All Studies

Question 1

belfast research

Answer 1

• Milroy and Milroy
• 1980
• looked at social networks in Belfast where people worked together and did other things together
• people of the same SEC and Religion
• showed how a very dense and multiplex community acts as a Norm enforcement mechanism
• people with the highest network strength had the strongest variation

Question 2

Eckert

Answer 2

Focused on Communities of practice

Question 3

Kurath’s American Dialect Regions

Answer 3

Three zones - North, midland, and south

Question 4

William Labov’s studies in Department stores

Answer 4

• 1966
• asked for directions to the “fourth floor” to examine pre consonant and word-end pronunciation of (r) in New York across social classes, age, and gender
• Visited three department stores representing different SECs and used rapid and anonymous testing
• found that the second highest SEC would overcompensate in their pronunciation of (r) in the prestige dialect
• ## People’s speech mimicked that of those they were talking to more often at these different stores

Question 5

Fischer study

Answer 5

• 1958
• Focused on in’ vs. ing in New England among 12 boys and 12 girls aged 3-10
• examined differences between the model boy and the typical boy
• one of the earliest studies of Linguistic Variation
• found that whether the children said in’ or ing was dependent on various factors, including sex, class, personality, mood, formality, and even the specific verb (e.g. more likely to use in’ with more everyday verbs and ing with more fancy verbs)