Social Networks

Symmetry and Universality in Language Change

“…Drawing inspiration from the relationship between symmetry and universality in physics, we have appealed to symmetry as a means to categorise theories for language change. Specifically, we identified the following sources of asymmetry in models of language change: variation in interaction frequencies alone (which corresponds to the theories of accommodation and determinism [29]); asymmetry in the degree of influence that speakers have over each other (which correspond to theories based on social network effects, propounded for example by Bloomfield [40], Labov [4], Milroy [32] and others); variation in the attitude towards different linguistic variants (which correspond to theories based on prestige and related social factors, advanced for example by Sturtyvant [41], Labov [4] and enjoys some prominence among sociolinguists); and finally asymmetry that is based on the usage frequencies of variants (such as regularisation effects [34] and momentum-based explanations for change [38]).…”

“…In the sociolinguistics literature, there has been some discussion of social networks, focussing on the role that strong ties between individuals might play as a mechanism to preserve social norms, and how the number and quality of relationships between in governing how linguistic variation propagates (see e.g. [32,33]). Meanwhile, Labov [4] and Rogers [7] further emphasise the important role played by specific individuals who have influence over other members of a social group when it comes to propagating an innovation.…”

Variation sociolinguistique et réseau social : constitution et traitement d’un corpus de données orales massives1

“…Par exemple, elle permet de rendre compte des patrons de variation observés chez les hommes et les femmes par des réseaux de socialisation différenciés. Les hommes, dont les usages sont plus vernaculaires, contractent généralement des liens plus denses et plus multiplexes dans le réseau local que les femmes qui manifestent des usages plus standards (Milroy, 1987 ;Labov, 2001 ;Chambers, 2009 ;Milroy & Llamas, 2013). Un dernier avantage, que nous reprenons à Labov (2001), est le fait que l'étude des usages langagiers des locuteurs au sein de leur réseau social permet de recueillir leurs productions dans leurs manifestations quotidiennes (conversations avec la famille, les amis, les collègues de travail).…”

Language change and network games

“…The calculation of such features needs a quantity of network data that generally field work studies cannot deliver. This obstacle leads to a practice in field work of generally considering first‐order networks, as explained by Milroy and Llamas (:411):…”

“…might be crucially important for explaining language variation and change (cf. Labov, ; Eckert, ; Milroy & Llamas, ), particularly because of its universal character, a quality that other social features generally lack. Since the early 1980s, the social network approach (Milroy, ) has been used in various field studies.…”