William Labov Research Articles

Conversations with strangers by William Labov (review)

Conversations with strangers by William Labov (review)

Towards a model of world Englishes and multilingual variation

AbstractDrawing on research on multilingualism in South Africa and India, this paper attempts to integrate world Englishes studies and variationist sociolinguistics; in other words, to fill in a missing dialogue between Braj Kachru and William Labov. The classic studies of variationism have been undertaken in large western centres in which the hegemony of one language is largely accepted. In the postcolonial world elsewhere, language functions and statuses are apportioned differently. This paper therefore probes the extent to which mainstream variationism is applicable outside the western milieu that it has so powerfully illuminated. This paper will outline how P languages (carrying overt prestige and power) interact with S languages (for solidarity and community interaction) within multilingual repertoires in post‐colonial contexts. The paper also explores the extent to which S and P codes interact under contact and switching in ‘third space’ moments that best capture the post‐colonial habitus among educated bilingual speakers.

A Narrative Stylistic Analysis to Amitav Ghosh’s Fictional Narratives

Narrative Stylistics is the most recently established idea and area in contemporary stylistics. William Labov (1972), Fowler (1977, 1996) and Bakhtin (1986) were major contributions to contemporary stylistics and narratology. Without a doubt, the story has gained a bigger place in the minds of stylists, analysts, and critics. The social, historical, and cultural foundations of story stylistics are the most important, where narrative and discourse stylistics collide. It gave the best scope to study Amitav Ghosh's historical fiction in Sea of Poppies and River of Smoke with narrative and cognitive stylistics. This paper focused on the study of narrative stylistics and deictic shift theory, and how they were employed in these two novels that resulted in the cognitive effect on readers' minds.

HINDUSTANI DIALECT ANALYSIS AT PHONOLOGICAL LEVEL: SPOKEN IN WESTERN UTTAR PRADESH

The current study addresses the issue of insufficient phonological analysis of the Hindustani dialect spoken in the town of Atrauli, Aligarh district, Western Uttar Pradesh, India. Although there have been research on the phonology of numerous dialects in different places, no extensive analysis has been carried out in this particular case. This study employs William Labov's variationist paradigm as an experimental approach to define the phonemic inventory and analyse systematic patterns of variation in the Hindustani dialect spoken in Atrauli. The study is quantitative, using natural speech recordings to investigate how social factors like religion and age affect phonological variance. The study demonstrates that, while the dialect conforms to the Khari Boli phonemic inventory, distinct patterns of phonological variation are impacted by religion and age, demonstrating the importance of sociodemographic factors on language behaviour. The study suggests that these differences represent deeper social and cultural identities within the community, emphasising the significance of context-specific phonological research.

An Identity Capital Model Perspective for Social Entrepreneurship Education

Previous research has highlighted the primary objective of social entrepreneurship as balancing social and commercial purposes. Social entrepreneurs face significant challenges in managing their ventures, and there is a pressing need to equip students with the necessary knowledge and skills to overcome these challenges through social entrepreneurship education. To address this need, the authors propose a curriculum matrix based on the Identity Capital Model to aid students in achieving social entrepreneurship objectives while incorporating the principles of innovation and sustainability. The proposed curriculum matrix was developed based on data collected through semi-structured interviews with successful youth social entrepreneurs. The sample size was determined using data saturation. The authors analyzed the backgrounds, personal experiences, motivations, and difficulties encountered by participants in launching and operating their social enterprises using the Narrative Analysis Theory of William Labov and Joshua Waletzky. The Identity Capital Model was used as a theoretical framework to identify the key factors contributing to the success of youth social entrepreneurs.

ANGLICIZATION OF INDIGENOUS NAMES ON SOCIAL MEDIA BY YORUBA-ENGLISH BILINGUALS: PEDAGOGIC IMPLICATIONS

Anglicism and Nativization can be said to be closely knit as both linguistic phenomena are attempts to portray one language in the form of another. Whereas, Anglicism is the attempt to make an indigenous language sound English, Nativization is trying to make English sound indigenous. This study investigates Anglicization of names on social media, a practice among some Yoruba-English bilinguals (YEBs), with a view to finding out its linguistic features, sociolinguistic imports, the motivation behind such practice and its implications for pedagogy and language teaching. Data for the study, which were sourced from the WhatsApp group of SSIII students, Demonstration Secondary School, Ondo, Nigeria, contain one hundred indigenous profile names of the students as anglicized on the group’s platform. Using Dell Hymes’ Ethnography of Communication, William Labov’s Variability Concept as well as Descriptive Method of Data Analysis, the data were purposively selected, carefully grouped and applied for the analysis. The investigation reveals that the theory of word-formation processes in English was adopted by YEBs to anglicize their indigenous names at both phonological and morphological levels, with apparent disregard for both semantic components and sociolinguistic functions of their indigenous names before Anglicization, thereby leaving the product (anglicized) to appear as mere cant or jargon of the bilingual youths. The paper submits that the motivation for Anglicism might not be mainly attributable to linguistic dexterity or innate morphological competence on the part of YEBs, but largely to exuberance and idiosyncrasies emanating from identifying with the global practice of specialized youth communication on social media, a phenomenon that should be noted by the EL2 teacher while teaching this set of youths.<p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/soc/0001/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>

A Narrative Structure Analysis of Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones

This article analyses how rape narratives provide insights into the conceptualization of rape, trauma, abuse, and recovery of rape victims. Using William Labov’s theoretical model of narrative structure analysis and Michael Halliday’s transitivity system, the article examines Alice Sebold’s rape narrative, The Lovely Bones (henceforth TLB). The analysis shows that the narrative structure of rape narratives helps understand deeper meanings and underpinned concepts of rape. Such meanings and concepts reveal the real horrors of rape, the gravity of the pain and suffering of rape victims, and the ways of their eventual recovery. Despite its limitations to only TLB, the article offers potential alternative approaches to examine rape narratives to uncover the deeper meanings and suggests new concepts of rape and sexual violence affecting the perspectives to be taken while dealing with rape in general and rape victims being women and children in particular.

The relationality of parts for narrative identity constitution in the corporate profile translations of China’s multinational corporations

The corporate profile translations of multinational corporations (MNCs) in emerging economies such as China possess rich information for narrative analysis. Nevertheless, how the parts of a corporate profile translation form a whole narrative remains undertheorized. This study, therefore, examines the relationality of parts in the corporate profile translations of China’s MNCs by integrating William Labov’s narrative structure with Margaret Somers’ narrative identity theory. Specifically, we conduct a theoretical thematic analysis of how constituents form a whole narrative in relevant corporate profiles, of the shifts in the relationality of parts from the Chinese source texts (STs) to the English target texts (TTs) of these profiles, and of the influences of these shifts on the constitution of corporate identities in the target texts. Our results show that in the corporate profiles of Chinese MNCs, episodes are not randomly selected and related to each other but follow predominant patterns. However, we find no unified patterns in the shifts in the relationality of parts via the corporate profile translation of China’s MNCs. We thus reveal how corporations’ identities are constituted in diverse ways that reflect their fluid and unique features. Accordingly, our findings have implications for translation studies and corporate communications.

Нарративная структура книги-игры как разновидности гипернарратива

The article describes the research of the narrative structure of gamebooks as an example of hypertext fiction. The aim of the research is to analyse the storyline of Raymond Queneau’s gamebook “A Story of Your Own” as a literary hypertext narrative, to define the peculiarities of its structural organization and to come up with a narrative scheme of the gamebook. The methodology of the research is based on the narrative analysis predicated by the invariant narrative scheme offered by William Labov and Joshua Waletzky. The research novelty lies in the fact that for the first time a narrative analysis of a book-game is carried out taking into account its narrative and hypertext characteristics and the hypernarrative structure of a bookgame is described and presented in the form of a scheme. The article dwells on the notions of the narrative, its prototype form and hypertext narrative as being a combination of hypertext and narrative. The author also defines the conception of the hypertext gamebook, follows its evolution. As a result of the analysis of Raymond Queneau’s minimalistic gamebook, the author identifies following isomorphic characteristics of a gamebook: nonlinearity and variation of the plot structure, fragmentarity and interactivity (the dialogue between the author, the reader and the text). The gamebook narrative structure utilizes all the narrative components (Abstract, Orientation, Complicating Action, Evaluation, Resolution, Coda), but there are some deviations from the scheme of the prototype linear narrative such as the combination of all narrative components in one, the substantial repetition of a component, the implementation of a component in a different textone, elimination, the presence of narrative polycomponents and their discontinuity, the implementation of a new component of Evaluation by the reader. All these deviations fulfil their definite functions inherent in the game-book. The gamebook structural abnormities are explained by the hypertext strategy of the narration and by interactivity. They create a new fiction space with numerous textual branches, make it possible to expand and to restrict the framework of the narration, boost the narrative dynamics and encourage readers’ activity. As a result of the research, the gamebook narrative scheme has been devised and described. This scheme includes potential authorial variations and it can be applied as the basis for the analysis of all kinds of hypertext narratives.

Echoing Retorts in Hárbarðsljóð and Lokasenna

Echoing Retorts in <i>Hárbarðsljóð</i> and <i>Lokasenna</i>

From Acting Out Stories to Telling Stories: Elicitation of Oral Narrative Productions in the Japanese Language Classroom

Given the complexity and difficulty of discourse-level grammar acquisition, narrative construction can be a challenging task for many language learners as well as for language teachers to provide guidance in classroom. This paper provides a structure for narrative production practices that are based on assigned dialogues in classroom setting by following the Japanese narrative structure of kishōtenketsu 起承転結 (introduction, development, twist, and conclusion), and William Labov’s (1972) six components of a natural narrative model—Abstract Orientation, Complicating Action, Resolution, Evaluation, and Coda. Sample narrations in Japanese are provided to discuss a selected set of discourse-level features commonly used in each phase of narrative production. As pedagogical implications, this paper provides a step-by-step instruction on how to conduct narrative rehearsals in classroom by using a dialogue from the NihonGO NOW! series (Noda, et al. 2020). It also discusses ways to provide support and opportunities for language learners’ narrative skill development.

Investigating into the varieties of language spoken at Benue State University, Makurdi

In a multilingual speech community like Benue State University, Makurdi, where the members thereof have different native language backgrounds and English is chosen to be the official language, members of the university community speak different varieties of language in different domains. The paper entitled ‘Investigating into the varieties of language spoken at Benue State University (BSU), Makurdi’ is set to examine the varieties of language spoken on the BSU’s campus. The survey design was adopted, and questionnaires were used as the instruments for data collection for the paper. The analysis of the varieties of language spoken at the university was based on William Labov’s Variationist Theory which claims that differences are featured in the use of language among individuals based on the contexts. Through the analysis of the data, the researchers discovered that English, Pidgin, and native languages such as Tiv, Idoma, Igede, Etulo, Igbo, Hausa, among others, are spoken at the university. The study also discovered that Pidgin is predominantly used at the university despite the fact that English is the official language because academics and lecture rooms may be the only domains and settings that compulsorily enforce the use of English. The researchers, therefore, suggest that more efforts should be made to ensure a predominant use of English on the BSU’s campus since it is the official and prestigious language of Nigeria.

Dialect Levelling: A Case Study of Ìkàr??-Àkókó Dialect

This study investigates the factors that are responsible for the levelling of Ìkàr??-Àkókó dialect. Specifically, the paper examines the impacts of Nigerian indigenous languages, especially Yorùbá, on the dialect. The study aims at identifying the patterns of changes in the dialect and their impacts on the ethnic identities of the people. The work is based on the variationist approach pioneered by William Labov in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The tools used for data collection include questionnaire, oral interview and observation. The findings of the study reveal that the dialect manifests different stages of changes, vital domains like home, school and work place, which are supposed to be the strongholds of this dialect are being encroached upon by languages other than the mother tongue in the study area. It was found that the changes in the dialect are not due to the influence of English language only, but to indigenous Nigerian languages, mostly Yorùbá. It was concluded that the gradual levelling of Ìkàr??-Àkókó dialect is caused in part by restricted domains of use, increase in population; lack of commitment to indigenous language use by the native speakers; and suppressive language policy in the nation. The study recommends sensitization campaigns as a way of maintaining and sustaining the status of indigenous languages.

The Social Status Analysis of Freedom Writer Movie’s Character Based Upon the Uttered Language Variation

Due to the expanding demand of exploration in linguistic studies, this research was specifically made in answering one of the fundamental question related with the discourse of societal status in domain of literary work. Upn such goal, this research aims to unveil the link between social class and the way a person speak through their variation of the language spoken in daily basis. Since this research addresses the use of language variation in literaty work, the required data were taken specifically from a movie entitled as Freedom Writers. The analysis utilizes textual analysis as the mean of interpretation and data processing, due to the fact this research is carried in qualitative manner. By following the theoretical framework of language variation from William Labov, researcher is finally able in unveiling the finding of this study. Concisely, it is showed that in most cases, language variation is heavily influenced by speaker.

Considerações sobre identidade e os papeis sociais da mulher na realidade de comunidades quilombolas alagoanas

RESUMO: Neste artigo, debatemos de forma breve e sucinta conceitos caros ao contexto social em que vivemos, como identidade e papeis sociais da mulher na realidade de comunidades quilombolas. Para este fim, selecionamos seis comunidades de quilombo alagoanas: Muquém, em União dos Palmares/ Al; Jussara, Mariana e Filús, em Santana do Mundaú/ Al, localizadas na Região Serrana dos Quilombos; Gurgumba e Sabalangá, em Viçosa/ Al, situadas na Região Planalto da Borborema. A partir da observação empírica do modus vivendi desse povo, veremos se é possível apreender algumas nuances de suas construções identitárias e como é ser mulher nesse universo particular e local. Por meio da discussão de conceitos elaborados por Rampton (2006), Souza Santos (2013) e Stella (2014) sobre identidades e pela metodologia de pesquisa sociolinguística adotada por William Labov (2008 [1972]), averiguamos como os efeitos da modernidade e da globalização têm afetado a todos nós, independente da etnia, gênero ou classe social, levando-nos para uma direção cada vez menos local e cada vez mais global. &#x0D; PALAVRAS-CHAVE: identidade, mulher, comunidade quilombola.

The Correlation of Tonal Shifts and Dialect Use with Socioeconomic Class in Dalian, China

Drawing on Professor William Labov&amp;rsquo;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 &amp;ldquo;first&amp;rdquo; in the phrase &amp;ldquo;first floor&amp;rdquo; 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&amp;rsquo;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&amp;rsquo; tonal shift in pronunciation is shown to correlate with the socioeconomic class of the customers being targeted.

Concordância verbal no português brasileiro em Maceió/AL, Brasil

RESUMO: Neste artigo analisamos a concordância verbal no português brasileiro falado na zona urbana de Maceió/AL, tomando como base os pressupostos teóricos e metodológicos da Teoria Sociolinguística Variacionista, de William Labov (2008 [1972]) com o objetivo de descrever e analisar o padrão de concordância dos falantes maceioenses. Para tanto, utilizamos dados do projeto Portal – Variação Linguística no Português Alagoano, com entrevistas gravadas e transcritas ortograficamente de 36 colaboradores, homens e mulheres de três faixas etárias e três níveis de escolaridade. Foram selecionadas como variáveis sociais ‘gênero’, ‘faixa etária’ e ‘escolaridade’; e como variáveis linguísticas ‘posição do sujeito em relação ao verbo’, ‘elementos intervenientes entre sujeito e verbo’ e ‘natureza do sujeito’. Concluímos que a concordância verbal em Maceió é diretamente proporcional à escolaridade e que há interação entre as variáveis gênero e faixa etária. Do ponto de vista linguístico, o processo é favorecido pela 1ª pessoa do plural e desfavorecido pela 3ª pessoa do plural. As variáveis ‘posição do sujeito’ e ‘elementos intervenientes’ não foram estatisticamente significativas.&#x0D; PALAVRAS-CHAVE: variação linguística, sintaxe, variedade alagoana.

Empirical foundations for an integrated study of language evolution

Abstract Half a century ago, Uriel Weinreich, William Labov, and Marvin Herzog laid out a programmatic vision for the study of language change. This included establishing five fundamental problems for the field and a radical shift from a focus on idiolects to a focus on population-level change (grounded in their concept of orderly heterogeneity). They also expressed an explicit desire to see an integrated evolutionary study of language change. In spite of this, the newer fields of language evolution and cultural evolution make little contact with the field of sociolinguistics that emerged out of their work. Here we lay out a program, grounded in their five problems, for a more integrated future. We situate each problem in modern sociolinguistics and identify promising points for theoretical exchange, making comparisons with Tinbergen’s four questions, which play a similar role in the evolutionary sciences. Finally, we propose cultural-evolutionary experiments for making empirical progress.

A sociolinguística para além das variáveis sociais: a promoção de justiça social

Neste texto, resenhamos a conferência intitulada Language as a linguistic matter, ministrada por William Labov no evento Abralin ao vivo em 19 de maio de 2020. Labov discorre sobre as contribuições do estudo da variação do /r/ em Nova Iorque e a descrição do African American Vernacular English (AAVE) para a pesquisa sociolinguística. Segundo o conferencista, a partir desses trabalhos foi possível desenvolver novos métodos de descrição e análise quantitativa dos fatores linguísticos e sociais que atuam nos processos de variação e mudança linguística. Labov aponta como os estudos descritivos podem ser úteis às esferas educacional e jurídica, promovendo um ensino de língua eficiente e atuando como ferramenta para a promoção de justiça social.

Remarks on the phonological evolution of Russian in comparison with the other Slavic languages by Roman Jakobson

Reviewed by: Remarks on the phonological evolution of Russian in comparison with the other Slavic languages by Roman Jakobson Ronald I. Kim Roman Jakobson. Remarks on the phonological evolution of Russian in comparison with the other Slavic languages. Tr. by Ronald F. Feldstein. Cambridge, MA and London: The MIT Press, 2018. xxiv + 215 pp. ISBN 9780262038690. During the 1920s and 1930s, in the capital of the newly independent Czechoslovak Republic, a Russian émigré and his associates produced a wealth of such innovative studies on the workings of human language that today, nearly a century later, their influence continues to be felt across a range of disciplines. Roman Jakobson, together with his compatriot Nikolai Trubetzkoy, was the central figure in the Prague Linguistic Circle, which built upon the insights of Ferdinand de Saussure to make lasting contributions to structuralist linguistics, poetics, and literary theory. Jakobson’s impact on fields such as linguistic anthropology and semiotics remains palpable down to the present, and his theory of distinctive features and understanding of linguistic changes not as isolated events, but as changes to whole systems inspired many leading minds of the postwar generation, from Noam Chomsky and Morris Halle, the founders of generative linguistics, to Uriel Weinreich and William Labov, who pioneered the study of language in its social context. Many of his observations were drawn from Russian and other Slavic languages, of which Jakobson had a legendary command, establishing his enduring status as a towering figure of Slavic studies. Jakobson is mostly known among linguists today for his postwar publications written in English, which along with his prewar œuvre are collected in the nine-volume Selected writings (Jakobson 1962–2014). The first of these contains the work under review, the second monograph composed by Jakobson after his celebrated study of Russian and Czech poetics (Jakobson 1923). But whereas the latter was printed and remains available in the original Russian, Remarks suffered a less fortunate fate: after the Russian manuscript was destroyed in 1939 during the German occupation of Brno, it survived only in the French translation of Louis Brun, published in Prague in 1929 as the second volume of the Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Prague. The precipitous decline in knowledge of French among Slavicists (and linguists at large) has had the consequence that this major achievement of Jakobson’s Prague years has tended to be somewhat overlooked, its analyses often known from citations in Jakobson’s later publications. [End Page 81] The present edition owes its appearance to the efforts of Ronald F. Feldstein, a leading figure in Jakobsonian linguistics who has written extensively on many of the topics addressed in Remarks. Feldstein, who also collaborated on the translation of V. M. Illič-Svityč’s classic Nominal accentuation in Baltic and Slavic (1979), has skillfully rendered Brun’s French into idiomatic English academic prose, while striving to maintain (and, in select instances, restore) as much as possible of the sense of the lost Russian original. Given Jakobson’s famously terse prose and the complexity of the concepts discussed, Feldstein has wisely decided to include annotations following each chapter, rather than after each section or all together at the end; this arrangement greatly facilitates the reader’s task, without unduly interrupting the flow of the text. The volume begins with a foreword by Feldstein placing Remarks in the context of Jakobson’s scholarship (xiii–xvii) and orientational “Notes on Early Common Slavic to Late Common Slavic” (xix–xxi), followed by Jakobson’s own preface (xxiii). The first two chapters, “Basic principles” (1–8; Feldstein’s annotations 9–13) and “Remarks on current issues of comparative historical phonology” (15–21; 22–24), introduce the main concepts used throughout the rest of the study, including phonemes, phonological correlations and disjunctions, archiphonemes, the relation between synchrony and diachrony, and “laws” linking correlations in phonological change. Chapter 3 is devoted to “Remarks on the evolution of the phonological system of Proto-Slavic” (25–43; 44–57), focusing on the palatalization of consonants and treatment of diphthongs as crucial events in the trend toward rising sonority and syllabic synharmony. Jakobson then turns to a perennial problem of Slavic historical phonology in Chapter 4, “The Proto-East-Slavic change...