Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Notes on codes and abbreviations
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Data collection
- 3 The sociolinguistic interview
- 4 Data, data and more data
- 5 The linguistic variable
- 6 Formulating hypotheses/operationalising claims
- 7 The variable rule program: theory and practice
- 8 The how-to's of a variationist analysis
- 9 Distributional analysis
- 10 Multivariate analysis
- 11 Interpreting your results
- 12 Finding the story
- Glossary of terms
- References
- Index
5 - The linguistic variable
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Notes on codes and abbreviations
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Data collection
- 3 The sociolinguistic interview
- 4 Data, data and more data
- 5 The linguistic variable
- 6 Formulating hypotheses/operationalising claims
- 7 The variable rule program: theory and practice
- 8 The how-to's of a variationist analysis
- 9 Distributional analysis
- 10 Multivariate analysis
- 11 Interpreting your results
- 12 Finding the story
- Glossary of terms
- References
- Index
Summary
How do you find a linguistic variable? This chapter will discuss the key construct in the variationist paradigm – the linguistic variable. It will detail the definition of a linguistic variable, describe what it is, how to identify it and how to circumscribe it.
DEFINING THE LINGUISTIC VARIABLE
The definition of a linguistic variable is the first and also the last step in the analysis of variation. It begins with the simple act of noticing a variation – that there are two alternative ways of saying the same thing.
(Labov to appear)The most fundamental construct in variation analysis is the ‘linguistic variable’. The quote above is the most recent one I could find from Labov himself; turning back to the original definition of the linguistic variable you find something a little more complicated. In 1966, Labov (1966/1982: 49) says the linguistic variable must be ‘high in frequency, have a certain immunity from conscious suppression … [be] integral units of larger structures, and … be easily quantified on a linear scale’. Furthermore, the linguistic variable was required to be ‘highly stratified’ and to have ‘an asymmetric distribution over a wide range of age levels or other ordered strata of the society’ (Labov 1972c: 8). In this chapter, I shall ‘unpack’ what all this means. At the outset, however, the most straightforward and simple definition of the linguistic variable is simply ‘two or more ways of saying the same thing’ (Labov 1972c, Sankoff 1980: 55).
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- Analysing Sociolinguistic Variation , pp. 70 - 98Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006
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