Chapter III
The Social Context of English INTRODUCTION
On july of 2005, John Roberts was nominated to be a justice on the supreme Court of the United States. Commenting in this description of Roberts, the noted literary and legal theorist Stanley Fish (2005) argued that Roberts was not really proponent of “strict contructionsm” but of “textualism”, the belief that interpretation involves “sticking to the meanings that are encoded in the texts and not going beyond them.” To illustrate the limitation of this view of interpretation, Fish notes that if a wife asks her husband why don’t we go to the movies tonight ?
The answer to that question depends on the history of the marriage, the kind of relationship they have, the kind of person the husband thinks the wife is. The words themselves will not produce a fixed account of their meaning [emphasis added].
What Fish is arguing in this statement is that communication does not exist\ in a vacuum: to engage in a conversation, for instance, we do not simply decode the meanings of the words that people speak but draw upon the larger social context in which the conversation takes place.
1.GRAMMATICAL VS PRAGMATIC MEANING
A.GRAMMATICAL
The term 'grammar' covers the proper use of words and word-forms as well as thegrammatical structure of phrases, clauses, and sentences. While different wordforms of lexemes are created by the adding of inflectional morphemes, combinations of words into more complex units are the domain of syntax proper. Grammatical categories that are marked by English inflectional morphology are tense, person, number, gender, case, and comparison. Most of these grammatical categories which can thus be formed synthetically can also be expressed analytically (such as the comparison of adjectives, or possessive case); others are always formed periphrastically, i.e. by the use of function words (such as many tenses, or voice), or are no longer expressed at all (such as grammatical gender). Due to its limited number of inflectional morphemes, Modern English is considered an isolating, or analytic, language.While the constituents of a sentence are its formal components, syntactic roles or grammatical relations define the functional relationship within the clause, in particular the relation of all the other constituents (the arguments) to the verb. In a clause there is always a noun phrase that fills the role of subject in relation to the main verb, other roles are assigned depending on the transitivity of the verb: Intransitive verbs do not permit an object, monotransitive require a direct object, while ditransitives have so-called double object constructions, i.e. an indirect object before the direct one.
Example:
[The duck] NP=subject left [the pool] NP=direct object
A syntactic role associated in turn with subjects and objects, is that of subject orobject complements. They are usually required with so-called copula or linking verbs, in relation to which they can be described as predicative complements.
Example:
[The duck] NP=subject is [a fool] NP=complement In contrast to complements, adverbials are less close in their relation to the verb, they can bedescribed as predicating either the verb or the entire clause, but are usually not obligatory and can be moved in the sentence rather freely.
Example:
[Last month] NP=adverbial [the duck] [left the pool]. [The duck] [left the pool [last month] NP= adverbial]. Note, however, that these terms in syntax (in particular, object, complement and adverbial) are used with a variety of meanings within different theories; the terminology we use here is a rather traditional one and sometimes poses problems of fuzziness.
B.PRAGMATIC MEANING When humans communicate, much of what goes on is not simply about conveying information to others. One problem regarding the way in whichsemantics describes meaning is that anything that goes beyond thecontent of the linguistic sign itself is outside the scope of description.Social and affective meaning are not covered by semantics (whichfocuses on conventional/conceptual meaning only), but virtually anyreal-life communicative situation contains countless signs which are usedto express something about the speakers and their social relationships.
Pragmatics is concerned with how people use language within acontext, in real-life situations. While semantics (and virtually all units wehave covered before) was concerned with words, phrases andsentences, the unit of analysis in pragmatics (and in the units we willcover later) is the utterance. In pragmatics we study how factors such astime, place and the social relationship between speaker and hearer affectthe ways in which language is used to perform different functions.Language is action, in the words of J.L. Austin, and much of theinteraction between human beings is based on verbal action, for examplewhen we request, promise, swear, apologize etc.The difference viewpoints of semantics and pragmatics can best beillustrated by looking at a single utterance. Imagine you are shoppingdowntown with a friend. As you pass a well-known pizza place, yourfriend longingly stares to the people outside eating pepperoni pizza andremarks "Boy, I am really hungry!". What would be your reaction?
Taken out of context, your friend has simply provided a piece ofinformation - that he is feeling hungry. In terms of the meaning he wantsto communicate, however, it is likely he intends to get something elseacross. You might interpret him remark as a request to make a food stopand respond by saying "Me too - let's get some pizza". Note that in thiscase your interpretation of what your friend means goes beyond what hehas literally said.
2.SENTENCE VS UTTERENCE
A.SENTENCE
Sentences are not simply chains of words, but have an internal, mostly hierarchical structure. This grammatical hierarchy can be illustrated by the following list of the categories used for the analysis of sentence structure:
1. sentences contain one or several
2. clauses contain one or several
3. phrases contain one or several
4. words from different word classes Word classes
The starting-point of the analysis of sentence structure is the classification of words into wordclasses or, more traditionally, parts of speech. A basic division is made between lexical and grammatical (or functional) word classes; to the former belong nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs, to the latter the classes of determiners, pronouns, prepositions, and conjunctions.
While speakers come up with new lexical words quite frequently, i.e. these constitute a rather open set, function words usually form a closed system. Although word class definitions have traditionally been based on semantic criteria, it is much safer to define a word class on the basis of structural, i.e. morphological and syntactic, criteria.
Phrase structure
Sentences also consist of structural units larger than lexical categories, these sentence constituents are called phrases. In the analysis they are represented by brackets or in tree diagrams. S

NP VP

Det N V NP The duck left Det N the pool
There are a number of constituency tests, such as substitution, movement, and coordination, which can show which groups of words form syntactic units and which do not. For example, in the sentence represented above, The duck could be replaced by it or could be coordinated with another NP, while the sequence of words duck left or left the does not show this form of syntactic behavior.
Example:
It left the pool. (= substitution test for NP) The duck and the penguin left the pool. (coordination test for NP) Types of phrases Different types of phrases are defined by different types of lexical heads, so each phrase type has its central, obligatory element: There are noun phrases, verb phrases, adjective phrases, adverb phrases, and prepositional phrases.
Examples:
[The duck]= NP [left the pool]= VP. [In the morning] = PP [the duck] [left the pool]. [The [incredibly stupid] = AdjP] duck] [left the pool]. [The duck] left the pool [incredibly slowly] = AdvP As can be seen in some of these examples, in phrase structure phrases are frequently ‘packaged’ inside other phrases, giving sentences their internal hierarchical structure. The productivity of syntax that results from the - at least potentially - unlimited embedding and coordination of phrases within other phrases has been described as the recursiveness of grammar.
B.UTTERENCE
There are many ways to define utterance, a concept that is often used in linguistics. To make it simple, utterance could be defined as “what a human being produces when addressing another human being”, or “a group of pronounced sounds to which a meaning can be associated”. In linguistics, this concept is associated with the definition of a sentence: a sentence is an utterance, but an utterance can have several sentences. The interjection “ouch!” isn’t a grammatical sentence, but the meaning is clear, so it is indeed an utterance. “Ouch! It hurts!” is an utterance composed of an interjection and a sentence…
3.SPEECH ACT THEORY
When language is used by human beings in real-life situations, there are generally communicative goals associated with every utterance. Speakers express their emotions, ask questions, make requests, commit themselves to actions - they do things with words. The term speech act is used to describe such language actions. A wide range of utterances can qualifyas speech acts.
Common Speech Acts
Speech act Function
Assertion conveys information
Question elicits information
Request (politely) elicits action
Order demands action
Promise commits the speaker to an action
Threat intimidates the hearer
There exist several special syntactic structures (sentence forms) which are typically used to mark some speech acts.
Sentence form Example
Declarative He is cooking the chicken
Interrogative Is he cooking the chicken?
Imperative Cook the chicken!
Consequently there are typical association between Sentence Form and Speech Act.

Sentence Form Speech Act
Declarative Assertion
Interrogative Question
Imperative Order or Request
Direct and indirect speech acts
In everyday situations, we often do not directly express what we intend, but instead formulate our utterances in ways which appear more polite to hearers. Compare the utterances Pass me the salt! and Could you pass me the salt? Both are in effect requests, but the first one, phrased as an imperative, has a different connotation than the second, which uses the form of a question. It's obvious to us from experience that Could you pass me the salt is not actually a question about the ability of the addressee to pass the salt, but a prompt to action, and responding to this prompt simply by saying Yes, I could and not acting would not be an appropriate reaction. Could you pass me the salt? has two pragmatic levels. On the surface level it is a question, but underlying this is a request. It therefore qualifies as an indirect speech act, whereas Pass me the salt! is a direct speech act.
Felicity Conditions
Speech acts (whether direct or indirect) can be classified according to their felicity. Speech acts are infelicitous (meaning they don't work as intended) when certain essential requirements are not met. A speech act is infelicitous when the utterance is illogical (I promise to call you last year), when certain requirements aren't met (I will buy you a Porsche, honey) or when the speaker is lying (I really like your new jacket). Note that there is a subtle difference between the three examples. The first one can never 'work' (i.e. be felicitous), because it is inherently illogical. The second one may work or not, depending on whether the speaker can afford to buy her partner a Porsche - something she might not know for sure herself at the time of making the utterance. The third one is a flat-out lie (in this example) -the speaker does not like the listener's new jacket. Felicity conditions are determined bycontext and especially performative speech acts often require a number of contextualconditions in order to be felicitous.
4.THE COOPERATIVE PRINCIPLE
Pragmatics as a study of language explaining language use in context seeks to explain aspects of meaning which cannot be explained by semantics. It is concerned with speaker meaning and how utterances are interpreted by listeners. As a discipline within language science, Pragmatics lie its roots in the work of (Herbert) Paul Grice on conversational implicature and the cooperative principle, and on the work of Stephen Levinson, Penelope Brown and Geoff Leech onpoliteness.
When people communicate, they exchange information. When a conversation is taking place between two persons they are depending on some common guidelines in order to get the most out of the communication. For the messages to be successfully put across, those involved in the communication should share the same common grounds on what is being talked about. This principle of speakers’ sharing the same common grounds on what they are discussing constitutes what is termed “cooperative principle” (Grice, 1975 in Yule, 1996), by which speakers make “conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or the direction of the talk exchange…” (cited in Yule, 1996).
Paul Grice, an English language philosopher, proposes that speakers and hearers share a cooperative principle in ordinary conversation. Speakers shape their utterances to be understood by hearers. Grice analyzes cooperation as involving four maxims: quantity, quality, relation, and manner. Speakers give enough and not too much information: quantity. They are genuine and sincere, speaking "truth" or facts: quality. Utterances are relative to the context of the speech: relation. Speakers try to present meaning clearly and concisely, avoiding ambiguity: manner.
Consider this following conversation cited in Yule (1996). There is a woman sitting on a park bench and a large dog lying on the ground in front of the bench. A man comes along and sits down on the bench.
Man : Does your dog bite?
Woman: No, he doesn’t.
(The man reaches down to feed the dog. The dog bites the man’s hand)
Man : Ouch! Hey! You said your dog doesn’t bite.
Woman: He doesn’t. But that’s not my dog.
In the scenario, it is seems that the man’s assumption that is more communicated than what is said is answered with less information expected.
Grice's cooperative principle is a set of norms expected in conversation. Grice proposes four maxims (sub-cooperative principle) expected in conversation.
1. Quality: speaker tells the truth or provable by adequate evidence
2. Quantity: speaker is as informative as required
3. Relation: response is relevant to topic of discussion
4. Manner: speaker's avoids ambiguity or obscurity, is direct and straightforward
He suggests that there is an accepted way of speaking which we all accept as standard behavior. When we produce, or hear, an utterance, we assume that it will generally be true, have the right amount of information, be relevant, and will be couched in understandable terms. If an utterance does not appear to conform to this model, then we do not assume that the utterance is nonsense; rather, we assume that an appropriate meaning is there to be inferred. In Grice’s terms, a maxim has been flouted, and an implicature generated.
There are certain kinds of expressions speakers use to mark that they may be in danger of not fully adhering to the principles, these kinds of expressions are called “hedges”. For example we may say: “I am not sure if this is right…” or “As far as I know…” to show that we respect the maxim of quality and many of us may use this cliché expression” So, to cut a long story short,…” to emphasize that we observe the quality maxim in communication process. We can observe many of such phrases and sentences in news stories also.
To sum up the story…There are no more details about this news…(Quantity maxim)The official sources announced that…No one takes the responsibility of this report …It is heard that…(Quality maxim)On this subject, we interview…(Relation maxim)To clarify the news I talk to…(manner maxim).

Problem with The Cooperative Principle
Determiningwhether an individual has violated the maxim of the cooperative principle is a largely a matter of interpretation.Intuitively an input (a sight, a sound, an utterance, a memory) is relevant to in individual when it connects with background information he has available to yield conclusions that matter to him: say, by answering a question he had in mind, improving his knowledge on a certain topic, settling a doubt, confirming a suspicion, or correcting a mistaken impression.
This does not necessarily mean that all communication will be as highlyrelevant as the first reply to the woman’s question. Instead, speakers striveto achieve what Wilson and Sperber (2006: 612) characterize as “optimalrelevance.” For instance, if I ask you whether you enjoyed the dinner I justcooked for you, and you reply It was fine, this response rather than I lovedit may be all you are willing to tell me. And I may infer from your responsethat you did not like the dinner all that much – a correct inferencebecause had your response been more relevant, it would have been highlyimpolite. Politeness, as the next section will demonstrate, overrides manyof the pragmatic principles discussed thus far.
5.POLITENESS
"What exactly is politeness? In one sense, all politeness can be viewed as deviation from maximally efficient communication; as violations (in some sense) of Grice’s (1975) conversational maxims [see cooperative principle]. To perform an act other than in the most clear and efficient manner possible is to implicate some degree of politeness on the part of the speaker. To request another to open a window by saying “It’s warm in here” is to perform the request politely because one did not use the most efficient means possible for performing this act (i.e., “Open the window”)."Politeness allows people to perform many inter-personally sensitive actions in a nonthreatening or less threatening manner."There are an infinite number of ways in which people can be polite by performing an act in a less than optimal manner, and Brown and Levinson’s typology of five superstrategies is an attempt to capture some of these essential differences."(Thomas Holtgraves, Language as Social Action: Social Psychology and Language Use. Lawrence Erlbaum, 2002)
Power relationships and social distance
 There will be disparate power relationship between teacher and student: the teacher will be super ordinate( higher on the power hierarchy) and the student subordinates (lower on the hierarchy).
 Student from study groups, and one or more student in the group hold power over the others.
 Social distance specifies the extend to which individuals have a close or more distant relationship. Although the notion of social distance and power relationship.
 While all communicants will be either equals or disparate, some mybe intimates as well. Intimates are individuals between whom three is little social distance: children and parents, spouses, partners, close friend, and so forth.
Levels of Impoliteness, Face-ThreateningActs, and Tact
While power relationships and social distance are important influences onlevels of politeness that speakers of a language will use, an equally important consideration is the extent to which a speaker is willing to commit anFTA. If I have a guest over for dinner who is overstaying his welcome, I cansimply say You’ve been here long enough. Leave! if I am unconcerned about producing an utterance that is highly impolite. In most circumstances, however, people will mitigate the directness of an utterance such as this, usingstrategies that convey their intentions but in ways that are more indirect: Ihave to get up early for work tomorrow. Let’s call it a night and get together againreally soon. The difference between this utterance and the one above is directly related to Geoffrey Leech’s (1983) notion of “tact” as expressed throughhis tact maxim, one of six maxims that comprise his politeness principle.
The disparate power relationship between waitpersons and guests obviously led to the indirectness of the utterance.Although the two examples below are considerably less indirect than theones above, they nevertheless attempt to mitigate the imposition of asking aserver to bring more wine, or a host to provide a guest with a cup of coffee:We’re going to need another bottle of wine.
(invented example)
I wouldn’t mind some coffee actually
(ICE-GB S1A-045 214)
While hearers would undoubtedly correctly interpret the intentions ofthe above examples, the more indirect the utterance, the greater the likelihood the hearer will not infer its correct meaning. But for many speakers, this is a risk worth taking, since they would rather be misunderstoodthan produce a less than tactful utterance.
Other kinds of politeness "People who grow up in communities that are more oriented to negative face wants and negative politeness may find that they are perceived as aloof or cold if they move somewhere where positive politeness is emphasized more. They may also mistake some of the conventionalised positive politeness routines as being expressions of 'genuine' friendship or closeness . . .. Conversely, people accustomed to paying attention to positive face wants and using positive politeness strategies may find that they come across as unsophisticated or vulgar if they find themselves in a community that is more oriented to negative face wants."
(Miriam Meyerhoff, Introducing Sociolinguistics. Routledge, 2006)
• Page Conners: [bursting into Jack's bar] I want my purse, jerk-off!Jack Withrowe: That's not very friendly. Now, I want you to go back out, and this time,when you kick the door open, say something nice.
(Jennifer Love Hewitt and Jason Lee in Heartbreakers, 2001)
•Variables in Degrees of Politeness
"Brown and Levinson list three 'sociological variables' that speakers employ in choosing the degree of politeness to use and in calculating the amount of threat to their own face:
(i) the social distance of the speaker and hearer (D);
(ii) the relative 'power' of the speaker over the hearer (P);
(iii) the absolute ranking of impositions in the particular culture (R).

The greater the social distance between the interlocutors (e.g., if they know each other very little), the more politeness is generally expected. The greater the (perceived) relative power of hearer over speaker, the more politeness is recommended. The heavier the imposition made on the hearer (the more of their time required, or the greater the favour requested), the more politeness will generally have to be used."

(Alan Partington, The Linguistics of Laughter: A Corpus-Assisted Study of Laughter-Talk. Routledge, 2006)

•Positive and Negative Politeness
"Brown and Levinson (1978/1987) distinguish between positive and negative politeness. Both types of politeness involve maintaining--or redressing threats to--positive and negative face, where positive face is defined as the addressee's 'perennial desire that his wants . . . should be thought of as desirable' (p. 101), and negative face as the addressee's 'want to have his freedom of action unhindered and his attention unimpeded' (p. 129)."
(Almut Koester, Investigating Workplace Discourse. Routledge, 2006)
6. Speaker variables
The investigation of social dialects has required the development of an array of techniques quite different from those used in dialect geography. Many of these derive from the pioneering work of Labov, who, along with other sociolinguists, has attempted to describe how language varies in any community
Types of variable
The investigation of social dialects has required the development of an array of techniques quite different from those used in dialect geography. Many of these derive from the pioneering work of Labov, who, along with other sociolinguists, has attempted to describe how language varies in any community and to draw conclusions from that variation not only for linguistic theory but also sometimes for the conduct of everyday life, e.g., suggestions as to how educators should view linguistic variation. As we will see, investigators now pay serious attention to such matters as stating hypotheses, sampling, the statistical treatment of data, drawing conclusions, and relating these conclusions to such matters as the inherent nature of language, the processes of language acquisition and language change, and the social functions of variation.
Possibly the greatest contribution has been in the development of the use of the ‘linguistic variable,’ the basic conceptual tool necessary to do this kind of work (see Wolfram, 1991). As I have just indicated, variation has long been of interest to linguists, but the use of the linguistic variable has added a new dimension to linguistic investigations. Although not all linguists find the concept useful in their work, it has nevertheless compelled most of its severest critics to reconsider just what it is they are theorizing about when they talk of ‘language,’ of a speaker’s ‘knowledge’ of language, and of the relationship between such knowledge and actual ‘use.’
A linguistic variable is a linguistic item which has identifiable variants. For example, words like singing and fishing are sometimes pronounced as singin’ and fishin’. The final sound in these words may be called the linguistic variable (ng) with its two variants [º] in singing and [n] in singin’. Another example of a linguistic variable can be seen in words like farm and far. These words are sometimes given r-less pronunciations; in this case we have the linguistic variable (r) with two variants [r] and Ø (pronounced ‘zero’). Still another example involves the vowel in a word like bend. That vowel is sometimes nasalized and sometimes it is not; sometimes too the amounts of nasalization are noticeably different. In this case we have the linguistic variable (e) and a number of variants, [y], [*]1, . . . , [*]n; here the superscripts 1 to n are used to indicate the degree of nasalization observed to occur. We might, for example, find two or even three distinct quantities of nasalization.
There are at least two basically different kinds of variation. One is of the kind (ng) with its variants [º] or [n], or (th) with its variants [θ], [t], or [f], as in with pronounced as with, wit, or wif. In this first case the concern is with which quite clearly distinct variant is used, with, of course, the possibility of Ø, the zero variant. The other kind of variation is the kind you find above in (e): [*]1, . . . , [*]n, when it is the quantity of nasalization, rather than its presence or absence, which is important. How can you best quantify nasalization when the phenomenon is actually a continuous one? The same issue occurs with quantifying variation in other vowel variables: quantifying their relative frontness or backness, tenseness or laxness, and rounding or unrounding. Moreover, more than one dimension may be involved, e.g., amount of nasalization and frontness or backness. In such cases usually some kind of weighting formula is devised, and when the data are treated it is these weights that are used in any calculations, not just the ones and zeros that we can use in the case of (ng): [º] or [n], where [º] = 1 and [n] = 0. Linguists who have studied variation in this way have used a number of linguistic variables. The (ng) variable has been widely used. So has the (r) variable. Others are the (h) variable in words like house and hospital, i.e., (h): [h] or Ø; the (t) variable in bet and better, i.e., (t): [t] or [?]; the (th) and (dh) variables in thin and they, i.e., (th): [θ] or [t] and (dh): [¨] or [d]; the (l) variable in French in il, i.e., (l): [l] or Ø; and consonant variables like the final (t) and (d) in words like test and told, i.e., their presence or absence. Vocalic variables used have included the vowel (e) in words like pen and men; the (o) in dog, caught, and coffee; the (e) in beg; the (a) in back, bag, bad, and half; and the (u) in pull. Studies of variation employing the linguistic variable are not confined solely to phonological matters. Investigators have looked at the (s) of the third-person singular, as in he talks, i.e., its presence or absence; the occurrence or nonoccurrence of be (and of its various inflected forms) in sentences such as He’s happy, He be happy, and He happy; the occurrence (actually, virtual nonoccurrence) of the negative particle ne in French; various aspects of the phenomenon of multiple negation in English, e.g., He don’t mean no harm to nobody; and the beginnings of English relative clauses, as in She is the girl who(m) I praised, She is the girl that I praised, and She is the girl I praised. To see how individual researchers choose variables, we can look briefly at three studies. In a major part of his work in New York City, Labov (1966) chose five phonological variables: the (th) variable, the initial consonant in words like thin and three; the (dh) variable, the initial consonant in words like there and then; the (r) variable, r-pronunciation in words like farm and far; the (a) variable, the pronunciation of the vowel in words like bad and back; and the (o) variable, the pronunciation of the vowel in words like dog and caught. We should note that some of these have discrete variants, e.g., (r): [r] or Ø, whereas others require the investigator to quantify the variants because the variation is a continuous phenomenon, e.g., the (a) variable, where there can be both raising and retraction of the vowel, i.e., a pronunciation made higher and further back in the mouth, and, of course, in some environments nasalization too. Trudgill (1974) also chose certain phonological variables in his study of the speech of Norwich: three consonant variables and thirteen vowel variables. The consonant variables were the (h) in happy and home, the (ng) in walking and running, and the (t) in bet and better. In the first two cases only the presence or absence of h-pronunciation and the [º] versus [n] realizations of (ng) were of concern to Trudgill. In the last there were four variants of (t) to consider: an aspirated variant; an unaspirated one; a glottalized one; and a glottal stop. These variants were ordered, with the first two combined and weighted as being least marked as nonstandard, the third as more marked, and the last, the glottal stop, as definitely marked as nonstandard. The thirteen vowel variables were the vowels used in words such as bad, name, path, tell, here, hair, ride, bird, top, know, boat, boot, and tune. Most of these had more than two variants, so weighting, i.e., some imposed quantification, was again required to differentiate the least preferred varieties, i.e., the most nonstandard, from the most preferred variety, i.e., the most standard.
The linguistic variables which sociolinguistics has studied are those where the meaning remains constant but the form varies, though in theory one could study such aspects as the different ways in which past-tense forms are used as a linguistic variable. There are, however, serious problems if we try to use this as a definition of ‘linguistic variable’ since it is hard to be clear about what counts as ‘the same meaning’. For instance, it could be argued that cat and pussy have the same meaning, and therefore might be considered as a linguistic variable, in much the same ways, for example, alternative pronunciation of house with and without [h]. Against this it could be argued that ‘meaning’ ought to be defined more liberally, to include what is often called ‘social meaning’, in which case cat and pussy would have different meanings and couldn’t be treated as variants, of a linguistic variable. Fortunately, the notion ‘linguistic variable’, itself is not meant to be taken as a part of a general theory of language, but rather as an analytical tool in the sociolinguist’s tool chest, so we need not worry unduly about such problems of definition.
A part from saying that a linguistic variables should not involve a change of meaning, there is little to be said which aspects of language may have variables. They may be found in the pronunciation of individual words or of whole classes of words (say, all those beginning in one accent with [h], or all those ending in –ing), and in the patterns of syntax. There are major problems which make pronunciation variables harder to study than might be expected. The current state of disarray in phonological theory, where, for instance, the status of phonemes and the nature of underlying forms of words is still in doubt, gives rise to one such problem. Is one justified, for example, in treating the [r] sound in cart as an instance of the same ‘phoneme as that in car? Could one use the difference which Labov found in his New York study as evidence that they are different phonemes (assuming that ‘phonemes’ is a meaningful term)? Is it justifiable to postulate phonemes such as /h/ in the underlying forms of words like house when speakers nearly always leave the sound out in ordinary speech? If not, by what right do we assume that such speakers are illustrating the same variable in choosing between house with and without [h] as others speakers who normally have the [h], but sometimes ‘drop’ it.

Calculating scores for texts The classical labovian approach offers an attractively simple method for assigning scores to text, to show similarities and differences between speakers’ use of linguistics variable, but we shall see it is also has serious weakness. A score is calculated for each variable in each text, which allows texts to be compared with respect to one variable at time, which is the prime aim of quantities study of texts. To calculate the text scores of a given variable, a score is assigned to each of its variants; the score of any texts then the average of all the individual scores for the variants in that text. To take a simple example, let us say we have a variable with three variants, A B and C, and we have calculated the scores as 1 for each instance of A, 2 for each B and 3 for each C. Now assume that we have a text containing 12 A’s, 23 B’s and 75 C’s. We calculate the text score by calculating the scores of all the A’s (12 x 1 = 12), all the B’s (23 x 2 = 46), and all the C’s (75 x 3 = 225), then adding all together (12 + 46 + 225 = 283 ) and dividing the answer by the total number of variants found (i.e. 12 + 23 + 75 = 110), giving 283 ¸ 110 = 2.57. This is the score for the text concerned for this variable, and it will of course be easy to compare it directly with scores for the other texts for this same variable. This method has two failings, both of which are important, the first is to do the ranking of variants, on which we touched in 5.3.2. Assigning separate scores to individual variants (1 for an A, 2 for a B, and so on), has to be based on some kind of principle, otherwise the results may nonsense. Scoring is not simply arbitrary, since the apparent relations among texts could be completely changed by using a different scoring system. There is no problem if a variable only has two variants, since it makes no difference which one is scored ‘high’ and which ‘low’. The problem arises where there are three or more variants, since the scoring system reflects a particular ordering of the variants, with two variants picked out as maximally different and the others arranged between them as intermediate values. This means that whenever three or more variants are recognized on a single variable, the analyst has to be able to pick out two of them as the extremes and to arrange the remainder between them. This can be done in many cases on the basis of phonetic relations among the variants can be arranged on some phonetic dimension such as vowel height. However, we have seen that this is by no means always the case – there may be more than one such dimension involved – so the phonetic facts do not tell the researcher how to order the variants. Another basis for ordering is the social prestige of the variants, which allows the most standard and the least standard variants to be picked out as the extremes and the others ranked in between according to relative ‘standardness’. The problem with this approach is that it assumes in advance that society is organized in a single hierarchy reflected by linguistic variable, whereas this often turns out not to be true, so the method biases the research towards incorrect conclusion. The second weakness of the Labovian scoring system is connected with the distribution of variants, since the final figure for a text gives no idea of the relative
Contributions made by individual variants. A score of a 2 for a text in our hypothetical case could reflect the use of nothing but B (scoring 2 each time it occurs), or of nothing but A and C, in equal numbers, with no instances of B at all. Let us take an actual example, using data from a study of the (r) variable in Edinburg by Suzanne Romaine (1978). This study is unusual in providing separate figures for individual variants, rather than aggregate scores for the whole variable. The variable (r), like the one which Labov studied in New York, applies to words containing an (r) not followed by a vowel in the same word. However, these particular figures apply only to (r) occurring at the end of a word, and show the influence of the linguistic context: whether the word is followed by a pause, or by variants are not quite the same as those distinguished by labov, since there are two possible types of consonantal constriction for (r) in Endigburg, a frictionless continuant, as in RP and most American accents (I), and a flapped (r).

Calculating Scores for Individual and Groups In a sociolinguistic study of texts the investigator has material produced by different individuals, and often more than one text from each, produced in different circumstances. A typical research project might involve the study of 10 variables in the speech of 60 people under 4 types of circumstances, producing 10 x 60 x 4 = 2,400 separate scores for texts, if the classical labovian method were used. The figure would of course be much larger if the alternative of quoting separates scores for individual variants were adopted. The problem is how to handle such a larger amount of data without being swamped. By far the most satisfactory solution is to use a computer with a sophisticated statistical programmer, which is now widely done where sufficient funds and manpower are available. However, another solution is to reduce the number of figures by producing averages for individuals or groups of individuals, and this is still common practice among sociolinguists. For example, if we can reduce 60 speakers to 8 group defined, say, by sex, socioeconomic class, we immediately reduce the total number of figures from the 2,400 given above to 320, which means just 32 figures for each variable taken on its own. Moreover, the number of cases covered by each of the figures is increased, since each score for a variable will represent a whole group of speakers instead of a single one. This has the advantage of increasing the statistical significance of any difference between scores, since this depends not only on the size of the difference but also on the number cases involved. There are thus great gains from merging separate figures into averages. All the actual figures quoted so far have been group averages and not scores for individual speaker. This is typical of the literature, where it is in fact rare to find figures for individual speakers. A reliance on group scores alone conceals the amount of variation within each group. A group scores of say, 2 for some variable ranging from 1 to 3 could be produced either by all the members of the group having scores very close to 2, or by some scoring 1 and others 3. In the former case, the group average of two represent a norm around which the speech of the group members clusters, whereas it is completely meaningless or misleading in the second case. The variable is concerned with the assimilation of one vowel to another in the following syllable in words like /beckon/ ‘Do’, whose first vowel varies between [e] and [o]. Each figure represents the percentage of assimilated vowels in the speech of one speaker, and the speakers are arranged in eight columns, each representing a separate group. The groups are defined on non-linguistic grounds, on the basis of education and sex. A study of the pronunciation of sixteen 11 years old boys from there different a school in Edinburgh is the source of of the data. The children wore radio microphones while playing in the playground and the data collected were thus expected to be close to the kind of speech the children used naturally. The three schools were chosen so that each would cover a different range of social background, but it can be seen that grouping boys according to their school produced very heterogeneous result from the point of view of the (t) variable, with a great deal of overlap between groups. Reid also gave information about the occupations of the boys’ father, but even this supposedly more accurate measure of social status did not produce much more homogeneous groupings. All the boys from the school 1 had fathers classified as ‘foremen, skilled manual workers and own account workers other than professional’, with the expectation of the two marked with daggers, whose fathers were semi-skilled or unskilled-manual workers or personal service workers. The other problem which arises from group scores is related to the first, and in fact arises out of it. If grouping speakers or texts is simply matter of convenience for the analyst faced by an otherwise unmanaged able mass of data, there is probably no problem. No doubt the grouping will help him to see various broad trends in the data which he might otherwise miss. But there is a danger of moving from this position to very different one, where one believe that grouping are socially ‘real part of the objective structure of the society, and therefore part of theoretical framework that is referred to in interpreting the result. According to which society is structured at least partly in terms of network of more or less closely connected people, who are influenced to different degree by the norm of the various networks. The weakness of the group analysis is that it makes no allowance for people who belong to group to different extent; and when individual scores have been merged in group averages there is nothing to indicate wither or not this should be taken into account. To summarize this section, we have criticized the labovian method of identifying variants and calculating scores because it loses too much information which may be important. Information about the use of individual variants is lost when these are merged into variable scores, and information about the speech of individualism also lost if these are included in group average. At each stage the method impose a structure on the data which may be more rigid than was inherent in the data, and to the extent distorts the result – discrete boundaries are imposed on non-discrete phonetic parameters, artificial orderings are used for variants which are related in more than one way, and speakers are assigned to discrete groups when they relate to each other in terns of networked rather than groups.
The discussion so far in this chapter has focused on a series of pragmaticprinciples – speech acts, the cooperative principle, and politeness – andhow these principles determine how people speak in various communicative contexts. Language use of this nature is characterized by James Milroyand Lesley Milroy (1997: 50) as “contextual style ... the speaker’s relationshipto the resources of language and of the situational context in which thespeaker finds himself at different times.” Other variation, however, ismore inherent to speakers themselves. For instance, while the form Couldyou please pass the salt is more polite than Pass the salt, it is also the case thatstudies have shown that females tend to use polite linguistic forms morefrequently than males. Gender is thus one of a number of speaker variables: particular characteristics of speakers that affect how they use language. Other speaker variables include geographic mobility, age, socialclass, ethnicity, education, and social networks. The study of speaker variables is the cornerstone of research done in sociolinguistics, an area of linguistics concerned with the study of social variation in language.
Although speaker variables appear to be mutually exclusive categories,they overlap considerably. While age and social class are not related, socialclass and education are more clearly connected, since the social class ofwhich one is a member will very often determine the amount of education that individual receives. In addition, some of the variables are exceedingly difficult to define.
Michael A.
Michael A. has lived his entire life in Quincy, a suburb immediately southof Dorchester, one of the many neighborhoods of Boston. His parentsmoved to Quincy in the late 1970s from the Charlestown neighborhood ofBoston during a period when there was considerable white flight fromBoston to many of the communities on the south shore. Although MichaelA. plans to apply to a local community college when he graduates fromhigh school, neither his parents nor his older siblings attended college.Both of Michael’s parents are second-generation children of Irish immigrants to Boston. His father is an electrician and his mother works for thestate of Massachusetts as a clerk in a municipal court. Michael A. Speakswith what locals would describe as a Boston accent. For instance, hisspeech is non-rhotic: he does not consistently pronounce post-vocalic/r/,the sound /r/ preceded by a vowel in the same syllable. As a result, hewould typically pronounce a word such as never as /nRvE/ rather than/nRv/ because the final syllable of his word contains the vowel /E/ (commonly referred to as schwa); in this context, the following /r/ can beoptionally deleted.Michael A.’s speech is /r/-less because of the region of the country inwhich he resides and the social class of which he is a member. This pronunciation is confined to the eastern seaboard of the United States primarily for historical reasons. The Massachusetts area was one of the earli est parts of the United States to be colonized, and the original colonists. The social context of English 71brought with them their speech patterns, in this case the omission ofpost-vocalic /r/. Ironically, in Modern British English, Michael A.’s pronunciation of never is Standard British English, so-called RP (received pronunciation). In the United States, however, /r/-less speech patterns have anentirely different status. As Labov documents in his now classic study “TheSocial Stratification of (r) in New York City Department Stores,” conducted in 1962 (see Labov 1972), there is a direct correlation between a speaker’s social class and his or her pronunciation of post-vocalic /r/.
Teresa B.
Teresa B. lives in Atlanta, Georgia. Unlike most cities in the United States,the majority of residents in Atlanta (61 percent) are, according to 2000census figures, of African-American origin. While Atlanta has many of theproblems associated with most urban areas in the United States – 21 percent of its population lives under the poverty level and 39 percent ofhouseholds are headed by a single female – it has a range of social classesand a well-established African-American middle class, of which Teresa B.is a member. Although neither of her parents went to college, they wereable to open their own business, move out of a poor inner-city area ofAtlanta, and thus provide themselves and their daughter (their only child)with a comfortable middle-class existence. Teresa B. went to good publicschools and attended Emory University, where she received an accountingdegree and ultimately an MBA. She speaks a variety of English that is commonly referred to as General American (GA).General American is an accent that does not associate an individualwith a particular region of the United States, ethnic group, or social class.