Abstract
Drawing on Professor William Labov’s seminal 1962 experiment, this paper examines tonal variation amongst employees of department stores targeting three different socioeconomic classes in Dalian, China. The experiment recorded pronunciations of the tone of yī (the word “first” in the phrase “first floor” 一楼), which is pronounced in first tone in standard Mandarin and shifted to the third tone in Dalian dialect. In this experiment, it was hypothesized that for the four department stores studied, an employee’s tone in pronunciation of first tone words would shift towards the third tone the most in the store catering to lower socioeconomic classes and shift the least in the store catering to higher socioeconomic classes. From analyzing the data collected, the non-first tone pronunciations were the most frequent in the lowest ranking store and less frequent in the higher ranking store. Therefore, the salespersons’ tonal shift in pronunciation is shown to correlate with the socioeconomic class of the customers being targeted.
Highlights
1.1 BackgroundFor the last 60 years, variationist sociolinguistics has highlighted the importance of social factors, other than geography, in determining language usage
Professor William Labov, considered by many as a founding figure in the field of variationist sociolinguistics, conducted his original 1962 experiment “The social stratification of (r) in NYC department stores” as part of his larger study focusing on the social stratification of English in New York City (Labov, 2006)
The results of the experiment clearly demonstrate a correlation between tonal shift and the ranking of the department store
Summary
1.1 BackgroundFor the last 60 years, variationist sociolinguistics has highlighted the importance of social factors, other than geography, in determining language usage. Professor William Labov, considered by many as a founding figure in the field of variationist sociolinguistics, conducted his original 1962 experiment “The social stratification of (r) in NYC department stores” as part of his larger study focusing on the social stratification of English in New York City (Labov, 2006). For this 2020 paper, Labov’s 1962 experiment is replicated in Dalian, China for the similar purpose of examining the effect of socioeconomic class differences on language usage. Labov validated his initial hypothesis; salespersons in the highest ranked store had the highest values of (r), those in the middle ranked store had intermediate values of (r), and those in the lowest ranked store had the lowest values of (r) (Labov, 2006, p. 42)
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