Name : • Falda Mawarni Putri (18033920)
• Siti Aminah (18033963)
• Umi Aini (18033934)
• Yolanda Br Sitepu (18033943)
Class : PBI V
The Social Stratification of (r) in New York City
Department Stores (Labov's Work (1966))
》 The research question (problem)
Labov’s observations in Martha’s Vineyard
Labov’s studies in Martha’s Vineyard are characterised by a first effort to study the
distribution of (r) in its social context. While studying that case, Labov remarked a
change in the realisation of the (ay) and (aw) diphthongs and focused on their
centralisation process from 1933 to 1961.
Geographical and historical conditions of Labov’s studies
Martha’s Vineyard is to be found close to the cost of New England where early
settlers coming from Europe landed. The population of Martha’s Vineyard can be
divided into three main groups: English Yankee settlers, aboriginal Indians and recent
Portuguese settlers. Martha’s Vineyard is a contrasting island because on the one side
there is a congested area at the down-island where the population of the main town
lives of tourism during the summer months, while on the other side there are mostly
farmers and fishermen at the up-island.
As a base of his studies Labov used some data from the Linguistic Atlas of New
England (1933). There it was mentioned that in that period the island speech was
characterised by mild centralisation of the (ay)diphthong in words such as wife, night,
right, I and little to no centralisation of the (aw) diphthong in house, out, about, month
Repetition of the studies in 1961 by Labov
About 30 years later Labov returned to Martha’s Vineyard to restart the studies which
he had found in the Linguistic Atlas of New England and interviewed about 70
people. There he developed his idea of anonymous interviews by asking people
questions like “When we speak of the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness, what does right mean? ... Is it in writing? ... If a man is successful at a job
he doesn't like, would you still say he was a successful man?” (Trippel 1997) so that
they would use some of the words containing the (ay) or (aw) diphthong in their
answers. Labov also noticed that especially fishermen living in the up-island regions
centralised the two diphthongs. But here was not only a difference between groups of
different ages and occupation but also between the different ethnic groups. As a result
of Labov’s observations it turned out that “the English Yankees and Indian inhabitants
were more likely to use centralization than the Portuguese” (Trippel 1997).
Labov’s explanation of the observation
Labov concluded that the centralisation of the (ay) and (aw) diphthongs was marked
by the social attitudes of the interviewed people and closely linked to the fact that in
this time many people left the mainland and went to the down-island because of the
economic pressure in their hometowns. The Yankees would therefore change their
speech by emphasising the (ay) and (aw) diphthongs to keep distance to the mainland
immigrants who didn’t centralise the diphthongs at all. That explains why the
centralisation first came up in the up-islands where most of the native Yankees lived
as fishermen and from there spread to the Indian population which was a link between
up-island and down-island. This means that the new arrived Portuguese settlers who
lived mainly in the towns at down-islands, attended to centralise the (ay) and (aw)
diphthongs a lot later than the other two groups. The centralisation itself therefore
spread from the up-island to the down-island.
A further observation led to the result that people who wanted to leave the island soon
and go to the mainland didn’t centralise the diphthongs as much as people who
wanted to stay in Martha’s Vineyard like most people from the up-island. Labov
marked this by an either positive or negative attitude towards Martha’s Vineyard and
the wish to accommodate the individual’s language to the to the language of the
speech community with which he/she identifies or plans to belong to.
All the observations Labov made in Martha’s Vineyard gave him the idea that speech
is always linked to social attitudes and linguistic change of several groups of society.
As shown in the next chapter, he extended his studies in New York City by studying
the social stratification of (r) and the speech community of the Lower East Side.
In this term paper three of Labov’s studies have been described under many different
aspects. One central point was Labov’s new way of gathering linguistic data by rapid
anonymous and spontaneous interviews. A second important point was the discovery
that (r) as a linguistic variable gives a detailed stratification of social classes. Finally
the question of objectivity of linguistics analysis and interpretation was raised.
Labov’s case studies do not only give linguistic data, they also show different ways
and new methods of studying linguistics. Labov’s work in New York and Martha’s
Vineyard is still very popular today and has influenced sociolinguistic studies for
more than 50 years of linguistic analysis. That’s why William Labov is known as the
founding-father of sociolinguistics.
》 The subject of the research
William Labov worked on a classic study on social stratification for New York City
speech. He was able to illustrate the social stratification of (r) in N.Y.C. department
stores. The variants of the phonological variable (r) are either presence or absence of
post-vocalic /r/. That is, in expressions such as fourth floor, whose pronunciation was
tested by Labov, /r/ was either pronounced or omitted. Historically, New York City
speech had been characteristically r-less, i.e. it featured a non-rhotic accent. However,
the general attitude towards this accent feature was rather negative and the
pronunciation of /r/ seems to have been reintroduced to New York City speech. Labov
found that in New York City the pronunciation of /r/ occurred and its frequency of use
depended on the speakers’ membership to particular socioeconomic status groups, i.e.
social classes.
Labov’s department store survey was threefold in character:
(1) He studied the speech of employees in three department stores in Manhattan: Saks
Fifth Avenue (an expensive upper middle-class store), Macy’s (a less expensive
middle-class store), S. Klein (a discount store frequented mainly by working-class
New Yorkers).
In order to study the pronunciation of /r/ by the employees of the three department
stores, Labov asked questions which should elicit the lexical items (‘fourth floor’)
containing the desired accent feature in the employees’ speech:
1st question: “Where can I find the lamps?” Elicited answer: “fourth floor.”
2nd question:“Excuse me?” Answer: repeated and more careful utterance of fourth
floor.
Each employee thus could pronounce post-vocalic /r/ four times (twice each in fourth
and floor).
(2) In a modified survey Labov studied the pronunciation patterns of the largest
homogeneous group of informants in the three department stores: white female sales
clerks. The survey yielded the same results: The higher the socioeconomic status of
the female sales clerk, the more frequently she pronounced /r/.
(3) Class stratification was also the result of another modified survey. This time
Labov did not focus on pronunciation patterns in each of the three department stores
but on the feature occurring in a single store, and in the speech of three occupational
groups. Again, the higher the socioeconomic status of the occupational group, the
higher was the frequency of pronouncing /r/.
》 The data
We can see that here, Labov conducted a survey to determine the relationship between
social class and language variation in the United States, particularly in the city of New
York City. This research is based on education, occupation and criteria income.
Labov wanted to find out whether the pronunciation of the phoneme "r" distinguished
social class speaker. The research locations were three supermarkets selected based
on certain criteria. The first supermarket is a high social class category, the second
supermarket is a middle social class category, and the third supermarket a low social
class category. .. we can see that people who shop in supermarkets of low social class
category are very rare gives rise to the pronunciation of the phoneme 'r', while in the
other two supermarkets the frequency of occurrence is the same or more than that in
the third supermarket. This clearly shows that the presence and absence of the word
'r' in a particular word is closely related to social class. We can also see the data
shown in this Labov study.
The advertising and price policies of the stores are very clearly stratified.
From that table we may also consider the prices of the goods advertised during those
four days. Since Saks usually does not list prices, we can only compare prices for all
three stores on one item: women's coats. Saks: $90, Macy's: $79.95, Kleins: $23. On
four items, we can compare Kleins and Macy's:
Look the table above, the emphasis on prices is also different. Saks either does not
mention prices, or buries the figure in small type at the foot of the page. Macy's
features the prices in large type, but often adds the slogan, 'You get more than low
prices.' Kleins, on the other hand, is often content to let the prices speak for
themselves. The form of the prices is also differen: Saks gives prices in round figures,
such as $120; Macy's always shows a few cents off the dolar: $49.95; Kleins usually
prices its goods in round numbers, and adds the retail price which is always much
higher, and shown in Macy's style: '$23.00, marked down from $49.95.'
And then, the results of the study showed clear and consistent stratification of (r) in
the three stores. In the figure 13.1 below, the use of (r) by employees of Saks, Macy's
and Kleins is compared by means of a bar graph. Since the data for most informants
consist of only four items, we will not use a continuous numerical index for (r) but
rather divide all informants into three categories.
all (r-1): those whose records show only (r-1) and no (r-0)
some (r-1): those whose records show at least one (r-1) and one (r-0)
no (r-0): those whose records showed only (r-0)
From figure 13.1 we see that a total of 62 percent of Saks employees, 51 percent of
Macy's, and 20 percent of Kleins used all or some (r-1). The stratification is even
sharper for the precentages of all (r-1). As the hypothesis predicted, the groups are
ranked by their differential use of (r-1) in the same order as their stratification by
extralinguistic factors. And next, we may wish to examine the distribution of (r) in
each of the four standard positions. Figure 13.2 shows this type of display, where
once again, the stores are differentiated in the same order, and for each position.
There is a considerable difference between Macy's and Kleins at each position, but the
difference between Macy's and Saks varies.
》 The method of data gathering
-The method of data gathering
After this preliminary considerations Labov started his experiment by questioning the
employees of the different department stores. The method he used is that the
interviewer (Labov himself, dressed in middle-class style and r-pronouncing) should
approach the questioned employee and ask for a department with the expected answer
: “fourth floor”. He would then repeat the question once more to get the answer
“fourth floor” once more but in a more emphatic style. After having got the answer
Labov turned away and made some short notes concerning
a) the following independent variables
the store
floor within the store
sex
age (estimated units of five years)
occupation (floorwalker, sales, cashier, stockboy)
race
foreign or regional accent, if any
and
b) the following dependent variable (use of (r) in four occurences):
casual: fourth floor
emphatic: fourth floor (Labov 1972:49f.)
The results Labov got were based on 264 interviews; 68 in Saks, 125 in Macy’s and
71 in Kleins. The interviewing time was about 6.5 hours.In the following chapter the
general results will be shown; specific details such as results divided up into age and
race will be left out.
》 The results
Labov examines the variety of languages with various social classes in New York
City. The sample used by Labov was randomly selected (random sampling). Labov
can prove that an individual from a certain social class, a certain age, a certain gender
will use a certain variety of language forms; so that in this way we can now make a
correlation between linguistic characteristics (linguistics) and social class.
Labov conducted a survey to determine the relationship between social class and
language variation in the United States, particularly in the city of New York City.
This research is based on education, occupation and criteria income. Labov wanted to
find out whether the pronunciation of the phoneme "r" distinguished social class
speaker. The research locations are three supermarkets that have been selected based
on certain criteria. The first supermarket is a high social class category, the second
supermarket is a middle social class category, and the third is a low social class
category.
The results of this study indicate that people who shop at supermarkets in the low
social class category are rare raises the pronunciation of the phoneme 'r', while in the
other two supermarkets the frequency of occurrence is the same or more than that in
the third supermarket. This clearly shows that the presence and absence of the word 'r'
in a particular word is closely related to social class.
