The Handbook of Historical Sociolinguistics

Juan Manuel Hernández-Campoy, Juan Camilo Conde-Silvestre, Juan Manuel Hernández-Campoy, Juan Camilo Conde-Silvestre

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781118798027, 9781405190688
• eBook ISBN: 9781118257265
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sprachen & Linguistik
• Subtopic: Soziolinguistik

Written by an international team of leading scholars, this groundbreaking reference work explores the nature of language change and diffusion, and paves the way for future research in this rapidly expanding interdisciplinary field.

• Features 35 newly-written essays from internationally acclaimed experts that reflect the growth and vitality of the burgeoning area of historical sociolinguistics
• Examines how sociolinguistic theoretical models, methods, findings, and expertise can be used to reconstruct a language's past in order to explain linguistic changes and developments
• Bridges the gap between the past and the present in linguistic studies
• Structured thematically into sections exploring: origins and theoretical assumptions; methods for the sociolinguistic study of the history of languages; linguistic and extra-linguistic variables; historical dialectology, language contact and diffusion; and attitudes to language

Part I: Origins and Theoretical Assumptions

1

Diachrony vs Synchrony: the Complementary Evolution of Two (Ir)reconcilable Dimensions

JEAN AITCHISON

“Since languages […] are transmitted from one age to another […] the relation of the past to the present enters into the utmost depth of their formation” (Humboldt 1836/1988:40). This statement by the linguistic pioneer Wilhelm von Humboldt in the early nineteenth century shows that the relationship between diachrony and synchrony has long been of concern to linguists – even though Humboldt himself did little more than state the need to deal with both sides of the question. This chapter will explore changing attitudes to this relationship, showing that in the early days of linguistics, diachrony and synchrony were indeed regarded as irreconcilable, though in recent years they have become increasingly integrated.

“The opposition between the two viewpoints – synchronic and diachronic – is absolute and allows no compromise” (Saussure 1915/1959: 125). This dogmatic statement about the need to separate diachrony from synchrony was made by the venerated Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1837–1913), in his posthumously published text, Cours de Linguistique Générale (1915), which was assembled by his students from their lecture notes. The book is now better known to British and American readers in its translated version Course in General Linguistics (1959).

Saussure illustrated his uncompromising statement about the opposition between diachrony and synchrony by his well-known comparison to cuts made through the trunk of a tree. The linguist could make either a horizontal cut, and examine a language at a single point in time, or he could make a vertical cut, and chart the development of selected items over a number of years.

For a long time, this rigid division was largely unquestioned, and still remains a methodological distinction put forward in some textbooks: “[l]anguage can be viewed either as historically developing, or as a more or less static, synchronic object of investigation” (Hock 1991:30).

Yet the relationship between diachrony and synchrony has varied as linguistic concerns have shifted. In the nineteenth century, attention was focused primarily on diachronic linguistics, largely due to the excitement of finding that changes were not random, but ‘regular’ in nature. The so-called ‘neogrammarians,’ a group of scholars centered on Leipzig around 1870, promoted the view that “[a]ll sound changes, as mechanical processes, take place according to laws with no exceptions” (Osthoff and Brugmann 1878, my translation; full text and slightly different translation in Lehmann 1967).

In contrast to the historical fervor of the nineteenth century, for over half of the twentieth century the majority of linguists concentrated on synchronic studies. This was partly in reaction to the earlier historical fixation, and partly because of the urgent need to capture for posterity descriptions of languages that might be likely to die out. Diachronic linguistics continued, but was considered by many to be an optional extra, an inessential subsidiary study.

But in spite of the widespread early twentieth century attention to synchrony, most of the synchronic descriptions were inadequate. They were lacking in coverage in ways that impoverished both synchronic and diachronic studies. The omissions were of two main kinds. First, many synchronic linguists tried to ignore stylistic variation, even though it must have been obvious that any normal speaker could vary the speed and formality of their pronunciation, syntax, and vocabulary, depending on whether s/he was addressing an employer or stranger on the one hand, or friends and family members on the other. Second, the majority of linguists preferred to concentrate on clear-cut cases, ignoring any variation or fuzziness they encountered. In so doing, many of them unwittingly omitted the evidence needed to study changes in progress.

Of course, not all linguists could be accused of these shortcomings. The insightful linguist Edward Sapir famously said: “[a]ll grammars leak” (1921: 38). And the renowned Russian (later American) linguist Roman Jakobson both spoke and wrote realistically about the impossibility of separating diachrony from synchrony. In his memorable lectures at Harvard (1960–61), he impressed his students by standing on one leg and waving the other in the air: “[m]y friends” (this in his inimitable middle-European accent), “[z]is is what a change is like. It is like a step being taken. We do not jump suddenly from one leg to ze other. In a change, you need to look at ze half-way stage, when you are standing on one foot, and ze other is in ze air, like zis” (more leg-waving). In spite of his unforgettable lectures on the topic, his most important published statement on the need to integrate synchrony and diachrony was for a long time accessible only in French, and was not made available in an English translation until 1972 (Jakobson 1949/1972). The paper ended with some key comments on the topic (Jakobson 1949/1972: 138):

The joining together of the static and the dynamic is one of the most fundamental dialectic paradoxes that determine the spirit of the language. One cannot conceive of the dialectic of linguistic development without referring to this antinomy. Attempts to identify synchrony, static […] on the one hand, and, on the other diachrony, dynamic […] make of historical linguistics a conglomerate of disparate facts, and create the superficial and harmful illusion of an abyss between the problems of synchrony and diachrony.

Or as another scholar succinctly expressed it more recently: “[t]he linguistic processes that yield change are diachronic extensions of variable processes that are extant in synchronic usage and synchronic grammar” (Guy 2003: 370). As Guy points out, it is now widely accepted that all change involves variation, even though variation does not inevitably lead to change: “[w]e must allow the possibility that some variables persist in active alternation in the speech community, and indeed in the speech of each individual, for generations, without resulting in one variant supplanting all others” (2003: 372).

But perhaps the general lack of knowledge about ongoing changes in the early days was due to the fact that sociolinguistics was a fledgling branch of linguistics, which did not come of age until over halfway through the twentieth century. The person who brought about a revolution in thinking among linguists on this topic was the sociolinguist William Labov. In the 1960s, he addressed the diachrony/synchrony problem in a (then) novel way and moved historical linguistics in a new direction. He pointed out the need to look not only at completed changes, but also at ongoing alterations:

One approach to linguistic evolution is to study changes completed in the past […] On the other hand, the questions of the mechanism of change, the inciting causes of change, and the adaptive functions of change, are best analyzed by studying in detail linguistic changes in progress […] An essential presupposition of this line of research is uniformitarian doctrine: that is, the claim that the same mechanisms which operated to produce the large scale changes of the past may be observed operating in the current changes taking place around us.

(Labov 1965/1972: 268–69) (see Chapter 5 in this Handbook)

In a landmark paper (1965/1972), he outlined twelve sound changes, three on rural Martha’s Vineyard (an island lying three miles off the east coast of mainland America, and technically part of the state of Massachusetts), and nine in urban New York City. The sound changes were documented across two successive generations: earlier reports in the literature were supplemented by later data obtained by Labov himself. Sound change, he observed, is characterized by the rapid development of some units of a phonetic sub-system, while other units remain relatively constant. Word classes as a whole are affected, rather than individual words. The change is regular, though more in the eventual outcome than in its inception or development.

The changes originated with a restricted subgroup of the speech community, at a time when the separate identity of this group had been weakened. The linguistic form which began to shift was often a marker of regional status with an irregular distribution within the community (Labov 1965/1972: 285). The change then moved throughout the subgroup. He referred to this stage as change from below, that is, change below the level of social awareness¹. The linguistic variable involved in the change is labeled an ‘indicator’ which he regarded as a function of group membership.

Succeeding generations of speakers within the same subgroup carried the change further. The variable is now defined as a function of group membership and age level. In cases where the values of the original subgroup were adopted by other groups, the sound change with its associated value of group membership spread to the adopting groups. As the sound change reached the limits of its expansion, the linguistic variable became one of the norms which defined that speech community. The variable was now a ‘marker’, and began to show stylistic variation.

The movement of the linguistic variable led to readjustments in the distribution of other elements within the system. Later changes, not inevitable, involved ‘change from above,’ correction towards the prestige model, the linguistic usage of the highest status group.

Labov did not just document changes in progress, he also suggested how to carry out this research. He showed the need to obtain speech samples from a range of different people, in different speech styles. In New York City, he began by selecting a balanced population sample, looking at geographical area, age, ethnic group, and social position, and he obtained different speech styles from each group. Samples of formal speech were relatively easy to document. He and his students found that as interviewers, they were treated as well-educated strangers, and those being interviewed spoke fairly carefully. Even more careful speech was obtained by asking people to read a prose passage, and also word lists. But casual speech was more difficult to capture, and he used several methods. One was a ‘danger of death’ situation. He asked an informant if s/he had ever seriously thought s/he might be likely to die. As the informants relived a terrifying episode in their lives, they often, without realizing it, moved into a casual style of speech. For example, a woman described a car accident rapidly, using an informal style: “[a]ll I remember is – I thought I fell asleep and I was in a dream […] I actually saw stars, you know, stars in the sky – y’know, when you look up there […] and I was seein’ stars” (Labov 1972: 94). Labov was also able to hear casual speech when the informant answered the phone, or talked to her children: “[g]et out of the refrigerator, Darlene! … Close the refrigerator, Darlene!” (Labov 1972: 89). He found a street-rhyme useful for the pronunciation of the words more and door:

I won’t go to Macy’s any more, more, more,

There’s a big fat policeman at the door, door, door.

(Labov 1972: 92)

He also allowed speakers to digress. He found that some speakers, particularly older ones, had favorite topics they wanted to talk about, and these digressions often elicited casual speech.

The early, careful work by Labov on Martha’s Vineyard and in New York stimulated a generation of younger linguists to study change, and he is rightly applauded for his inspiration: “[t]he ‘synchronic approach’ to the study of language change, the study of change in progress, forms one of the cornerstones of research in language variation and change. This approach has had an enormous impact both on our knowledge of the mechanisms of change and on our understanding of its motivations” (Bailey 2002: 312). Another sociolinguist has argued that the study of language change in progress might be “the most striking single accomplishment of contemporary linguistics” (Chambers 1995: 147). Labov’s influence is acknowledged in A Handbook of Language Variation and Change, a thick volume of over 800 pages, which is dedicated to him: “[f]or William Labov whose work is referred to in every chapter and whose ideas imbue every page” (Chambers, Trudgill and Schilling-Estes 2002: v).

Labov’s work had an immediate appeal to students and researchers. A key innovation was his emphasis on the need to quantify linguistic variation with reliable statistics, and he established methods for doing this (see Chapter 4 in this Handbook). This inspired a whole post-Labovian generation to explore changes which were independent of his original Martha’s Vineyard and New York ones. For example, in Britain, Peter Trudgill (1974, 1986) explored English in Norwich, Jenny Cheshire (1982) looked at English verb-endings in Reading, and James and Lesley Milroy examined English in Belfast (e.g. J. Milroy 1992, L. Milroy 1980/1987). Each of these moved the field along in different ways. For example, Trudgill explored over- and under-reporting of changes by people in Norwich, which provided useful insights into attitudes towards change; C...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Blackwell Handbooks in Linguistics
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Dedication
• List of Plates
• List of Figures
• List of Maps
• List of Tables
• Notes on Contributors
• Preface
• Introduction
• Part I: Origins and Theoretical Assumptions
• Part II: Methods for the Sociolinguistic Study of the History of Languages
• Part III: Linguistic and Socio-demographic Variables
• Part IV: Historical Dialectology, Language Contact, Change, and Diffusion
• Part V: Attitudes to Language
• Index