LINGUIST List 13.1600

Wed Jun 5 2002

Books: Socioling:Principles of Linguistic Change

Editor for this issue: Dina Kapetangianni <dinalinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. dwilliams, Principles of Linguistic Change Volume II by William Labov

Title:Principles of Linguistic Change Volume II 
Subtitle: Social Factors
			
Publication Year: 2001
			
Publisher: Blackwell Publishers 
 http://www.blackwellpublishers.co.uk/
			
Book URL: http://www.blackwellpub.com/asp/book.asp?ref=063117916X
			
 
Author: William Labov 
				

Paperback: ISBN: 063117916X, Pages: 592, Price: $36.95
Comment: * 30% off with your Blackwell's LL+ Subscription
			
Abstract:

This volume presents the results of several decades of inquiry into
the social origins and social motivation of linguistic change. It
includes the first complete report on the Philadelphia project
designed to establish the social location of the leaders of linguistic
change. These findings are developed further on the basis of a broad
range of sociolinguistic studies in the 1980s and 1990s, as well as
the recently completed Atlas of North American English.


Successive chapters on social class, neighborhood, ethnicity, gender,
and social networks delineate the leaders of linguistic change as
women of the upper working class with a high density of interaction
within their neighborhoods and a high proportion of weak ties outside
of it. Detailed portraits of individual leaders show that the women
who lead linguistic change are distinguished from others by their
general pattern of deviation from established norms of
conformity. Mathematical models are developed to account for the
linear incrementation of change in progress, and the transmission of
change across generations.

Lingfield(s): Sociolinguistics
			 
Subject Language(s): English (Language code: ENG)
 
Written In: English (Language Code: ENG)