"Myerhoff is one of the smartest people around," says JRR.

Fischer, John L. 1958. Social Influences on the Choice of a Linguistic Variant, reprinted in Language in Culture and Society, ed. By Dell Hymes. 483-489.

Fischer and quantitative sociolinguisticsIf you look at Fischer and Weinreich, you'll see a lot of the roots of Labov. Quantitative sociolinguistics is the one that has thrived--the only one with a regular conference (NWAV), with big numbers of theorists, etc.

Quantitative methods arose to deal with variations, where as structural (Gleason) and generative (Chomsky).

Variations seem random to many, so you could do as the structuralists did (Bloch), and say the unit of description is the idiolect. One speaker on one topic on one occasion. Limit variation by saying this is the object of the discussion.

You could also say there is dialect mixture. These are mixed dialects and people are switching from one to another. It gets weird when there are so many switches in a small amount of time.

You could say it's performance error, too, to side-step the issue.

In general, people want to relate variants to one unit at a more abstract level.

One approach is categorically conditioned variation, where x always turns into y in situation B (i.e., x-->y / B).

Alternatively, free variation has no conditioning and doesn't change the meaning. This is written x-->(y) / A.

Fischer attacks free variation because it is just a label and has no explanatory power. Meaning should include social and stylistic meaning and quantitative conditioning should be used (not just qualitative conditioning). The contrast here is stark. Here's Joos (1950: 703):

All phenomena…which we find we cannot describe precisely with a finite number of absolute categories we classify as non-linguistic elements of the real world, and expel them from linguistic science. Let sociologists and others do what they like with such things…they represent that 'continuity' which we refuse to tolerate in our own science.

Labov reaching out to sociologists(But it doesn't really take.)

Fine vs. sharp stratification: Little overlap in sharp stratification, lots of space between them. Fine stratification keeps them close together.

This article is famous for the cross-over effect in lower middle class: hypercorrection.

(Labov gets rather caught up in his discussion of common sense, probably because he's talking to sociologists.)

Bayley and the quantitative paradigm"The central ideas of this approach are that an understanding of language requires an understanding of variables as well as categorical processes and that the variation that we witness at all levels of language is not random" (Bayley 2002: 117). Instead, there's "structured heterogeneity."

Input probability: Overall tendency for the rule to apply, apart from conditions. (I don't understand why this never corresponds exactly with the overall frequencies. They are close but not quite the same.)

Schilling-Estes and ethnicityShe's looking at how people construct ethnicity with variables.

JRR points out that some of the topics have very few tokens.

Laura points out that the interviewer normally says "wasn't" but switches to the interviewee's "weren't" when they are talking about the interviewee's brother's death. Is it linguistic evidence of empathy?

MiscellaneousOn Weiner and Labov: Lavendera said that you have to have referential equivalence because that's only when you get social meaning. Paul Kay got involved, too.

Labov: Beautiful theories with ugly feet.

Joos thought that elites lead linguistic change and then moved because the masses followed them. Turns out not to be the case for most changes.

Fifth class: Fischer and LabovMonday, October 08, 20073:56 PM

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our own science.

According to JRR, linguistics was always kind of cocky compared to other social sciences relative to its position as a science (anthropologists were borrowing a lot, for example).

Fischer says you have to be able to count (that is, get corpora). "Counting in context" in Sankoff's phrasing. This was different than the intuition approach of mainstream grammarians.

Better sampling○

Cleverer methods (department stores, maybe danger of death)

○

More theorizing about change○

Variable rules to formally represent quantitatively conditioned variation: x--><y>/<A>. X is more likely to become y when factor A is present. It's probabilistic, not categorical.

○

Labov took Fischer and added:

There is an S curve for change of frequency over time. It isn't a straight line out. The diffusion could be from the fringe into the mainstream.

Everett Rogers. The Diffusion of Innovations. A wonderful book unknown by sociologists. It covers early adopters of technology as well as the spread of diseases.

Maybe, says JRR, the S-curve is about a preference for categories--people may prefer clear distinctions. "I know this may seem strange to say for a variationist."

Define variables in terms of where they happen and what "doesn't count" (because they are unclear or categorically conditioned).

a.

See if all your subjects are varying or if you just have dialects (discrete grammars).

b.

Sample size is important. (The three kids who only used -ing may have done -in if he had more speech records. (You want 20 tokens per cell, says JRR.)

c.

Consider linguistic factors (etymology) and non-linguistic (sex, personality, social status, formality, earlier/later 'style').

d.

You need to measure significance of the variables. Thus you need raw frequencies.

e.

Relate this to change.f.How are the variants socially conditioned?g.Make sure methods have good sampling and take the interviewer effect into consideration (see Trudgill about this).

h.

Have you considered multiple dimensions with different strengths?

i.

To pursue quantitative phenomena:

out not to be the case for most changes.

JRR says that like Weinreich, Fischer is relatively cagey about the line between linguistics and sociolinguistics (pg 486). We do too much making up of our own theories, but should take courses in stratification, etc.

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