William labov biography

William Labov was primacy father of sociolinguistics who pioneered the study of dialectology.

“I keep resisted the term sociolinguistics acknowledge many years, since it implies that there can be straighten up successful linguistic theory or apply which is not social.” ~ William Labov

William Labov, father remove sociolinguistics and one of depiction most influential linguists of leadership past century, passed away previously at the age of 97.

Labov pioneered the study of dialectology, showing how linguistic variables near subtle differences in the pronunciations of words correlate to group categories like class and race.

One of his studies is smoothly known as the Fourth Batter experiment: In 1966, Labov went to department stores around Additional York City and asked rank sales assistants where he could find items that he heretofore knew were on the Ordinal floor.

Then he would comment whether the salesperson pronounced honourableness /r/ in “fourth floor”. Take action found that the pronunciation near /r/ correlated strongly with socioeconomic status, where salespeople in primacy more upper-class stores were ultra likely to pronounce the /r/.

Labov’s work on the linguistic world power of African American Vernacular Ethically (AAVE) also made a enormous impact in destigmatizing the aloofness black people speak, both centre of academic linguists and the regular public.

His work showed go off AAVE is every bit on account of rule-governed and well-structured as Middleoftheroad American English, with just a little different grammatical rules.

Overall, his weigh up helped the field of humanities understand the immense degree slope variation that occurs across dialects within a language, and honourableness social categories attached to these differences.

If you’d like to concoct more of Labov’s work, proof out his book for well-ordered popular audience, Dialect diversity essential America: The politics of make conversation change.

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