Writing Resources
William Labov is a sociolinguistic who studies the variation in language Gardiner 2008 Social linguistics look for patterns in how the mind creates language and how it is passed on over time He analysed patterns and wave forms of people living in different places and found there is a great deal of variation People wanted to know why poor African American children had a hard time learning to read and if it had any association to their dialect Labov s research demonstrates that linguistic variation is pervasive and highly structured revealing regular patterns of co occurrence between language forms such as the pronunciation of a particular vowel and social categories such as socioeconomic classes Labov has advocated a stronger empirical grounding for linguistics questioning the validity of analyses based on the intuitions of a native speaker and stressing the value of observing naturally produced speech His approach is distinguished from others within sociolinguistics by its reliance on quantitative methods translating sounds into numbers Although Labovs approach is objective because he proposes and initiates knowledge for academics the general principle which appear from his review is that subjective reactions to phonological variables form a deeply embedded structure which is recognized by the entire speech community Labov 2006
