Introducing English Linguistics

ciation)
. In the United States, however, /r/-less speech patterns have an
entirely different status. As Labov documents in his now classic study “The
Social Stratification of (r) in New York City Department Stores,” conduct-
ed in 1962 (see Labov 1972), there is a direct correlation between a speak-
er’s social class and his or her pronunciation of post-vocalic /r/.
Labov reached this conclusion by eliciting the pronunciation of post-
vocalic /r/ from employees working in three different department stores in
New York City having various levels of prestige: Saks Fifth Avenue (highest
prestige), Macy’s (middle-level prestige), and S. Klein (lowest prestige).
Labov determined these rankings by examining, for instance, the costs of
comparable items in the stores, and the targeted audience of advertise-
ments the stores ran in local New York newspapers. Interviewers then
went to the stores and asked clerks to direct them to a floor – always the
fourth floor – on which a particular item could be found. The interviewer
made note of the clerk’s pronunciation of fourth in two contexts: casual
style (the response given to the interviewer’s first request for the floor on
which the item could be found) and careful style (when the interviewer’s
initial request was followed by “Excuse me?,” forcing the clerk to give a
more deliberate pronunciation). Labov (1972: 51) found a “clear and con-
sistent stratification of (r) in the three stores” with the highest incidence
of post-vocalic /r/ in Saks (the high-prestige store) and the lowest incidence
in S. Klein. By analogy, Labov’s findings can be extrapolated to Boston,
where omission of post-vocalic /r/ is a social marker: a usage of language
(in this case a specific pronunciation) that identifies one as being a mem-
ber of a particular social class. In Boston (and southeastern Massachusetts
in general), /r/-less speech patterns are associated with the working class.
Therefore, post-vocalic /r/ is more likely to be absent in Michael A.’s speech
than in the speech of an individual born and raised in southeastern
Massachusetts who is a member of, say, the middle class. Ironically, at one
time, Michael A.’s pronunciation was associated with upper-class speech.
The Boston Brahmins, descendants of the former British colonizers of
Massachusetts, took great pride in their British accents. But this class of
individuals has long died out in Boston as has the positive attitude
towards British speech patterns in general, a trend that Labov (1972: 64)
also documents in New York City, where the “Anglophile tradition” began
declining following World War II.
Because of his age, Michael A. also speaks differently than his parents.
Although he is familiar with many regional vocabulary items – tonic
meaning ‘soft drink’ or spa used to refer to a convenience store – he does
not actually use these expressions, since he perceives them as words used
mainly by “older people.” Age is an important social variable for tracking
language change or studying the phenomenon of apparent time: linguis-
tic constructions that pattern according to a speaker’s age. In her work
with the Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE), Hall (2004: 105)
found that age was “the most distinctive social variable” in determining a
72
INTRODUCING ENGLISH LINGUISTICS

---

speaker’s use of regional vocabulary items, “since they reflect basic
changes in our culture.” For Michael A., older vocabulary items hark back
to an earlier era, not the contemporary era in which he lives. Michael A.’s
desire to be “current” is also reflected in the fact that he and other
younger speakers are more likely to use slang than older speakers.
Although slang has many popular definitions, in linguistics it is regarded
as a kind of in-group language: the jazz age of the 1930s and 1940s popu-
larized slang such as cool and hip; in the 1960s, expressions such as groovy,
far out, and bummer permeated the culture of “hippies” and “flower chil-
dren.” Michael A. and his friends draw their vocabulary from hip-hop cul-
ture, which in music and movies has contributed such words as bling bling
(noun ‘elaborate jewelry’), def (adjective ‘excellent’), and catch a case (verb
‘get arrested’) (The Rap Dictionary, www.rapdict.org/Main_Page). Slang can
be very transitory: it is language of the moment and tends to disappear as
its users move from adolescence to adulthood.
Michael A.’s use of language is also a consequence of his gender. While
he uses like as a discourse marker, he does so less frequently than females
his age do. The word like has many uses in English: it can be a verb, mean-
ing ‘enjoy’ or ‘be fond of ’ (I like chocolate brownies; I like classes in English lit-
erature); it can also be a preposition, meaning ‘similar to’ (Many people like my
father retire early). As a discourse marker, however, like does not have a clear-
ly identifiable meaning but a particular function in the context in which it
is used. In the example below, the frequent use of like serves “to signal the
sequential relationship between units of discourse” (D’Arcy 2007: 394):
to kids the only consequence like of stealing is getting, what they’re
stealing. like there’s no like punishment and for the kid like, shooting
that girl to him he was like, repaying her for hitting him cuz i think
that was what the thing was ... 
(MICASE DIS115JU087)
This use of like is one of four cases of what D’Arcy (2007: 392) terms “vernac-
ular” uses of like – instances of like whose uses are more restricted than the
use of like as a verb meaning ‘enjoy,’ which all speakers of English would use.
Although both males and females use like as a discourse marker, it is more
commonly found in the speech of females than males (D’Arcy 2007: 396), and
although it occurs more frequently in the speech of individuals below 20,
older speakers (even those as old as 80) use it too (D’Arcy 2007: 402). And this
use of like has global reach, extending beyond North America to countries
such as Ireland and England. For instance, Andersen (2001) found that in the
Corpus of London Teenage English (COLT), the heaviest use of like occurred
among higher-class adolescents. And most sources discussing like note its
predominance among whites rather than other racial groups. 
What these findings illustrate is that very often no one speaker variable
can adequately explain the use of a particular linguistic item: one variable
works hand in hand with another. But despite the overlapping nature of
the variables, some variables, such as ethnicity, are so powerful that they
alone can have a significant effect on language usage – a point that will
be pursued in greater detail in the next section.
The social context of English
73

---