Linguistic change and diffusion: description and explanation in sociolinguistic dialect geography

Abstract

Linguistic geography has remained relatively unaffected by recent developments in sociolinguistic theory and method and theoretical geography. In this paper it is argued that insights and techniques from both these disciplines will be of value in improving descriptions of geographical variation in language, and that these improvements will in turn lead to more adequate explanations for certain of the social and spatial characteristics of linguistic change. Evidence in favour of a sociolinguistic methodology and new cartographic techniques in dialect geography is drawn from empirical studies in urban dialectology, in East Anglia, England, and rural dialectology, in Norway. (Sociolinguistic variation, dialectology, linguistic change, British English, Norwegian.) William Labov's Social Stratification of English in New York City has made a number of very important contributions to linguistic theory and practice. 1 Among these are the development of the concept of the linguistic variable, which has provided linguists with a means of measuring and describing gradient and variable linguistic features, and the adoption of certain aspects of sociological methodology (particularly sampling and social class index construction), which has permitted a detailed study of the covariation of linguistic and social phenomena. This in turn has enabled us to achieve a clearer understanding of the nature of the relationship between language and various sociological parameters, and increased our knowledge about the social setting of linguistic change. In this paper I want to argue that the linguistic variable, together with a number of methodological and theoretical insights from human geography, can similarly improve our knowledge of the relationship between language and geography, and of the geographical setting of linguistic change.In section 1 I shall suggest some reasons for considering the improvement of[1] I am very grateful indeed to R. L. Hodgart, who first interested me in the topic of this paper, and to Arne Kjell Foldvik, who first involved me in the study of Norwegian, and without whom the Brunlanes survey would have been impossible. I am also grateful to the large number of people who commented on earlier versions of this paper, especially . My thanks are also due to Ingeborg Hoff for her help with aspects of the Norwegian data. LINGUISTIC CHANGE IN DIALECT GEOGRAPHYthis way will we be able to arrive at an understanding of the sociolinguistic mechanisms that lie behind the geographical distribution of linguistic phenomena, the location of isoglosses, and the diffusion of linguistic innovations. If we are to achieve this understanding we need to be able to say exactly why and how linguistic features, under linguistic change, are diffused from one location or social group to another. This does not mean to say, of course, that linguistic geography, hitherto, has not been concerned with explanations of this type. German dialectology, in particular, certainly has (see Bach 1950; Moser 1954; Wagner 1927, amongst several others)...

The diffusion of /l/-vocalization in Swiss German

“…One of the most significant findings to emerge from this study is that /l/-vocalization, having contra-hierarchically spread from rural Emmental to urban Bern and establishing itself robustly within the Bernese "cultural hearth," is now spreading further in a wavelike fashion, particularly to the southwest, the south, and the southeast of German-speaking Switzerland, while appearing to be absent in the Northern Plateau. It was also shown that the degree of vocalization is contingent on the phonological context, which in turn interacts with the specific location under investigation, as Trudgill (1986) and Labov (2007) predicted in cases of dialect diffusion. The findings further suggest an effect for age on the degree of vocalization, with older people tending to vocalize more than younger people do, especially in central Switzerland.…”

“…It has long been noted that diffusing linguistic innovations morph as they spread (e.g., Britain, 2005Britain, , 2010Trudgill, 1986): (i) socially, by being differently sociologically embedded in the destination from in the source (witness, for example, the diffusion of the glottalization of /t/ from the Southeast of England, where it tends to be used most in informal styles and among working-class speakers, to Cardiff in Wales, where highest rates are found among middle-class women in more formal speech styles) (Mees & Collins, 1999); (ii) attitudinally, through evolutions in how innovations are evaluated; and (iii), importantly, linguistically, as innovations embed themselves into local grammars that often differ from one place to another. Labov (2007) showed how the diffusion of the complex New York system of short /a/ tensing to Northern New Jersey, Albany, Cincinnati, and New Orleans has led to subtle yet significant and, what is more, different changes in each.…”

Linguistic Outcomes of Language Contact

“…The other chapters in this section (by Britten on diffusion and Kerswill on koineization) deal with contact among speech varieties that are more closely related. However, some of the same processes involved in these cases will also be seen to operate across language boundaries -the diffusion of uvular (r) in a number of European languages is one well-known example (Trudgill 1974a; see also Tristram 1995).…”

Sociophonetic Direction in Foreign Linguistics

“…опубликовано 133 статьи (т. [11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20]; из них 61, чуть менее 46%, касались исключительно фонетических тем, и многие другие включали фонети-ческие переменные в число других или использовали их в качестве основных при определении вариации других переменных, в первую очередь морфологических [18, р. 189].…”

“…Важным шагом на пути к пониманию понятия «диффузия» стало исследование П. Традгилла (1973), проведенное на полуострове Брунланес Норуэя. В гравитационной модели диффузии П. Традгилла измене-ние распространяется от крупнейших городов до следующего крупного города, в предсказуемом порядке, влияние одного города на другой пропорционально отношению размеров города и обратно пропорциональ-но расстоянию между ними [20].…”