Variation and Language

Question 1

What is diachronic change?

Answer 1

Change realised over chronological time

Question 2

What is the envelope of variation?

Answer 2

All, and only, the contexts in which a variable occurs

Question 3

What is free variation?

Answer 3

The (mistaken) idea that some variants alternate with each other without any reliable constraints on their occurrence in a particular context or by particular speakers

Question 4

What is an indicator?

Answer 4

A linguistic variable which shows limited or no style-shifting. It is stratified principally between groups

Question 5

What is inherent variability?

Answer 5

A way of modelling variation as a property of the grammar. Contrasts with a model of variation as speakers’ (or a speaker’s) alternation between different sound or grammar systems. Also contrasts with the notion of free variation.

Question 6

What is a marker?

Answer 6

A variable that speakers are less aware of than a stereotype, but which shows consistent style effects

Question 7

What was Martha’s Vineyard?

Answer 7

An island off the south eastern coast of Massachusetts where Bill Labov conducted a pioneering sociolinguistic study in the summer of 1961

Question 8

What is regional dialectology?

Answer 8

The identification and mapping of boundaries between different varieties on the basis of clusters of similar and different features in particular regions, towns or villages

Question 9

What is social dialectology?

Answer 9

The study of linguistic variation in relation to speakers’ participation or membership in social groups, or in relation to other non-linguistic factors

Question 10

What are sociolinguistic constraints?

Answer 10

The independent factors, e.g. gender, ethnicity, age, social class, that show systematic correlations with variants

Question 11

What is the definition of sociolinguistics?

Answer 11

The study of language in use and language in society

Question 12

What is a stereotype?

Answer 12

A linguistic feature that is widely recognised and is very often the subject of (not always strictly accurate!) dialect performances and impersonations

Question 13

What is synchronic variation?

Answer 13

Variation occurring now

Question 14

What is a variable?

Answer 14

An abstract representation of the source of variation; realised by two or more variants

Question 15

What is a variant?

Answer 15

The actual realisation of a variable. Analogous to the phonetic realisations of a phoneme

Question 16

What are variationist sociolinguistics?

Answer 16

The study of language in use with a focus on describing and explaining the distribution of variables

Question 17

What is weighting?

Answer 17

An adjustment that can be made to raw frequencies of a variant so as to take into account any biases or skewing of its overall distribution; expresses the probability or likelihood with which a variant will occur in a given linguistic environment or with a given non-linguistic factor