Sociolinguist

Autobiography of sociolinguist• William Labov• Dell Hymes• Janet Holmes• Peter Trudgill

William Labov is an American linguist, widely regarded as the founder of the discipline of variationist sociolinguistics. He has been described as "an enormously original and influential figure who has created much of the methodology" of sociolinguistics. He is employed as a professor in the linguistics department of the University of Pennsylvania.

William Labov

The methods he used to collect data for his study of the varieties of English spoken in New York City, published as The Social Stratification of English in New York City (1966), have been influential in social dialectology. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, his studies of the linguistic features of African American Vernacular English (AAVE) were also influential: he argued that AAVE should not be stigmatized as substandard, but respected as a variety of English with its own grammatical rules.

More recently he has studied changes in the phonology of English as spoken in the United States today, and studied the origins and patterns of chain shifts of vowels (one sound replacing a second, replacing a third, in a complete chain). In the Atlas of North American English (2006), he and his co-authors find three major divergent chain shifts taking place today: a Southern Shift (in Appalachia and southern coastal regions), a Northern Cities Vowel Shift affecting a region from Madison, Wisconsin, east to Utica, New York, and a Canadian Shift affecting most of Canada, as well as some areas in the Western and Midwestern (Midland) United States, in addition to several minor chain shifts in smaller regions.

In conclusion• He published many books such as The Social

Stratification of English in New York City (1966), The Study of Nonstandard English (1969), Language in the Inner City: Studies in Black English Vernacular (1972), Sociolinguistic Patterns (1972) which have been influential in social dialectology.

• He and his co-authors find three major divergent chain shifts taking place today.

• His methods were adopted in England by his students, Peter Trudgill for Norwich speech and KM Petyt for West Yorkshire speech.

• Labov was awarded the 2013 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Computer and Cognitive Science.

Dell Hathaway Hymes was a linguist, sociolinguist, anthropologist, and folklorist who established disciplinary foundations for the comparative, ethnographic study of language use. His research focused upon the languages of the Pacific Northwest.

Dell Hymes

The "S-P-E-A-K-I-N-G" model

Hymes developed a valuable model to assist the identification and labeling of components of linguistic interaction that was driven by his view that, in order to speak a language correctly, one needs not only to learn its vocabulary and grammar, but also the context in which words are used.

The model had sixteen components that can be applied to many sorts of discourse: message form; message content; setting; scene; speaker/sender; addressor; hearer/receiver/audience; addressee; purposes (outcomes); purposes (goals); key; channels; forms of speech; norms of interaction; norms of interpretation; and genres.

Hymes constructed the acronym SPEAKING, under which he grouped the sixteen components within eight divisions:

• Setting and Scene the time and place and psychological setting.

• Participants speaker and audience.

• Ends purposes, goals ,and outcomes.

• Act Sequence form and order of events.

• Key the “tone, manner, or spirit” of the speech.

• Instrumentalities channels, forms and styles of speech.

• Norms social rule governing the events and the participants.

• Genre the type of speech or event.

In conclusion

• He established disciplinary foundations for the comparative, ethnographic study of language use.

• Hymes developed a valuable model to assist the identification and labeling of components of linguistic interaction which is called “SPEAKING’’ model.

Janet Holmes is Emeritus Professor in Linguistics at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand and a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand. She is Director of the Wellington Language in the Workplace project, an ongoing study of communication in the workplace which has described small talk, humour, management strategies, directives, and leadership in a wide range of New Zealand workplaces.

Janet Holmes

Janet was Director of the project which produced the Wellington Corpus of Spoken New Zealand English which is available on CD-ROM. In the early 1990s, with Allan Bell and Mary Boyce, she conducted the first social dialect survey of New Zealand English in the Wellington area. Her publications include a textbook, An Introduction to Sociolinguistics, now in its fourth edition, a book of readings, Sociolinguistics, co-edited with John Pride, the first book of sociolinguistic and pragmatic articles on New Zealand English, New Zealand Ways of Speaking English, co-edited with Allan Bell, several books on language and gender, including Gendered Talk at Work, Women, Men and Politeness, the Blackwell Handbook of Language and Gender, co-edited with Miriam Meyerhoff, 2nd edition 2014, and an edited collection of papers Gendered Speech in Social Context.

She has also published on a range of sociolinguistic and pragmatics topics, including New Zealand English, New Zealand women's usage, sexist language, pragmatic particles and hedges, compliments, apologies, disagreement, humour and small talk, and many other aspects of workplace discourse.

Janet Holmes’s research Areas Janet supervises MA and PhD research in the areas of language

and gender, workplace communication, and New Zealand English.

Janet Holmes’s masterpiece• 2013 Holmes, Janet An Introduction to

Sociolinguistics. Fourth Edition. London: Pearson.

Janet Holmes examines the role of language in a variety of social contexts, considering both how language works and how it can be used to signal and interpret various aspects of social identity.

Peter Trudgill is a sociolinguist , academic and author. He was born in Norwich, England. He is now part-time professor of sociolinguistics at the University of Agder in Kristiansand, Norway, and adjunct professor at the Research centre for linguistic typology at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia, as well as honorary professor at the University of East Anglia, in Norwich, England.

Peter Trudgill

He has carried out linguistic fieldwork in Britain, Greece and Norway, and has lectured in most European countries, Canada, the United States, Colombia, Australia, New Zealand, India, Thailand, Hong Kong, Fiji, Malawi and Japan. Peter Trudgill is the honorary president of the Friends of Norfolk dialect society, and contributes a regular column on language and dialect to the Eastern Daily Press newspaper.

Peter Trudgill’s masterpiece Peter Trudgill is also the author of Chapter 1 ("The Meanings of Words

Should Not be Allowed to Vary or Change") of the popular linguistics book "Language Myths" of which he is also a co-editor.

→ 1998 Language Myths (with Laurie Bauer)

The topics discussed focus on some of the most popular myths about language: The Media Are Ruining English; Children Can't Speak or Write Properly Anymore; America is Ruining the English Language. The tone is lively and entertaining throughout and there are cartoons from Doonesbury and The Wizard of Id to illustrate some of the points. The book should have a wide readership not only amongst students who want to read leading linguists writing about popular misconceptions but also amongst the large number of people who enjoy reading about language in general.

In conclusion• He is now part-time professor of sociolinguistics at

the University of Agder in Kristiansand, Norway• He pubblished many books and one of them is

Introduction to Sociolinguistics.• He contributes a regular column on language and

dialect to the Eastern Daily Press newspaper.• He is the author of Chapter 1 of the linguistics book

"Language Myths" of which he is also a co-editor.

References• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Labov• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dell_Hymes• http://www.victoria.ac.nz/lals/about/staff/janet-holmes• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Trudgill