Apling 623, Sociolinguistics
Professor Macedo
Katie Entigar
September 16, 2012
Week Three: Critique of “The Reflection of Social Processes
in Linguistic Structures” (1977)
William Labov discusses the important connection of social context to linguistic shifts
in speakers studied in New York City in the 1960s. His underlying premise, that “the
shape of linguistic behavior changes rapidly as the speaker’s social position changes”
(240), is illustrated by phonological shifts in lower- middle- and upper-class residents of
the Lower East Side depending upon the social context in which they found themselves
and predicated to an extent upon the education, income, and occupation of the
informants; these results were found to be much more consistently predictive when
paired with social context. Labov asserts that social stratification can be tracked based
on the linguistic phenomena found in these informants as data plotted on a coordinate
plane and analyzing it for patterns, thus laying a clear argument for the sociological
analysis of linguistic data collected through interviewing.
In the surveys conducted by the researchers upon whose work this paper was
based, Labov signals a consistency with regard to “stylistic variation” (242), in which
speakers predictably modified their speech vis-à-vis the sociocultural view of certain
phonological forms, i.e. the use of the /r/ and the differentiated pronunciation of /th/ as a
historically stable delineator of social class, as prestige or stigmatized forms,
respectively. Interestingly, the rhotic /r/ has appeared, at the time of the publication of
this paper, as a prestige form among native New Yorkers, occurring with more frequency
among upper-class speakers generally, but also distinguished through the use of
potentially homophonic minimal pairs clearly by lower- and middle-class speakers. The
pronunciation of the /th/ as a phoneme with greater or lesser degrees of aspiration
depending upon social class (greater  lower correlated to lower  higher social class
status) indicated what Labov refers to as “sharp stratification” (242), meaning that the
phoneme did not modulate according to social context (formal/informal, reading out
loud/conversation, social class similarities/differences, etc.) and indicating that it could be
used, with some dependability, to determine the lines of social stratification. The rhotic
/r/, in contrast, was shown to moderate quite a bit among speakers, surprisingly most
among lower-middle class informants, which Labov calls a “hyper-correct behavior” (245)
and seemed to indicate that these speakers chose to introduce this phonological marker
in formal contexts even more so than middle- and upper-class speakers; this appeared
to have indications of class mobility and recognition of desired social position, and Labov
suggests that this revealed this social groups “linguistic insecurity” (248).
Labov’s argumentation seems strong to me until he uses the term “Negro” to refer to
African-Americans on p. 248; while I realize this paper was written in the 1970s, it is
troublesome that Labov neglects to consider terminology at this time. He makes an
interesting point about the ethnolinguistic identity of African-Americans (or Negroes, I
suppose) and Puerto Ricans in New York as distinct from white Standard American
English speakers, though again I wonder how overgeneralized and ethnocentric he is
being in considering only these two ethnolinguistic minorities as examples for his paper
(as opposed to speakers with Mexican, Dominican, Chinese, Vietnamese, or other
communities of distinct linguistic and cultural origins that were present in NYC at the
time). He introduces a strange point about the phrase “common sense” and how the
meaning of this term is semantically different in white and black linguistic communities, a
fact which neither community ‘has any idea about.’ I don’t understand why this point was
made in a paper focusing primarily on phonological processes, especially since he
seems to shift gears from data collection based on surveys to a general hypothesizing
using a sociological perception of segregation, a move from quantitative to qualitative
analysis in order to discuss the impact of semantic integration and its occurrence across
ethnolinguistic communities.
That said, I accept Labov’s conclusion that a sociological approach to linguistic data
analysis – whether it be quantitative or qualitative – is a more comprehensive and threedimensional way of perceiving and interpreting research in order to understand linguistic
phenomena in context and their implications regarding social change. As a general
background for language teachers, this perspective can help an educator to perceive all
phonological forms and lexical entries as relevant to, though perhaps not entirely
prescriptive of, the identification of the speech communities and ethnolinguistic groups
that use them in shared and divergent ways. I think it’s also a good idea to view studies
and papers done 45 years ago in their own sociocultural context, as it always speaks
volumes about the auto-interpolation of their executors as much as the results they are
putting forward for the academic world.