Abstract
Abstract This paper explores stylistic variation in the use of word-medial and word-final released and glottalled /t/ in London and Edinburgh. Specifically, it investigates the extent to which the social salience of a linguistic feature constrains individual differences in the degree and direction of intra-individual variation. Variation in the social salience of t-glottalling is explored in two linguistic contexts: word-medially, where it is high in London and somewhat lower in Edinburgh, and word-finally, where it is lower than in medial position in both places. Data is based on paired sociolinguistic interviews of 24 London-born adolescents and 21 Edinburgh-born adolescents. Results suggest that while style-shifting norms from speech to reading differ between London and Edinburgh adolescents, they are similar within the communities. However, there are many individual differences in the degree and direction of style-shifting and the latter are more pronounced in final position, where the social salience is weaker. There is also a somewhat large number of Edinburgh adolescents who diverge from the majority norm in medial position and who do not style-shift at all.
Highlights
Variationist sociolinguistics has traditionally focused on the patterning of language variation at the level of the speech community
It has been argued that our sociolinguistic competence, including stylistic variation, is learnt by participation and membership in a particular speech community and that individual language users learn to reproduce the variable patterns of this community (Labov 1972, 2012)
Schleef (2013) created separate models for these two positions in both London and Edinburgh, and he found style to matter in all of them: t-glottalling is significantly more frequent in conversational than in reading style with p-values below 0.001.2 This effect is more pronounced in word-medial position due to the more pronounced stigma attached to word-medial glottal replacement, especially intervocalically
Summary
Variationist sociolinguistics has traditionally focused on the patterning of language variation at the level of the speech community. It has been argued that our sociolinguistic competence, including stylistic variation, is learnt by participation and membership in a particular speech community and that individual language users learn to reproduce the variable patterns of this community (Labov 1972, 2012). The usage rate of specific variants may differ from individual to individual while still replicating stylistic and linguistic constraints of the community as a whole. This is not unusual and within predictions of Variationist Sociolinguistics. Second, it has been shown that community members may produce a variable in a way that differs from community level constraints (e.g. MacKenzie 2019)
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