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Transcript

New York 1966

William Labov

Exploring social stratification

STUDY FOCUS

Labov was studying how the letter 'R' was used in different words. E.g. beeR, baRe and guaRd.

WHAT?

William Labov initially discovered the idea of sociolinguistic styles, or the change in language style in the 1960's. He found two clear styles.

WHAT?

CASUAL

Casual word style, is really as it says, its the way that somebody speaks when they are comfortable in their surrounding and when they are not foccusing on how they speak and pronounce words. This is most common with the removal of a certain sound in a word, which in this case could be pronouncing 'fourth floor' as 'for floor'.

CASUAL

CAREFUL

Careful speech is the pronounciation of each sound which should be heard in a word, this is used modst commonly by upper class people ad those who are altering their speech.

CAREFUL

RESEARCH

RESEARCH

Here we will explore the method which Labov used to gather research for his theory.

Where?

Labov focussed on three stores in Manhattan and noticed changes on the speech from the sales assistants in these shops.

Where?

SAKS

SAKS

As the 'higher tier' store in Labov's research, Saks was expected to have a higher percentage of careful speech being used in comparison to the use of casual speech.

MACY'S

MACY'S

Macy's was expected to have a wide spread of both casual and careful speech styles as the store was used as a 'middle tier'

KLEIN'S

KLEINS'S

Klein's was seen as the 'lower tier' in this research and was expected to have the lowest percentage of careful language use, coupled with the most casual language.

How?

Labov asked the sales assistants about the 'fourth floor' and aimed for the pronunciaton or lack of pronunciation of the 'R' sound when they replied.

RESULTS

Labov's results caried across each of the shops, with the results mainly being as expected.

SAKS

Labov analysed that the use of the 'r' sound was most used in this store.

MACY'S

Macy's employees had the highest tendancy to change the pronounciation of the word fourth upon being asked to repeat what they had said.

MACY'S

KLEIN'S

Klein's was observed as having the highest tendancy to use the casual sociolinguistic speech when asked.

KLEIN'S

CHANGE IN USE

Labov noticed that the upper middle class individuals were less susceptible to changing how they used the 'r' sound, whilst the other three classes were more aware of the use of this sound as a symbol of prestige or appearing better.

CHANGE IN USE

DISCOVERIES

William Labov discovered that each class had different ways of using the 'r' sound and that the lower classes had a greater sense of value towards 'correctly' pronouncing the sound when they analyse how they said it themselves.

DISCOVERIES

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