersubjectivity (i.e., that two different researchers observ-ing the same phenomenon would have obtained the same results). Over the last twodecades, however, it has become clear that both reliability and intersubjectivity (andhence generalizability) are sometimes problematic in quantitative sociolinguistics.In fact, researchers have reported some remarkably divergent data from observationsof what is purported to be the same phenomenon. For example, figure 1.1 summa-rizes the distribution of zero third-person singular in ten studies of African-American

12 SOCIOLINGUISTIC METHODS

Vernacular English (AAVE); table 1.1 provides information on each source. Althoughthe results from nine of the ten studies are relatively close for the most part, rangingfrom 73% to 87%, the results from the North Carolina study are quite different. The52% rate of occurrence for zero third singular in North Carolina is some 21 percent-age points less than the next lowest rate. At least in regard to verbal s, AAVE inNorth Carolina is either very different from AAVE in other parts of the country, in-cluding other parts of the South, or there is a problem with intersubjectivity.

This chapter explores some of the reasons for this kind of divergent data in quan-titative sociolinguistics and argues that methodological differences account for mostof the divergent evidence. In particular, it examines the effects of different interview-

1.1 Sources for Figure 1

Location Author/PI Community Age Social Class

Georgia Sommer (1986) Atlanta Adolescents LowerMississippi Wolfram (1971) Meadville Adolescents Lower workingTexas-Rural Bailey (1993) Brazos Valley Adolescents LowerTexas-Urban Bailey (1993) Bryan Adolescents LowerTX-Houston Cukor-Avila (1997) Houston Adolescents WorkingNorth Carolina Butters & Nix (1986) Wilmington Adolescents Lower WorkingMaryland Whiteman (1981) ? Adolescents Lower WorkingWashington, D.C. Fasold (1972) Adolescents Lower WorkingCalifornia Rickford (1992) East Palo Alto Teenagers Lower WorkingMichigan Wolfram (1969) Detroit Adolescents Lower Working

1.1. Zero Third-Person Singular in Ten Sources of African-American VernacularEnglish

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SOME SOURCES OF DIVERGENT DATA IN SOCIOLINGUISTICS 13

ers, of differences in sample populations, and of differences in analytical strategiesin creating divergent data. In addition, we argue that the generalizability of results isa direct function of the methods employed to generate them and that, without a bodyof research that examines the effects of methods on results, neither intersubjectivitynor reliability is possible in quantitative sociolinguistics; as a consequence, our re-sults are probably not generalizable.

2. Interviewer effects

2.1. The effect of interviewer characteristicsIn his pioneering work in New York City, Labov (1966) identified the observersparadox (i.e., the skewing of linguistic behavior toward norms of correctness as aresult of the mere presence of a fieldworker) as a major impediment to research insociolinguistics. The observers paradox, however, is simply one manifestation of amore general phenomenonthe effects that fieldworkers and interviewers have onthe data they elicit. Although everyone who has been part of a large-scale survey isaware that some fieldworkers obtain better results than others, there is little researchon the effects of interviewer characteristics or of different interviewers on linguisticdata. Recent work by Rickford and McNair-Knox (1994), however, makes a prom-ising beginning by exploring the effects of one interviewer characteristic, race of theinterviewer, on data from sociolinguistic fieldwork.

Rickford and McNair-Knox (1994) examine the effects of the interviewersrace by having the same African-American informant (Foxy Boston) interviewedby an African-American and a white fieldworker. Both fieldworkers are women.Because the topics discussed in a linguistic interview can sometimes have an ef-fect on the type of data that occurs (see Bell 1984), Rickford and McNair-Knoxhad the white fieldworker audit the interview conducted by the African Americanand structure her interview around the same topics. They then compared the oc-currence of five well-known AAVE features (verbal s, possessive s, plural s,copula is/are absence, and habitual be) in the two interviews and found that in everycase the frequency of occurrence of these features was greater in the interviewconducted by the African-American fieldworker; in three instances the differencesare statistically significant (see table 1.2).2 These results, Rickford and McNair-

1.2 The Effects of the Race of the Interviewer

African-American WhiteFeature Interviewer Interviewer

Possessive s absence 67% (6/9) 50% (5/10) nsPlural s absence 01% (4/282) 00% (0/230) nsThird singular present absence 73% (83/114) 36% (45/124)aCopula is/are absence 70% (197/283) 40% (70/176)aInvariant habitual be 385 (=241 per hour) 97 (=78 per hour)a

a= significant at


Knox conclude, suggest that the race of the interviewer has a major effect on re-sults in sociolinguistic interviews.

In spite of the elegance of the study, Rickford and McNair-Knox (1994) wereunable to control for all of the dependent variables in their research. For instance,the African-American interviewer knew the interviewee (the white fieldworker wasa stranger) and also had her daughter, who served as a peer for the interviewee, presentduring the interview. The interview conducted by the white fieldworker was a one-on-one session. However, because both familiarity and the presence of additionalpeers can also affect results from interviews, it may be that some of the differencesin the study are attributable to these factors rather than to the race of the interviewer.3To try to sort out the effects of familiarity and the presence of additional peers fromthe effects of the race of the fieldworker, Cukor-Avila and Bailey (2001) attemptedto replicate Rickford and McNair-Knoxs studybut with controls for these othervariables.

As part of the Springville Project, Cukor-Avila and Bailey designed two experi-ments to examine the effects of interviewer race.4 The first experiment included twosets of interviews, one in which a white fieldworker interviewed three African-American teenage girls (Brandy, Samantha, and LaShonda) and a second in whichone of the teenage girls (Brandy) interviewed the other two. The second experimentincluded two interviews with an elderly African-American woman (Aubrey), one doneby a white male, the other by an African- American male who was a resident of thecommunity. In both experiments, Cukor-Avila and Bailey tried to control for as manyinterviewer characteristics as possible in order to isolate the effects of race. Table1.3 summarizes some of the interviewer characteristics both of the Cukor-Avila andBailey experiments and also of the one done by Rickford and McNair-Knox.

As figures 1.21.4 suggest, the results are quite different in the two studies.5 Foreach of the teenage interviewees in experiment 1 (see figures 1.2 and 1.3), the fre-

1.3 Comparison of Interviewer Characteristics in Rickford and McNair-Knox(1994) and Cukor-Avila and Bailey (2001)

Rickford/McNair-Knox Cukor-Avila/Bailey #1 Cukor-Avila/Bailey #2Study A-A FW Wh. FW A-A FW Wh. FW AA-FW Wh. FW

Community member yes no yes no* yes noa

Familiarity with yes no yes yes yes nobintervieweeOther interlocutors yes no yes yes yes yespresentInterviewers same sex yes yes yes yes yes yesControl of topic yes yes no noc yes yesMultiple interviews yes? no yes yes no no

aAlthough the fieldworkers in these experiments were not community members, they had spent more than 10 yearsdoing fieldwork in the community.bAlthough the fieldworkers did not know the informant, they knew the peers who were present.cAlthough there are no explicit controls for topics, many of the same topics occur in both sets of interviews.


quency of vernacular forms is higher with the African-American fieldworker in twoinstances and with the white fieldworker in two instances. However, in only one in-stance, habitual be in the data from LaShonda, is the difference statistically significant,and here the effect is the opposite of what the evidence in Rickford and McNair-Knox (1994) would lead us to expect. Even in this case, though, it would be a mistaketo make too much of the difference since the occurrence of be is highly context-dependent, and as table 1.3 indicates, experiment 1 did not control for interviewertopic. In experiment 2, the frequency of vernacular forms is actually higher with thewhite interviewer more often than with the black one, although again no differenceis statistically significant. None of these three informants, then, seems to shift awayfrom vernacular norms in the presence of the white fieldworkers.

Although it might be tempting to view these results as contradicting those ofRickford and McNair-Knox (1994), things are not quite so simple. As much as Cukor-Avila and Bailey (2001) tried to control for interviewer characteristics, there is onefactor not controlled for: the experience of the fieldworkers. Both of the white inter-viewers were experienced sociolinguistic fieldworkers who had been working inSpringville for more than a decade; the African-American fieldworkers were novices.It may be that the experience of the white fieldworkers, especially in the Springvillecommunity, enabled them to ameliorate any effects that their race might have had.The effects of experience and time spent in the community are unclear, but it standsto reason that they have some effect. Just as Rickford and McNair-Knox cannot

1.2. The Effects of the Race of the Fieldworker on Data from Samantha, anAfrican-American Female Born in 1982 (Source: Cukor-Avila and Bailey 2001)

50

83.9

53.6

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42.3

77

55.5

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90

0 possessive 0 3rd sing. 0 copula habitual beFeature

Perc

enta

ge o

f Occ

urre

nce

African-American FWWhite FW


1.4. The Effects of the Race of the Fieldworker on Data from Aubrey, an African-American Female Born in 1909 (Source: Cukor-Avila and Bailey 2001)

1.3. The Effects of the Race of the Fieldworker on Data from LaShonda, anAfrican-American Female Born in 1982 (Source: Cukor-Avila and Bailey 2001)

47.4

73.767.8

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35.3

76.7

55.8

6.4

0

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0possessive

0 3rd sing. 0 copula habitual be

Feature

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20.5

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strongpret.

strong p.p.

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3rd-plural-s

wasleveling

multipleneg.

Feature

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ge of N

onst

anda

rd F

orm

s African-American FWWhite FW


demonstrate conclusively that the race of the interviewer is a significant factor,Cukor-Avila and Bailey cannot conclude that it is notonly that if it is, it can beameliorated.

Whether the differences in Rickford and McNair-Knox (1994) represent theeffects of the race of the fieldworker, of familiarity and the presence of peers, or ofsome combination of these, they are nevertheless significant and clearly related tointerviewers and the interview situation. Understanding and accounting for such in-terviewer effects are necessary prerequisites to achieving reliability and intersubjec-tivity. The work of Bailey and Tillery (1999) provides a clear example of how theseeffects can skew both the results of a survey and their interpretation.

2.2. The Rutledge Effect

Bailey and Tillery (1999) reexamined the results of Montgomerys (1998) intrigu-ing analysis of the distribution of the Southern American English double modal con-struction might could in data gathered for the Linguistic Atlas of the Gulf States(LAGS). In his analysis of the data, Montgomery discovered that might could oc-curred almost twice as often when the fieldworker was a female (see figure 1.5) and

1.5. The Distribution of might could in LAGS by the Sex of the Interviewer(Source: Bailey and Tillery 1999)

13.31

23.76

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25

Male FWs Female FWsSex of Interviewer

Perc

enta

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f Inf

orm

ants

Usin

g Fo

rm


that this factor was the single most important constraint on the distribution of theform in LAGS. Montgomery argued that this peculiar distribution was a consequenceof the tendency for informants to be more polite to women than to men.

As a result of our previous work with LAGS data, however, we believed thatthere might be a better explanation for the peculiar distribution of might could. Be-cause LAGS used worksheets (a set of target items to be elicited) rather than a ques-tionnaire, fieldworkers had considerable discretion in eliciting target items.6 Manyrelied heavily on directed conversation, whereas others generally used direct elicita-tion of the items. Barbara Rutledge, the most prolific LAGS fieldworker (she con-ducted 200 of the 1,121 interviews), generally used direct elicitation of target items,but when she was unable to elicit an item, she frequently suggested a response toinformants, unlike many other LAGS fieldworkers. Few LAGS target items were moredifficult to elicit than might could, and it was uncommon in conversation as well. Asa consequence, Rutledge often suggested the form.

An analysis of the might could data in the interviews conducted by Rutledgeindicates that her approach to fieldwork accounts for almost all of the effects ofthe sex of the interviewer that Montgomery (1998) uncovered. Figure 1.6 showsthe distribution of might could in LAGS by the sex of the fieldworker, with theinterviews conducted by Rutledge separated from those done by other women. Thatfigure clearly shows that what at first appears to be the effect of the sex of the in-

1.6. The Rutledge Effect: The Occurrence of might could by the Sex of theFieldworker, with Barbara Rutledge Separated from Other Female Fieldworkers (Baileyand Tillery 1999)

16.3613.31

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Female fws. Male fws. Rutledge

Perc

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nfor

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ts W

ho U

se m

ight

cou

ld


terviewer on the occurrence of the form is actually the Rutledge Effect. Once theRutledge data are separated from those of other females, the 10% male-femaledifferential is reduced to 3% and is no longer significant. Although Rutledge con-ducted just under 18% of the LAGS interviews, those account for more than a thirdof the tokens of might could; and although might could occurs in 38% of the inter-views conducted by Rutledge, it occurs in only 14.86% of the interviews done byother fieldworkers.

Most of the differential between Rutledge and other LAGS fieldworkers is aconsequence of the strategy of suggestion. Figure 1.7 correlates tokens of might couldin the Rutledge interviews with the strategy used to elicit the form and includes datafrom the entire LAGS corpus for comparison. As this figure indicates, the strategyof suggestion was the most important factor in the occurrence of might could in LAGS.Since Rutledge used the strategy more than other fieldworkers, she obtained moretokens of the form; and because she is responsible for such a large proportion of theLAGS corpus, the form occurs most often with female interviewers. The effect ofthe sex of the interviewer, then, is really just the Rutledge Effect.

More generally, the Rutledge Effect is the effect that individual fieldworkers haveon the distribution of linguistic features in a corpus. What is particularly troublingabout the Rutledge Effect is that it is often not discernable in sociolinguistics sincemost data are presented in aggregate form. The presentation of data in LAGS allows

1.7. The Effects of Elicitation Techniques on the Occurrence of might could inLAGS (Source: Bailey and Tillery 1999)

50.47

67.79

25.97 23.6828.72

17.08

0

10

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30

40

50

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All fws. RutledgeNote: Percentages add up to more than 100% because might

could occurs more than once in some interviews.

Perc

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ccur

renc

es o

f mig

ht c

ould SuggestedElicitedConversation


researchers to link every occurrence of a form to a particular interview, to a particu-lar fieldworker and transcriber, and to a particular mode of elicitation. Quantitativesociolinguistics, however, generally presents only aggregated data correlated withvarious factors. Because we cannot recover individual tokens, we have no way ofknowing how much of the variation that we attribute to social and linguistic factorsmay be due to the Rutledge Effect. Nevertheless, both characteristics of interview-ers and the strategies they use to obtain data have significant effects on linguisticdata. If we are to obtain reliability and intersubjectivity, and hence generalizability,we must understand just what those effects are.

3. Sampling effects

Quantitative sociolinguistics began with a strong emphasis on representative sam-pling and a clear preference for probability sampling (see Labov 1966, 2001; Shuyet al. 1967). Many recent sociolinguistic studies, though, provide few details abouthow their informants were selected or about the representativeness of their samples.This circumstance creates problems for intersubjectivity and reliability since evenrelatively small differences in samples can lead to significant differences in results.The work of Bailey et al. (1997b) with a Survey of Oklahoma Dialects (SOD) illus-trates these effects.

This work consists of two complementary tape-recorded surveys, one a tele-phone survey and the other a field survey.7 The former used a proportionate strati-fied random sample of all telephone households in the state to develop a probabilitysample of 632 respondents. The latter made use of a purposive sample, with thetownship and range divisions used in the original settlement of the state (by whites)providing a sampling grid of 33 units. Communities within each grid were selectedrandomly, but the randomly selected target communities all had populations offewer than 25,000. Within each community, SOD fieldworkers interviewed 4 na-tives of Oklahomasomeone about 80 years old, about 60, about 40, and about20to construct the sample. The protocol for the field survey included all of thetarget items that were in the protocol for the telephone survey, although it alsoincluded a good many more. The primary differences between the two surveys,then, were in the mode of administration (telephone versus face to face) and in thesample populations (the field survey sampled only native-born residents of com-munities of under 25,000; the telephone survey sampled all Oklahoma residents).Our work suggests that the mode of administration had little effect on the data (seeBailey et al. 1997b); the differences in sample populations, however, had signifi-cant effects in almost every instance.

Figure 1.8 provides data on the occurrence of six features of Oklahoma speechin the two SOD surveys. As that figure shows, the differences between the two sur-veys are not particularly large, but in every instance they are statistically signifi-cant (at the .05 level, using the chi square test). When similar populations withineach survey are compared, however, the differences are reduced to the point thatthey are no longer statistically significant. Figure 1.9 includes the information pro-


vided in figure 1.8, but in this instance the data from the telephone survey includeonly those respondents who were native Oklahomans living in communities of fewerthan 25,000. As figure 1.9 shows, when like populations are compared, no differ-ence exceeds 6%, and no difference is statistically significant. Virtually all of thediscrepancies between the SOD telephone and field surveys, then, reflect differ-ences in the sample populations.

What is most striking about these differences is that they come from one of themore homogeneous areas in the United States. In 1990 more than 88% of the popu-lation of Oklahoma was Anglo, and no metropolitan area in the state had as many asa million people. About half of the state lived in communities of 25,000 or fewer.The fact that sampling differences from a population as homogeneous as this canlead to significant differences in results suggests that (1) specifying exactly what thesample population in a study is and (2) specifying what procedures were used to surveythat population are absolutely necessary for obtaining intersubjectivity and reliabil-ity. These differences also demonstrate the importance of not generalizing beyondthe precise population that the sample represents.

1.8. The Occurrence of Six Features of Oklahoma Speech in the SOD Telephoneand Field Surveys

87.4

32.7

77.8

55.9

82.6 79.2

93.9

28.9

90.3

67.6

97.288.9

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yall yall-sing. fixin to mightcould

pos.anymore

incept.got to

Features

Pe

rcen

tage

of R

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nden

ts U

sing

Each

Fo

rmTelephone Survey Field Survey


4. The effects of analytical strategies

In an important overview of methodological issues that have emerged in the study ofzero copula in AAVE, Rickford et al. (1991) showed that studies of zero copula aredifficult to compare because of the different analytical strategies researchers haveused.8 For example, in analyzing the effects of the following environment, someresearchers separate the adjective and locative categories, whereas others combinethe two since they sometimes have fewer tokens than other categories do. Likewise,some researchers calculate zero as a percentage of only the contractible copula formsin a given environment, whereas others calculate it as a percentage of all copula forms.These kinds of differences in analytical strategies can lead to dramatic differences inresults, as work on habitual be in AAVE demonstrates.

In their work on the evolution of habitual be in AAVE, Bailey and Maynor (1987)point out that among African Americans born before World War II, invariant be occursinfrequently both as a copula (before predicate adjectives, locatives, and nouns) andas an auxiliary (before V + ing).9 Among African Americans born after World WarII, be increases dramatically in its frequency of occurrence, but as figure 1.10 dem-

1.9. The Occurrence of Six Features of Oklahoma Speech in the Field Survey andamong Native Respondents in Communities under 25,000 in the Telephone Survey

92

34.8

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yall yall-sing. fixin to mightcould

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Fea

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Telephone Survey Field Survey


onstrates, the increase is limited almost entirely to one environmentbefore V + ing(i.e., as an auxiliary). Furthermore, the increase is restricted to auxiliary tokens thatcarry habitual meaning. These facts, Bailey and Maynor argue, demonstrate that thehabitual be, which is now a stereotype of AAVE, developed over the last 75 years asa result of the syntactic reanalysis of the invariant be that occurred infrequently inearlier AAVE.

Viereck (1988) uses a unique source of data on earlier AAVE, the Hoodoo texts,to argue against this position.10 He bases his argument on his claim that be occursfar more often as an auxiliary in the Hoodoo texts than in Bailey and Maynors(1987) data from African Americans born before World War I. This apparent dis-crepancy, however, is largely a consequence of differences in how the data areanalyzed. Bailey and Maynor analyze invariant be as a percentage of all forms ofbe (am, is, are, 0, be) in a given environment (e.g., before adjectives), whereasViereck analyzes be + V + ing only as a percentage of all invariant be forms. Fig-ures 1.101.12 show how the difference in categorization creates the discrepancyin the data.

1.10. The Development of be+ing as a Marker of Habitual Aspect (Source: Bailey1993)

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V+ing gonna adjective locative nounphrase

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be a

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a/Au

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s in

the

Envir

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tFormer SlavesAdults, 50100Adults, 2549Children


As figure 1.10 shows, Bailey and Maynor (1987) find that invariant be comprisesonly 1% of all be tokens (i.e., am, is, are, 0, be) before V+ing among elderly adults butcomprises 44% of the tokens among teenagers. When Viereck analyzes be+V+ing asa percentage of all invariant be tokens (see figure 1.11), he finds that it comprises morethan a quarter of the invariant be tokens. However, as figure 1.11 shows, if the datafrom Bailey and Maynor are analyzed in the same way that Viereck analyzed his evi-dence, the rapid expansion of invariant be as an auxiliary is still apparent. In Baileyand Maynors data, be + V + ing comprises almost two-thirds of the invariant be to-kens among children but only 13% of those tokens among elderly adults.

Even after the recategorization of the data in Bailey and Maynor (1987) to achieveconsistency with Vierecks (1988) approach, though, there is still a discrepancy.Vierecks data suggest that invariant be occurs about twice as often among the Hoodooinformants as among Bailey and Maynors elderly Texans (see figure 1.11). A moreextensive analysis of the Hoodoo texts by Ewers (1996), however, resolves this dis-crepancy. Ewers reports results that are quite different from those that Viereck re-ports and quite similar to those in Bailey and Maynor. Figure 1.11 provides the resultsof Ewerss analysis of the Hoodoo texts and highlights the sharp contrast betweenthat study and Vierecks. Although Ewers analysis eliminates the discrepancy be-

1.11. The Occurrence of Habitual be+ing in Three Studies, with be+ing Calcu-lated as a Percentage of All Invariant be Forms (Sources: Bailey and Maynor 1987;Viereck 1988; Ewers 1996)

27.42

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Viereck B&Mchildren

B&M adults Ewers early Ewers late

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be +

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as

a P

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ntag

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All I

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be


tween the Hoodoo texts and Bailey and Maynors data (see figure 1.12 also), it doeslead to another discrepancy of coursewith the Viereck studyand raises the ques-tion of how two studies of the same data, using the same analytical categories, couldget such different results.

Although we do not have sufficient data for arriving at a definitive answer, thediscrepancy may again be the result of differences in analytical strategies. As Fasold(1972) has clearly demonstrated, there are two types of invariant be in AAVE. Oneoccurs where other varieties of English have am, is, or are and takes do-support innegative constructions and in tag questions. The following examples from our Texasdata illustrate this type of invariant be:

(1) They chasin other people all the time; they got a four-wheel drive ansometimes they be jumpin in.

(2) You know, when it be sunny like today.(3) When it clabbers, it don always be sour.

The second type of invariant be derives from the deletion of an underlying will orwould, as in examples four and five, and is negated with wont or wouldnt.

1.12. The Occurrence of Invariant be before V+ing in Two Studies (Sources:Bailey and Maynor 1987; Ewers 1996)

1

2

1

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Ewers early Ewers late B&M 50100Study

be a

s a P

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opul

a Fo

rms

Befo

reV

+ in

g


(4) Sometimes it be twelve an one oclock before we go to bed. An thenwe would get up at five or six.

(5) When you got them big backlogs, you couldn get close to it; people beall aroun in front of it.

Work on invariant be in AAVE has typically focused on the first type, and re-searchers have been careful to exclude tokens derived from will/would deletion fromtheir analyses. However, as the examples above suggest, the differences are some-times not immediately obvious, and it may be that Viereck (1988) did not eliminatethe tokens derived from will/would deletion from his analysis.11 The lack of consis-tency in analytical strategies would certainly account for the intersubjectivity betweenViereck and Ewers (1996).

Even when researchers agree on analytical strategies and categories, those strat-egies and categories, when used unreflectively, can sometimes lead to divergent data.Work on the relative effects of predicate adjectives and locatives on the occurrenceof zero copula in AAVE illustrates this type of divergence. As the convenient sum-mary in Rickford (1998) suggests, about half of the studies of the AAVE copula foundthat zero copula is more frequent before predicate adjectives, and half found zeromore frequent before locatives. What makes this situation particularly troubling isthat the adjective/locative environments are crucial in the debate about the origins ofthe AAVE copula.

Cukor-Avila (1999) approaches the adjective/locative problem by rethinking theanalytical categories typically used in studies of the AAVE copula. Rather than treatadjective as a single category, she separates adjectives into three subcategories (par-ticipial, nonstatives, and statives) to explore any differential effects that adjectivesubcategory might have on the occurrence of zero copula in data from African Ameri-cans in Springville, Texas. As figure 1.13 shows, those subcategories do have dif-ferential effects, effects that are dramatic and complex. Zero copula is much morefrequent before participial than stative adjectives among informants born both be-fore and after World War II. Nonstatives have an effect similar to that of stativesamong people born before World War II, but for those born after the war, nonstativesare more like participials. Thus although subcategories of adjectives do have differ-ential effects on the occurrence of zero copula, those effects seem to be changingover time.

The differential effects of subcategories of adjectives and their changing effectsover time have significant consequences for the constraint ordering of the followinggrammatical category, as figure 1.14 suggests. Among informants born before WorldWar II, zero copula occurs more often with participial adjectives than with locatives,but it occurs more frequently with locatives than with stative and nonstative adjec-tives. Among informants born after the war, zero copula occurs more often with bothparticipial adjectives and nonstatives than with locatives. Thus whenever adjectivesubcategories are not separated in an analysis of zero copula (and except in Cukor-Avilas work they never have been), the ordering of locatives and adjectives on theconstraint hierarchy may be influenced by (1) the proportion of adjectives in eachsubcategory in the corpus and (2) the age of the informants. If a corpus contains ahigh proportion of stative adjectives, then zero is likely to occur more frequently with


locatives with adjectives; if a corpus contains a high proportion of participial adjec-tives, then zero will probably occur more frequently with adjectives than locatives.Depending upon the age of the informants, a high proportion of nonstatives may leadto either result. Thus even when researchers use the same analytical strategies andcategories, the categories themselves may lead to divergent data. Even widely usedschemes of analysis cannot be accepted uncritically.

5. Conclusion

As the above examples suggest, the results in sociolinguistic research are sometimesas much a consequence of the methodology used as of the behavior of informants.Differences in interviewer characteristics and interview strategies, in sampling pro-cedures and sample populations, and in analytical categories and strategies can allhave significant effects on data. Of course, the fact that different methods lead todifferent results is no great revelation and is not in and of itself a problem. What makes

1.13. The Effects of Stativity on the Occurrence of Zero Copula (Source: Cukor-Avila 1999)

41 42

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statives nonstatives participialAdjective Subcategory

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tPreWorld War IIPostWorld War II


the situation problematic is that quantitative sociolinguistics has no body of researchon methods, no literature (except for the articles cited in this chapter) that exploresthe effects of different interviewers, elicitation strategies, sampling procedures, oranalytical strategies. Moreover, the concern with methods that in part motivated thefirst generation of sociolinguists has not been sustained in more recent research, andmany recent studies say little about how the research was done. In the absence ofwork that clarifies the effects of methods on results, we have no way of knowing towhat extent our results reflect the behavior of our sample population (or even thebehavior of our informants) or to what extent they are a consequence of how theresearch was conducted. Disentangling the effects of our methods from the effectsof social and linguistic factors with some certainty is perhaps the most important thingwe can do to build upon the solid foundation laid by first-generation sociolinguists.

Notes1. See, for example, Labov (1966) Wolfram (1969), Fasold (1972) Trudgill (1974) and

Macaulay (1977) all published between 1966 and 1977.2. Rickford and McNair-Knox also find that topic has an effect as well, but the effects

of the race of the interviewer are much greater. The short summary given here glosses over anumber of nuances in their work; their article is a major contribution on several fronts and isworth reading in its entirety.

3. See Cukor-Avila and Bailey (2001) for a discussion of these factors. The use of peergroups, of course, is a well-known technique for trying to ameliorate the observers paradox.

1.14. The Effects of the Following Grammatical Environment on Zero Copula inAAVE, with Subcategories of Adjectives Treated Separately (Source: Cukor-Avila 1999)

86

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gonn

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Following Grammatical Environment

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PreWorld War II Infs. PostWorld War II Infs.


4. For a discussion of the Springville Project, see Cukor-Avila and Bailey (1995) andCukor-Avila (1996).

5. Note that in experiment 1 Cukor-Avila and Bailey do not include data on plural ssince this feature is of such low frequency both in their data and those of Rickford and McNair.In experiment 2 they use a different set of variables since some of the features used by Rickfordand McNair-Knox (e.g., habitual be) are recent innovations and others (e.g., zero copula) areinfrequent in the corpus because most of both interviews are in the past tense.

6. See Bailey and Tillery (1999) for a discussion of LAGS elicitation strategies.7. For a detailed account of SOD, see Bailey et al. (1997a).8. See also Blake (1997).9. Invariant be never occurs before gonna either in our data or in anyone elses as far as

we can determine.10. For a detailed account of the Hoodoo texts and an analysis that differs significantly

from that of Viereck (1988), see Ewers (1996).11. Fasold (1972) has an excellent discussion of the two types of invariant be and of

how to distinguish them.

ReferencesBailey, Guy. 1993. A Perspective on African American English. In American Dialect Re-

search, ed. D. Preston, 287318. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Bailey, Guy, and Natalie Maynor. 1987. Decreolization? Language in Society 16:449473.Bailey, Guy, and Jan Tillery. 1999. The Rutledge Effect: The Impact of Interviewers on Sur-

vey Results in Linguistics. American Speech 74:389402.Bailey, Guy, Jan Tillery, and Tom Wikle. 1997a. Methodology of a Survey of Oklahoma

Dialects. The SECOL Review 21:130.Bailey, Guy, Tom Wikle, and Jan Tillery. 1997b. The Effects of Methods on Results in Dia-

lectology. English World-Wide 18:3563.Bell, Alan. 1984. Language Style as Audience Design. Language in Society 13:145204.Blake, Renee. 1997. Defining the Envelope of Linguistic Variation: The Case of Dont Count

Forms in the Copula Analysis of African American Vernacular English. Language Varia-tion and Change 9:5779.

Butters, Ronald and Ruth Nix. 1986. The English of Blacks in Wilmington, North Carolina.In Language Variety in the South: Perspectives in Black and White, ed. M. Montgom-ery and G. Bailey, 254263. University, AL: University of Alabama Press.

Cukor-Avila, Patricia. 1996. The Evolution of AAVE in a Rural Texas Community: AnEthnolinguistic Study. Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

. 1997. Change and Stability in the Use of Verbal S over Time in AAVE. In EnglishesAround the World, Vol. 1: General Studies, British Isles, North America. Studies in Honourof Manfred Garlach, ed. E. Schneider, 295306. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

. 1999. Stativity and Copula Absence in AAVE: Grammatical Constraints at the Sub-Categorical Level. Journal of English Linguistics 27:341355.

Cukor-Avila, Patricia, and Guy Bailey. 1995. An Approach to Sociolinguistic Fieldwork: ASite Study of Rural AAVE in a Texas Community. English World-Wide 16:159193.

. 2001. The Effects of the Race of the Interviewer on Sociolinguistic Fieldwork. Journalof Sociolinguistics 5:254270.

Ewers, Traute. 1996. The Origins of American Black English: Be-Forms in the Hoodoo Texts.Berlin: Mouton.

Fasold. Ralph W. 1972. Tense Marking in Black English. Washington, D.C.: Center for Ap-plied Linguistics.


Labov, William. 1966. The Social Stratification of English in New York City. Washington,D.C.: Center for Applied Linguistics.

. 2001. Principles of Language Change, vol. 2. Oxford: Blackwell.Macaulay, Ronald K. S. 1977. Language, Social Class, and Education: A Glasgow Study.

Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Montgomery, Michael B. 1998. Multiple Modals in LAGS and LAMSAS. In From the Gulf

States and Beyond: The Legacy of Lee Pederson and LAGS, ed. Michael B. Montgom-ery and Thomas E. Nunnally, 90122. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.

Rickford, John. 1992. Grammatical Variation and Divergence in Vernacular Black English.In Internal and External Factors in Syntactic Change, ed. M. Gerritsen and D. Stein,175200. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Rickford, John R. 1998. The Creole Origins of African American Vernacular English: Evi-dence from Copula Absence. In African-American English: Structure, History, and Us,ed. Salikoko Mufwene, John R. Rickford, Guy Bailey, and John Baugh, 154200. Lon-don: Routledge.

Rickford, John R., and Faye McNair-Knox. 1994. Addressee- and Topic-Influenced StyleShift: A Quantitative Sociolinguistic Study. In Sociolinguistic Perspectives on Regis-ter, ed. Douglas Biber and Edward Finnegan, 235276. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Rickford, John R., A. Ball, R. Blake, R. Jackson and N. Martin. 1991. Rappin on the CopulaCoffin: Theoretical and Methodological Issues in the Analysis of Copula Variation inAfrican American Vernacular English. Language Variation and Change 3:103132.

Shuy, Roger W., Walt Wolfram, and William C. Riley. 1967. Linguistic Correlates of SocialStratification in Detroit Speech. USOE Final Report No. 61347.

Sommer, Elisabeth. 1986. Variation in Southern Urban English. In Language Variety in theSouth: Perspectives in Black and White, ed. M. Montgomery and G. Bailey, 180201.University of Alabama Press.

Trudgill, Peter. 1974. The Social Differentiation of English in Norwich. Cambridge: Cam-bridge University Press.

Viereck, Wolfgang. 1988. Invariant be in an Unnoticed Source of American Early BlackEnglish. American Speech 63:291303.

Wolfram, Walter A. 1969. A Sociolinguistic Description of Detroit Negro Speech. Washing-ton, D.C.: Center for Applied Linguistics.

Wolfram, Walt. 1971. Black-White Speech Differences Revisited. In Black-White SpeechRelationships, ed. W. Wolfram and N. Clarke, 139165. Washington, DC: Center forApplies Linguistics.

31

2

WILLIAM LABOV

Ordinary Events

In most sociolinguistic studies of the speech community, narratives of personal ex-perience play a prominent role. In the sociolinguistic interview, narratives are one ofthe primary means of reducing the effects of observation and recording. In dissect-ing the stylistic shifts in the interview, narratives consistently show a shift towardthe vernacularthat is, toward the first-learned style of speech that is used in every-day communication with friends and family (Labov 2001). Many of the results ofthis concentration on narrative are incorporated into the figures on style shifting oflinguistic variables (Cedergren 1973; Trudgill 1974). Because the elicitation of nar-rative is such an important methodological step, attention has turned to narrative struc-ture (Labov and Waletzky 1967; Labov 1972). The distribution of linguistic featuresin the construction of narrative has been the focus of a number of studies (e.g., Silva-Corvalan 1983; Schiffrin 1981). Several recent publications have focused on thenarratives as a whole (Laforest 1996; Butters 2001).

More than anyone else, Ronald Macaulay (1991) has brought to the forefrontthe emotional and social dimensions of personal narrative. In his exploration of thediscourse features of the Ayrshire dialect, narratives play the most prominent partnot only in the discourse particles that are tied to narrative structure, but also in theway that linguistic constructions are used to convey the full emotional impact ofthe events being recounted. The impact of his work is considerably heightened bythe quality of the many narratives that he cites in full. From the outset, Macaulayrealized the importance of the central themes of human experience in his socio-linguistic interviews; as an interviewer, he was able to draw forth the full eloquenceof the Scots speakers of Ayrshire and Glasgow.


1. The narrative

This chapter will deal with a single narrative recorded by Macaulay. It was origi-nally reported in his article on Polyphonic Monologues (1987), dealing with therole of direct quotation in narrative, and then incorporated into his 1991 book inchapter 11, The Use of Quoted Direct Speech. I have been thinking about thisnarrative since I first read Macaulays article, retelling it to various audiences andreanalyzing it from several points of view. It is told by Ella Laidlaw, whose narra-tives are cited at many points in Macaulays work. Laidlaw was 69 when she wasinterviewed in 1978. She was from a solidly working-class background: the daugh-ter of a coalman, she left school at 16 and was twice married to men who held manualjobs at a local factory. The narrative concerns her fathers death. Laidlaws motherhad been taking care of him in his final sickness. Though it is a narrative of personalexperience, the experience is her mothers, as retold by the daughter. It was intro-duced by an abstractHe just lay doon on the settee and turned over and that washim goneand then told in detail.

The story is reproduced below in the transcriptional style that is most useful forthe narrative analysis to follow. Each independent clause is lettered as a separate line,and all finite clauses dependent on it are indented below:

(1)Ella Laidlaw: An account of her fathers death

a And it was an exceptionally good afternoon,b and she put him out in a basket chair, sitting at the window ootside in the garden.c She went in on the one busd and came back on the same bus,

because the conductress says to her, Thought you said you were going formessages [shopping], she says.

e So I was.f Well, she says, Im awful glad Im no waiting on you, she says.g You coudnae have got much

because youve got the same bus back.h Ach well, she says, I dont like the idea of leaving him too long,i and she went up the road.j She noticed his basket chair was there,k but he wasnae there.l She never thought anything aboot it,

because it was too warm.m She thought hed naturally gone inside,n and when she went in,

he was lying on the settee.o And shes auld-fashioned, very tidy, very smart.p Everything had to go in its place.q She took off her coat,r hung it up,

ORDINARY EVENTS 33

s put away her shopping bag,t and she says, Its rather early for wer tea-wer dinner,

so Ill go and ask him if he wants a coffee.u And she made the coffee,v and she went throughw and shook him to ask him if he wanted tea.x And he dropped off the settee in front of her.y And she justher mind just broke,z and shes never known what it is since.

Macaulay points out that this extraordinary story must have been reconstructed fromLaidlaws mothers account, even if her mind had been disordered as a result of theevents. We find several indirect quotations from her mother (j, l, m) but also directquotations (e, h, t). The quoted exchanges with the conductress (d, e, f, g, h) mighthave been from her mother, but they also could have been from the conductress. It isthis reconstructed conversation that is the focus of Macaulays analysis. The dialogue,particularly (h), provides a dramatic anticipation of the tragedy. By the use of quoteddirect speech Laidlaw has transformed what would otherwise have been a straight-forward third-person account of her mothers actions on the day that her father diedinto a dramatic narrative in which the perspective varies with different speakers.Macaulay (1991:192).

In what follows, I would like to pursue Macaulays (1991) insights further byconsidering the relation of this dialogue to the central problem of polarization and in-tegration of the participants. Though we begin with the assumption that the events re-ported did in fact occur, the account is indeed constructed, as Macaulay points out.Following the model of Labov (1997), I will attempt to show that this construction isbest understood as built upon the skeleton of causally linked events that is required forthe creation of any narrative structure. The reportable events form a selection of theevents that we can infer did occur but also include a variety of events that are not inthemselves reportable and are not part of the causal chain required for a coherent nar-rative. These ordinary events will be the main focus of this account: how they relateto the central narrative task of conveying the narrators experience to the listener.

2. Temporal organization and evaluation

Following the method of Labov and Waletzky (1967), we can first examine the tem-poral organization of the narrative. The orientation is confined to a single clause (a),which establishes the time. The place and the participants are incorporated in the firstnarrative event of the complicating action, (b), which introduces her mother, herfather, and the situation: a sick man left alone on the front porch of the house. Theaction continues to the final resolution (x), the negative evaluation of that resolution(y), and the coda (z), which brings us back to the present with the present-perfectclause modified by since (that happened). The analysis is not so simple, however,since the sequence of temporal junctures is broken by a series of clauses with ex-tended temporal ranges, as shown in figure 2.1.


This series plainly forms an evaluation section. It deals with the perceptions,thoughts and character of the protagonist and is marked by irrealis predicates. Clause(j) reports the perception of a negative situation. Clauses (km) continue in an irrealismode, reporting misperceptions that prevailed through (w) and terminated only withthe tragic event (x). Clause (n) is another restricted clause, reporting the situationthat continues again through (w)her fathers location on the settee in the livingroom. There follow the two free clauses (o, p) that describe her mothers generalcharactermaterial that might have been placed in an orientation section. A glanceat figure 2.1 makes it plain that this evaluation section delays the advancement ofthe action, a delay that would normally precede and evaluate the main point of thenarrative.1

2.1. Temporal Ranges of Clauses in An Account of Her Fathers Death

ORDINARY EVENTS 35

However, there can be no doubt that clause (x) is the central point of the narra-tive, and the evaluation section is separated from it by a long series of less importantevents (qv). What follows in the analysis will attempt to account for this displace-ment of the evaluation section.

3. The assignment of praise and blame

Narratives that center on conflict, violence, sickness, and death are normally con-cerned with the assignment of responsibility for these events, and this narrative isnot an exception. Many such narratives are constructed to polarize the participants,so that the protagonist conforms to all community norms and the antagonist violatesthem. But narratives told by a family member, like this one, are frequently organizedas integrating narratives, told in a way that minimizes guilt and relieves participantsof responsibility for the outcome.

The issue in the Laidlaw narrative is evident: her mother left her father alone; ifshe had been present when he suffered whatever attack was responsible for his death,she might have been able to prevent it. It is not unlikely that this sense of guilt anddereliction of duty contributed to her mothers mental decline.

The narrative construction is plainly designed to mitigate this guilt on four counts:

(a): She brought him outside because it was an exceptionally pleasantafternoon. (bh): She did her shopping as quickly as possible be-cause she did not want to leave him alone.

(jm): When she saw his chair empty she thought that he had gone insidebecause it was too warm, and her conjecture was confirmed by see-ing him (n) on the settee.

(tw): Her following actions were only concerned with his welfare.

The dramatic dialogue (dh) identified by Macaulay (1991) as anticipating the trag-edy testifies most strongly to her mothers concern, Her mother states plainly, I dontlike the idea of leaving him too long, but the strongest testimony comes from thethird-party witness, the conductress, who volunteers the opinion that her mother hadshopped so quickly that she coudnae have got much. This is further confirmed bythe objective fact that she returned on the same bus that she had taken to town.

This section of the narrative is thus integrating rather than polarizing, mitigat-ing the assignment of blame for her fathers death. The actual quotations may havebeen provided by her mother, by the conductress, or by Laidlaw herself from morefragmentary indications.

4. Participant actions

To understand the narrative construction as a whole, it is useful to consider the chartof participant actions (figure 2.2). This correlates the overt actions of the three par-ticipants as reported by Laidlaw (excluding reported internal thoughts). The capital


letters on the left label the correlated time periods in which the participants actionsare correlated. The actions in brackets are not reported by Laidlaw but are necessaryadditions that are inferred from the others and are not correlated exactly with theovertly reported events.

Laidlaws mother is in contact with her father at three points in the narrative:when she first put him outside, when she saw him lying on the settee, and when sheshook him. She is in contact with the conductress during the conversation on thereturning bus. In almost all narratives of personal experience, we view the actionsthrough the eyes of the narrator. In this narrative of vicarious experience, the anima-tor (Laidlaw) allows us to view the action through the eyes of her mother. As in themore general case, no flashbacks are permitted, and we learn about events that tookplace outside of her mothers view only as she gets evidence of them.

As a result of this ironclad no flashback rule, we cannot place the criticalactions of Laidlaws father in time. At some point between A and J, her fatherbecame ill, went inside, and lay down on the settee. The exact time of his death isnot known: he may or may not have been alive when his wife saw him lying on thesettee. He might actually have died at any time after she entered the house and during

2.2. Chart of Participant Actions in the Laidlaw Narrative

Her Her Mother The Conductress

A sat outside put him out

B [became ill] went in on busC [went inside] [shopped]D [lay on settee] [got on bus] I thought you were goingE [died] So I was

I'm awful glad I'm no waitingG You couldna have got much . . .

H I don't like leaving himI came back on busJ noticed he wasn't thereK seen on settee went inL took off coatM hung it up

O says, I'll go . . .P made coffeeQ went throughR

Documents

AA. VV. (Oxford University Press) - Sociolinguistic Variatio