LINGUISTIC
VARIATION AND CHANGE
MILROY,
J.(1992)
Language Change
One of the
most important facts about human languages is that it is continuously changing.
Everyone knows that languages have changed in the course of history: it is easy
to see from a distance in time that there are differences between Shakespeare’s
English and present-day English, but it can also be shown from close at hand
that language is continuing to change in the present just as it did in the
past. At this very moment changes are being implemented and diffused: old
varieties are dying out and new varieties are springing up; pronunciations are
changing, new words and constructions are being adopted and old ones adapted to
new uses. Sometimes change is rapid, and sometimes it is slow, and at any given
time some linguistic structures are changing while others remain stable.
Indeed, change seems to be inherent in the nature of language: there is no such
thing as a perfectly stable human language.
It is also
true that at any given time a language is variable.
Languages are never uniform entities: they can be observed to vary
geographically and socially, and according to the situational contexts in which
they are used. In the study of linguistic change, this heterogeneity of
language is of crucial importance, as change in progress can be detected in the
study of variation. It is also important to remember this when we look at past
states of language: we have to accept that, just as language is variable when
observed at the present day, so it must also have been variable in the past.
The history of any language is therefore not the history of one “variety”, but
is a multidimensional history.
It follows,
therefore, that at any time we care to look at a language –or a dialect –it is
variable and in a state of change. We may, of course, choose to ignore this and
treat language for descriptive purposes as
if it were a uniform and unchanging phenomenon, and there are often good
practical reasons for adopting this convenient idealization. For instance, we
may want to write a grammar of English for the use of foreign learners, and it
will be more helpful to our readers if we focus what is constant rather than
what is changing. However, the idea that language is static or uniform has also
penetrated into the roots of theory, and much of the linguistic theory of this
century has been based on the perceived need to treat language as if it were static and uniform. It
should, however, be borne in mind that technological advances since the earlier
part of this century have made it much more feasible for us to focus on
variable states of language than it was for de Saussure, Sapir and Bloomfield.
Uniformity and Variation
Early in the
century de Saussure emphasized the priority of synchronic descriptions and from
that time onwards the dominant trends in language description were synchronic:
they focused on states of language at any
given time as finite entities. Historical (or diachronic) linguistics was
relegated to a subsidiary role and was often conceived of as an exercise in comparing these finite states of
language at different times. From this point of view we can liken a synchronic
description to a still photograph and a historical description to a comparison
of a series of a still photographs taken at different times. In reality,
however, the history of language is a continuous process: it is not a series of
stills, but a moving picture. If we are to come closer to understanding why and
how languages change, we need to bear this in mind.
It has often
been pointed out (for example, by Bynon, 1977:104-7) that Saussurean
structuralism can lead to a paradox for historical linguistics. According to
the Saussurean view, a language is at any given time a system où tout se tient –in which everything
holds together in a coherent self-contained structure of interdependent parts.
Historical linguistic inquiry then proceeds by comparing different states of
language that have been attested from different periods. However, a difficulty
arises in the (unattested) intervening stage between one state (state A) and
another (state B), as it appears that in the transitional stage that
cohesiveness of the state A structure has been to some extent violated. From
this point of view, therefore, we may be inclined to think of language as being
perfectly structured at some times but flawed at other times. Now, if
linguistic change were an abnormal state of affairs, this would not be an
unreasonable way to look at language: change could then be seen as something
that strikes a language from time to time like a disease. We could talk of
healthy languages (where everything holds together) and sick languages (where
it does not). But this is not how things are: no real language state is a perfectly
balanced and stable structure, linguistic change is always in progress, and all
dialects are transitional dialects. Synchronic states, as we observe them at
any given time, are therefore changing states, and stable states of language of
the kind postulated in Saussurean theory are idealizations
The same, of
course, applies to uniform states of
language. As Sapir observed long ago (1921:147): “everyone knows that language
is variable”. No language is ever uniform. Linguistic theorizing, however, has
often proceeded as if languages were
uniform entities. Indeed, according to Weinreich, Labov and Herzog (1968), it
has gone further than this and has assumed that structuredness is found only in uniformity: thus, variability in
language has often been discounted as unstructured. In fact, the equation of
uniformity with structuredness or regularity is most evident in popular
(non-professional) attitudes to language: one variety –usually a standard
language –is considered to be correct and regular, and others –usually
“non-standard” dialects –are thought to be incorrect, irregular, ungrammatical
and deviant. Furthermore, linguistic changes in progress are commonly perceived
as “errors”. Thus, although everyone knows that language is variable, many
people believe that invariance is nonetheless to be desired, and professional
scholars of the language have not been immune to the consequences of these same
beliefs. We have discussed these points elsewhere (J. Milroy & L. Milroy,
1985a), and I shall return to them in later chapters. Here my concern is merely
to point out that uniform states of language are idealizations and that
variable states are normal; furthermore, variation in language may itself be
structured and regular. Languages are not in reality completely stable or
uniform, and there is absolutely no reason why they should be.
The discussion
above has raised some basic questions about language. Is a language actually a
system où tout se tient, in which all
the structural parts are interdependent? Is variation in a language also
totally structured and systematic? Finally, if languages are actually like
this, how can change occur at all? In this book, I shall take the view that
these structuralist assumptions are not self-evidently true and that to
establish the degree to which language is structured within itself –without
reference to outside (for example, social) factors – is an empirical task.
Indeed, if language states are not to some extent open-ended –if there are no
“leaks” in the system –it is difficult to see how linguistic change can take
place.
Foundations for the Social Modelling of
Language Change
One way of
investigating these matters is to focus on the social nature of language
change, and this is the purpose of this book. My aim is to examine the extent
to which the origins of linguistic change can be shown to be social; to put it
in a slightly stronger form, I want to examine the thesis that linguistic
change is a product of speaker-activity in social contexts, which cannot be
wholly explained from within the properties of language systems themselves.
This approach is justified on the grounds that language is a social phenomenon:
it is used by speakers to communicate with one another in social and cultural
contexts in which the language system (narrowly defined as a “grammar”) is not
the sole means of communication and personal interaction. Furthermore, it is
commonly observed that languages which
have no speakers do not change, therefore, it seems reasonable to inquire
into the role of speakers in language change. As socially-based arguments of
this kind have not been widely favoured by historical linguists over the last
century or so, I shall attempt in Chapter 2 to relate this social theme to the
context of intra-linguistic historical argument. First, however, I want to
explain more directly why I have felt justified in developing this
socially-based approach to historical linguistics. The key point to bear in
mind is that language throughout history has been primarily a spoken, and not a
written phenomenon –my thesis is largely a matter of following out the
implications of that fact.
“The drama of
linguistic change”, according to Wyld (1927:21), “is enacted not in manuscripts
nor inscriptions, but in the mouths and minds of men”, and historical linguists
have generally insisted that the history of language is primarily the history
of spoken language. Traditionally, however, it was not possible to follow this
out very thoroughly because investigators did not have the technology to study
spoken discourse in extensor, and
could hardly have imagined how complex the patterning of spoken interaction in
situational contexts would actually turn out to be when it did become possible
to analyze it. As a result of these limitations, much of the generally accepted
body of knowledge on which theories of change are based depends on quite
narrows interpretations of written data and decontextualized citation forms
(whether written or spoken), rather than on observation of spoken language in
context (“situated speech”). However, it is in spoken rather than in written,
language that we are able to detect structural and phonetic changes in their
early stages; for tis reason and others, our
understanding of the nature of linguistic change can be greatly enhanced by observing
in a systematic way recurrent patterns of spoken language as it is used in
day-to-day contexts by live speakers. I would therefore like to suggest here
three general principles, or foundations, for the social modelling
of change that arise directly from this emphasis on spoken interaction, and
that I have used as guidelines in research into language change.
Speech is a
social activity in a sense that writing is not, and the primary locus of speech
is conversation. Conversations take
place between two or more participants in social and situational contexts, and
linguistic change is one type of phenomenon that is passed from person to
person in these situations. The first principle for a socially-based model of
language change therefore concerns the observation
of language in use: it is the principle that speech-exchanges can be observed
only within social and situational contexts –they can never be devoid of such a
context. To express this more fully:
Principle
1 As language use (outside of
literary modes and laboratory experiments) cannot take place except in social and situational
contexts and, when observed, is always
observed in these contexts, our analysis –if it is to be adequate –must take account of society, situation
and the speaker/listener.
This first
principle carries with a number of implications, the most important of which is
that generalizations about language structure depend on a process of
abstracting “language” from the situational contexts in which it naturally
occurs. We do not actually observe “the language” or “language” in the
abstract: we observe people talking. In a social account of language change,
therefore, we have to explain how changes get into the abstract structure that
we call language (which we cannot observe directly) as a result of the
activities of people talking (which we can observe more directly). Furthermore,
unstructured observations of very selective phenomena will not be enough here:
our descriptions of sociolinguistic patterns will depend on observing recurrent
patterns and will have to be systematic and accountable to the data. In chapter
2 I will suggest a distinction in principle between system and speaker, which
arises form this discussion; it is a distinction that I think we need to bear
in mind when we are analyzing language in use. It also follows form this first
principle that close attention to methods of data collection and analysis (and
the relation of one to another) is crucial; we regarded this as very important
in our work in Belfast, which I describe more fully in chapters 3 and 4.
Whereas
Principle 1 concerns the impossibility of observing
language independently of society, Principle 2 concerns the impossibility of describing language structures
independently of society. This is not as controversial as it may seem.
Principle
2 A full description of the
structure of a variety (whether it is “standard” English, or a dialect, or a
style or register) can only be successfully made if quite substantial
decisions, or judgements of a social kind are taken into account in the
description.
The word
“social” here does not mean social class or prestige –the decisions (or
judgements) we are talking about are decisions (or judgements) about the
“norms” of the variety concerned, and these norms are social in the sense that
they are agreed on socially –they
depend on consensus among speakers within the community or communities
concerned and will differ form one community to another. The accuracy of the
linguist’s description must therefore be judged on how closely it coincides
with the socially agreed norm for the relevant community.
Most language
description encounters this problem of “norms”, and although it is not always
acknowledge, it can be detected in many descriptive accounts of English. Even a
statement that Received Pronunciation (RP) of English has a long diphthong with
an open first element in such words as tie
and tight depends on observing a
sample of people who are considered to be speaking this variety and on the
linguist’s judgement that this vowel is the majority usage among these persons.
But as a more general example of judging the norm, let us consider Palmer’s
(1965: 72-7) characterization of the English perfect tense/aspect. Palmer cites
sentences in which the adverbs just
and already occur with the perfect,
but he gives no examples of their occurrence with the simple past tense. Thus,
forms like “I just did it” and “I did it already” are not given as possible
sequences. A normative judgement is implicit here, and this is a probably a correct
judgement for many varieties, chiefly southern English ones. However, it is
certainly not correct for all varieties: the [past tense + just/already]
collocation is frequently observed in American, Irish and Scottish English.
Therefore, the accuracy of Palmer’s characterization has to be assessed, not in
terms of some absolute standard of “grammaticality” of the construction, but in
terms of the speech community to which is relevant. It is not a matter of
accurately describing what is agreed on by speakers in the community concerned
as the consensus norm of that community.
The
interpenetration of social and linguistic judgements is easily demonstrated in
the work of linguists who are ostensibly non-social in their approach. Smith
(1989: 111-12), for example, comments that “for most speakers of (British)
English” he ate the pie already is
“barely acceptable”, whereas he has eaten
the pie already is “fine”. This involves the same kind of normative
judgement that I have discussed above, and it is more or less correct for
English in England and Wales. But much more dubiously, Smith further comments
that “for all speakers” (my italics) he has eaten the pie yesterday is
“ungrammatical”. However, this construction does occur in SBE (Southern British
English). As Trudgill (1984a: 42) points out, “the rules governing the use of
the present perfect in Standard English seem to be altering somewhat, and there
appears in particular to be an increase in the usage of such form as: I’ve seen him last year; He’s done it two
days ago”. Nothing that [perfect tense + yesterday, last year, etc.] is spreading in SBE and is
“grammatical” in other languages, such as French, it is advisable to side with
sociolinguists and not with Chomskyan linguists. We are not dealing with ungrammaticality,
but with a change in the norms of usage for some part of the community. What
this demonstrates is how easy it is for the non-social linguist to appear to
propose prescriptive judgements.
These typically appeal to some idealized superordinate norm which is part of
the “standard” or literate language, rather than a consensus community norm,
but, although they are not enunciated as social, there are also social
judgements.
But what is
true of “standard” English norms (as described by Palmer, Trudgill and Smith)
is also true of non-standard norms, no matter how violently deviant they appear
to be to the prescriptively-inclined observer. For example, if everybody in a
social group says we was there, then we was is the consensus norm. To take
one of our own examples, it is clear that for many Belfast speakers (and indeed
for many speakers of Irish English generally), the pronoun yous (plural) is categorical, contrasting with you (singular):”So I said to our Trish and our Sandra: “You wash
the dishes”. Sure, I might as well have said “You wash the dishes”, for our
Trish just go up, put her coat on and went out”. The categorical distinction
here between you and yous can be said to be a norm for some
community of speakers. The difficulty that arises for the descriptive linguist
is not so much to determine the extent of what is “grammatical” (on which see
especially Labov, 1973), as to determine the extent of the community of
speakers within which this particular structure is the consensus norm. It is clear that many people in Belfast have
categorical yous, but that many
others vary in the plural between you
and yous; indeed, there are some who
have categorical you (as in Standard
English). Therefore, a description which states that yous (plural) is categorical in Belfast English will be valid for
some part of the community, but not for all speakers or all styles, and the
variability in you/yous usage will
certainly exhibit a socially structured pattern.
Thus, although
linguists have generally described differences between varieties of language as
linguistic facts, these differences
are also social facts. The preference for “I did it already” in dialect A as
against “I’ve done it already” in dialect B, for example, arises from
differences in speaker-agreement within communities and is to that extent a
social fact. It follows form this that all language descriptions, no matter how
objective they are, must be normative.
But although linguists have often equated normative
with prescriptive, no such equation
is intended here. Language descriptions are normative because to be accurate
they have to coincide as closely as possible with the consensus norms of the
community concerned. To be normative, the linguist’s account of a variety does
not have to be prescriptive; that is, it does not have to prescribe how people
in a community should speak. The
distinction I am making here can be described as the distinction between observing a norm for descriptive
purposes and enforcing a norm
prescriptively; but as this is not a familiar distinction, I should perhaps
discuss it a little more fully.
Linguistic
scholars commonly contrast “descriptive” with “prescriptive”. Daniel Jones, for
example, has this to say in the preface to his English Pronouncing Dictionary (1955):”no attempt is made to decide
how people ought to pronounce; all
that dictionary aims at doing is to give a faithful record of the manner in
which certain people do pronounce.” This is as good a statement of the
descriptivist position as I can think of, and it seems to me to be irrelevant
to point out (as Haas, 1982, does) that people will nevertheless treat the
dictionary as prescriptive: they will use it to find out how they ought to pronounce. If they do, this
will not be because the presentation is prescriptive, but because the
pronunciation that happens to be described here is viewed as one that it is
desirably to acquire. If some other dialect had been described, people would
not use the description prescriptively. I doubt, for example, if many people
will use my own description of Belfast pronunciation (1981) in order to acquire
fluency in inner-city Belfast English, although in principle they could.
Jones’s English Pronouncing Dictionary is therefore descriptive, and not
prescriptive, in exactly the same way as the description of any other dialect
is. But it is also normative (as all such descriptions must be) in the sense
that it attempts to reflect the socially agreed norms of some particular
community of speakers –in this case the community (and social network) of RP
speakers.
These first
two principles can be described as requirements to acknowledge the importance
in language descriptions of: (1) the social and situational context of
speech-exchanges, and (2) consensus on linguistic norms of usage within speech
communities. There is a third principle, which can be seen as an extension of
the idea of consensus norms into the diachronic dimension, and it is based on
the notion of language maintenance.
If we assume that the natural tendency of language is to diverge, relatively
convergent states can be described as arising from language maintenance through
agreement on, or acceptance of, particular norms of usage in the community. To
the extent that linguistic changes take place in speech communities, however,
they take place against a background of language maintenance, and the extent to
which they are successful depends on the interplay of these two sets of social
influences –those that encourage maintenance (or stability), on the one hand,
and those that encourage change (or divergence), on the other. Principle 3 is
fundamental to the design of the Belfast research projects which were initiated
in order to follow out some arguments about linguistic change. Our various
discussions since then, about “language loyalty”, “focusing”, “social
identity”, social network and related matters, all grow directly out of the
idea of language maintenance in the research design itself.
Language Maintenance and Language Change
The third
principle can be stated thus:
Principle
3 In order to account for
differential patterns of change at particular times and places, we need first
to take account of those factors that tend to maintain language states and
resist change.
This is
closely related to the actuation problem,
which we discuss more fully in chapter 2 and the emphasis on language
maintenance is the most salient difference between the way I have approached
historical linguistic change and the approach of most other historical
linguists. It also differentiates our sociolinguistic research from other work
in that subject, including the large urban projects (such as Labov, 1966) that
influenced the Belfast research in the first place. It gives rise to a number
of consequential differences in approach. Historical linguists do not generally
describe patterns of maintenance:
they tend to focus on those things that are known to have changed and ignore
those things that have not, and they can often explicate historical changes
very elegantly without any reference at all to the social embedding of the
changes concerned. What strikes me as important here, however, is the fact that
if we focus exclusively on change and ignore maintenance, these non-social
procedures can be quite easily justified: we can indeed propose sophisticated
descriptions and highly constrained theories of linguistic change, without
taking any account of social factors, and this is frequently done. However, if
we pose the more basic question why some forms and varieties remain stable
while others change, we cannot avoid reference to society. This is one of the
justifications for Principle
If we are
interested in how language states can remain stable and how speech communities resist change, we have almost no
alternative but to take account of social factors. Suppose we notice that the
structure of language X has remained stable for a century: it is not very
interesting to point this out and then to leave it at that. We naturally want
to know why it has remained stable when other states of language have changed,
but in order to do this we have to study the social and speaker-based reasons
that may account fort the fact that it has not
changed. In reality, languages change at given times in some ways and not in
others, sometimes they change rapidly and sometimes slowly, some varieties are
divergent and some convergent, and so on. Thus, the third principle that I have
proposed above is clearly relevant in a range of very diverse language
situations, and at widely differing levels of generality, and I shall have much
more to say about this in later chapters.
I noted above
that our Belfast research projects depended especially on this third principle.
It is the idea of language maintenance that is most immediately relevant to the
historical interests of this
research, and that is what this book is also about. If you look at historical
sates of English, it is clear that some characteristics of the language have
persisted through time while others have changed, and it is also clear, even in
written documents, that early states of English were variable just as
present-day English is. Therefore, we want to know how divergent forms and
varieties of the language can be maintained across considerable periods of
time, and how structured variability can persist through time. These interests
influenced the original design of the Belfast research, and there were some
other related interests (including dialectological interests, such as
cross-dialectal comprehension and the question of access of non-standard
speakers to so-called “standard languages”). What these situations all have in
common is the maintenance of distinctive norms of language and (very often)
persistence of divergent varieties through time, but historical linguistic
theorists haven’t shown much interest in matters like this. Therefore, as a
historical linguist, I thought that we might get a better understanding of what
linguistic change actually is, and how and why it happens, if we could also
come closer to specifying the conditions under which it does not happen –the
conditions under which “states” and forms of language are maintained and
changes resisted.
This mean,
amongst other things, that we can see some of the traditional problems of
historical explanation in a different light: for example, we might want to ask
why apparently “low prestige” varieties of language can persist over centuries,
and why dialects of the same language can be maintained for long periods in
forms that differ so much form one another that they are mutually
incomprehensible. But the most general consequence of an interest in
maintenance is the one I have mentioned above: it forces us to ask questions
about society and to investigate the
structure of the societies in which norms of language are maintained and
changes implemented. If we focus on change alone, we can propose explanations
that are language-internal without systematic reference to social processes, but we cannot do this if we focus on
maintenance; our answers have to be in some way socially based.
Of course,
none of this implies that historical linguists never appeal to social explanations: sometimes they do, but the
appeals tend to be ad hoc appeals to
“prestige”, “the standard language” and the like, which assume the existence of
speaker-links and power-structures in society, but which do not investigate
these systematically. This has various consequences, but the one I need to call
attention to here is that, as a result of the superficiality of the social
analysis, accounts of the histories of particular languages have often been
very heavily coloured by the social attitudes of the investigators themselves.
Frequently, the researches have not been able to observe social structures and
processes in an impartial way: their subjective social attitudes have often
been based on ideological positions which they have simply assumed to be
“common sense”, and so not easily open to rational examination. They have then
imposed these ideological positions on to the analysis “form above”, as in the
following: “Just as fashions in dress are bidding upon all members of a given
class and are imitated by all who look up to that class, so fashions in
language are bidding upon all people of culture and are followed by other
members of the community to the best of their ability”(Sturtevant, 1917: 26).
This is a unidimensional imposition of standards form the top; it is basically
elitist, but quite mildly expressed. In some cases, as we shall see, the
standard language ideology is much more strongly expressed, and in some
accounts “non-standard” forms and varieties are rejected as if they were not
really “language” at all. In chapter 5 we shall discuss the effects if
standard-based attitudes on historical descriptions of English.
What we seem
to need, therefore, is a theoretical orientation to the study of language
maintenance that takes full account of social processes and therefore of social
theories. Such an orientation, in contrast with theories that have focused on
change alone, is in the fullest sense of sociolinguistic.
In this book I shall explore the social side of our subject more fully than
have been usual, and in chapters 6 and 7 I shall attempt to develop an
integrated social model for the interpretation of language change. In section 1.4,
we first acknowledge the importance of the “empirical foundations” of
Weinreich, Labov and Herzog (1968)
The “Empirical Foundations”
Whereas the
three principles proposed above can be seen as basic in a context of language
stability and maintenance, the “empirical foundations” of Weinreich, Labov and
Herzog (1968) are quite specifically directed towards a theory of language change. Furthermore, whereas our three
principles are very definitely about the social
nature of language variation, their principles are in practice more directly
focused on locating the linguistic
patterns of change. They are devoted to supporting the claim that linguistic
innovations move in an orderly manner through space (social, geographical,
historical) affecting linguistic structure also in an orderly manner. Thus,
although there is no necessary contradiction between their principles and ours,
we have tended over time to reinterpret their principles in the light of our
own experiences in social and sociolinguistic analysis. The essential
difference here can perhaps best be understood by recalling that whereas
Labov’s New York City study was specifically directed towards locating
linguistic changes, our inner-city study of Belfast was primarily a study of
maintenance, and therefore necessarily social for the reasons given above.
Although it is assumed that change is in progress at any time in any speech
community, we would not have been greatly concerned if, in this limited study,
we had not found any evidence for change at all: we would have expected it to
appear at some later stage.
According to
Weinreich, Labov and Herzog, the task of explaining linguistic change is best
divided into five parts –the problems of constraints,
embedding, evaluation transition and actuation.
The first three of these are interrelated and we have tended to treat them as
aspects of the same thing. The problem of the universal constraints on
linguistic change would, if it were solved, specify with changes are possible
and which are impossible, and predict which changes would happen in particular
circumstances: much historical linguistic theorizing has been directed towards
a solution to this problem. Here, however, we need notice that although the
term “constraints” has often been understood as intra-linguistic, it is
obviously possible to speak also of social constraints on change. Let us
consider this briefly.
“Avoidance of homophony” (following Martinet’s
(1955) arguments, and see further chapter 2) may be considered to be an
intra-linguistic constraint of change. In this spirit, I have pointed out (J.
Milroy, 1976a) that the development of [e:] (as in bait, sane) in Belfast vernacular (henceforth BV) to [ei] (as in RP) may be blocked by the fact that the
vernacular pronunciation of the word-class of bite, sign is already pronounced with [ei]
in BV. Thus, if the RP-like pronunciation were adopted, there would be merger
of two distinct lexical sets. However, following Principle 2 (which is
concerned with consensus norms), the decisive constraint here and elsewhere is
just as likely to be social as linguistic, because despite homonymic clash (of
the meat/meet type), mergers do
commonly occur in languages. Furthermore, in this case there would have to be
some social motivation for moving in the RP direction in the first place. Our
evidence suggests, however, that there is a little or no such motivation:
throughout most of the Belfast community there is no discernible movement in phonetic realization towards RP.
Therefore, we can suggest very plausibly that the so-called “prestige”
motivation to adopt Rp forms is overridden here by
the solidarity constraint, which requires the speaker to conform to local
community norms rather than to norms that are viewed as “external”. It is very
striking, after all, that in our inner-city work there were no examples at all
of RP-like [ei] in closed syllables of the type bait, sane, and very similar points can
be made about a number of other words (for further discussion see chapter 3)
In the
Weinreich, Labov and Herzog programme, all aspects are said to be both social
and linguistic, but it is the evaluation
problem that is most clearly designated as social. This pertains principally to
social responses to language change “at levels of awareness, form overt
discussion to reactions that are quite inaccessible to introspection” (Labov,
1982: 28). It embraces notions of prestige, attitudes to language (both overt
and covert), as well as linguistic stereotyping and notions of correctness. In
practice, we have taken a rather wider view of what goes on in speech
communities than the Weinreich, Labov and Herzog principles imply, and have
tried to look at evaluation within the context of broader structural principles
such as power and solidarity (Brown and Gilman, 1960), and interactional
factors such as “politeness” (Brown and Jameson, 1987) and “accommodation”
(Giles and Smith, 1979, Trudgill, 1986a). We have also been interested in how
speech communities can reach consensus on the evaluation of linguistic forms
and how this consensus can shift in the course of time.
It seems,
however, that the problems of evaluation and constraints can be viewed as
constituent, or contributory, parts of the more general problem of explaining
the embedding of linguistic changes
in the pre-existing states of language and society. Labov’s original
contribution here (principally in the New York City study) has been to provide
a general model of the social location of a linguistic innovation and of the
manner in which it spreads from a central point upwards and downwards through a
speech community. But clearly, this overlaps conceptually with the transition problem, in so far as the
transition form one state to another must be described here also. Thus, the
graphs and diagrams of the quantitative paradigm, when they show stable
patterns, can be interpreted a displaying aspects of the linguistic embedding of a variable; when there is a
crossover pattern, however, they also display transition.
Transition
concerns “the intervening stages which can be observed, or which must be
posited, between any two forms of a language defined for a language community
at different times” (Weinreich, Labov and Herzog, 1968: 101). Transition is
what most historical description has been about, mapping (as it has usually
done) the transition between state A at one period and state B at a later one.
Quantitative analysis here allows a gain in sophistication: the process by
which one form gradually gives way to another can be demonstrated in
fine-grained detail in what is generally an orderly progression through social
groups and speech styles (for a study of this kind, see Eckert, 1980)
The fifth
problem –actuation –is a very different kind of problem from these others, and
I shall not consider it here. We shall return to it in Chapter 2 and later
chapters, and I shall suggest that a solution to it must be based on behaviour
of speakers rather than primarily on the properties of languages. Here, it is
appropriate to comment on some general differences that seem to exist between
the Weinreich, Labov and Herzog methods of accounting for change in language systems
and our own approach to it. The chief difference, as I have suggested above, is
that whereas their programme and Labov’s work within it are based on first
being able to locate linguistic changes in progress, our work has been more
generally based on describing variation in the speech community and accounting
for differing patterns (whether or not they exhibit change in progress) in
social terms. In other words, our notion of the embedding of change in the
speech community is broader, and as a result our idea of what a linguistic
change actually is broader and less traditional than Labov’s view appears to
be. It also raises the question of what a sound-change actually is: how do we
know when we have located one, and how does the pattern of a change differ from
other patterns that we might locate?
I shall
discuss these matters more fully in later chapters, but I can lay some of the
groundwork here. Traditional codifications of sound-change have generally
focused on sound-segments as they “change” across time. Thus –to simplify –a
linguistic change can be described as a change from A to B in some lexical set,
such as that of Old English [a:] in stan, ham, which in the course of time becomes
and [o:] –like vowel in PresE (Present English) stone, home. The transitional
stages can be postulated in the Middle English period or studied directly, as
in Kristensson’s (1967) study of onomastic sources from around 1300, from which
figure 1.1 is compiled, showing the northward progress of the “new” rounded
vowel in this set at that time (the rounded vowel has penetrated further
northward in the west, that is, in Lancashire and the West Riding, than in the
east, that is, in Lincolnshire). Labov’s treatment of sound-change seems to be
quite similar to this traditional treatment in that a change is generally
located by comparative methods (comparing different social groups in real and
apparent time) within a single segment or a very limited class of sounds.
We have also
used these methods, but our conceptualization of linguistic change is broader
and is largely based on the normative principle that I proposed above:
linguistic change is to be understood more broadly as changes in consensus on
norms of usage in a speech community. During the process there will be some
disagreement or conflict on norms at some levels in the community, but if a
change is ever “completed”, then it will be possible to say that some community
of speakers agrees that what was formerly A is now B. but this can apply at
different levels of generality –from a single sound-segment up to a language
state as a whole. Thus –to take a much more generalized case than, say
post-vocalic /r/ in New York City –if a language state is observed to become
more (or less) homogeneous within itself in the course of time, then the trend
to greater or lesser homogeneity is itself a pattern of linguistic change that
has to be accounted for in terms of consensus or conflict amongst speakers
within the speech community.
We might wish
to look, for example, at Australian English in this way. It is much more
homogeneous than British English, even though the early settlers came from
different places. If it has moved from an early heterogeneous state to a more
homogeneous one, this is itself a linguistic change relevant to the history of
Australian English and aspects of colonial language development in general.
Thus, many of the detailed patterns that we are likely to find in
sociolinguistic inquiries will not be unidimensional (as more traditional work
often suggests), but bidimensional or multidimensional, showing trends towards
greater agreement or greater disagreement on norms within the communities (see
further J. Milroy, 1982b, and chapters 3 and 4)
Synopsis
The purpose of
chapter 2 is to place the general theme of this book in perspective by
considering the relationship between historical linguistics explanations of a
non-social kind and sociolinguistic explanations of language change. I do not
attempt to review all current intra-linguistic work on change, as my main aim
is to propose a different (social) way of looking at change, but I discuss some
of the main trends. Following out my social arguments and Principle 1, I shall
focus on conversational settings as the locus of change, and I shall suggest
that language change is made possible to the extent that it is passed form
person to person in speaker encounters, in which the apparently dysfunctional
nature of language change is counteracted by features of the communicative
context (this idea is developed from our early work in Belfast on speech and
context: L. Milroy and J. Milroy, 1977)
Chapters 3 and
4 are chiefly about analyzing language in the community and interpreting the
patterns revealed, bearing in mind Principles 2 and 3 (on linguistic norms and
language maintenance). The main database is the Belfast research, from which I
have selected examples. My purpose is to build the general foundations in these
chapters, starting with the observation and analysis of language in the
community. In chapter 5, I extend the perspective backwards in time, and
consider some case-studies of language maintenance over periods of time that
are relevant to historical interpretation. In this chapter we have to consider
what we mean by a sound-change in history, and we conclude with a brief
discussion of Neogrammarian views of how sound-change is implemented.
Chapters 6 and
7 are the main theoretical chapters and are devoted to the social modeling of
linguistic change. In chapter 6, I outline a social model which is derived from
the social network model that we have used to study language maintenance, and I
proposed a model of “weak ties” to account for the possibility of language
change. As this model does not account for broader social structures and
processes, I explore in chapter 7 the links between network and social class in
an attempt to build up a more comprehensive social model for the interpretation
of language change.
Explaining
Language Change
The ultimate
aim of historical linguistics is to explain the causation of linguistic change. The question of causation is beset
with difficulties but we can focus on it here by stating Weinreich, Labov and
Herzog’s formulation of the actuation
problem (1968: 102): “Why do changes in a structural feature take place in
a particular language at a given time, but not in other languages with the same
feature, or in the same language at other times? This actuation problem may be regarded as the very heart of the matter.”
In attempting to solve the actuation problem we are concerned with no less than
the origin of change: we want to locate its beginning and by any means possible
attempt to explain why that particular change was initiated and diffused at
some particular time and place. It seems clear that to tackle it, we must take
account of how speakers initiate
changes, and I shall treat it in later chapters in these terms.
The actuation
problem, however, is so challenging that historical linguists do not usually
address it directly; this is hardly surprising as, when it is formulated in
this way, it is actually insoluble: a solution to it implies the capacity to predict, not only what particular change
will happen, but also when and where it will happen. However, the probability
of any event in life actually taking place at some particular and specified
place and time is close to zero. Weather prediction is a convenient analogy
here: we can predict from meteorological observations that it will rain on a
particular day with a high probability of being correct, but if we predict that
in a particular place it will start raining at one minute past eleven and stop
at six minutes past twelve, the probability of the prediction being correct is
vanishingly low. Nevertheless, we would be bad meteorologists if we did not try
to improve the accuracy includes the ability to specify the conditions under
which it will happen. In view of all this, we have no excuse as linguists for
not addressing the actuation problem.
The Weinreich,
Labov and Herzog formulation has several implications that are important for a
theory of language change, and some of these can be understood fairly readily
if we cite as an example a kind of sound-change that is frequently observed in
languages and is sometimes called “natural”. So let us consider here the
palatalization of /k/ before front vowels. Suppose it happens (as it often
does) that one particular language (or dialect) undergoes this palatalization,
whereas a closely related language (or dialect) of very similar structure does
not. Following the Weinreich, Labov and Herzog principles, we have to ask why
it happened in one variety but not in the other. We also have to ask why it
should have happened at some particular time and not at some other time, when
the structure of the relevant language presumably exhibited suitable conditions
for the change at time when it did not happen as well as at the time when it
did. There are, of course, well-known examples of varying developments of this
kind: amongst the continental Scandinavian languages, Swedish and Norwegian
have palatalization of Old Norse /k/, whereas Danish now usually has a velar:
Old English underwent palatalization before front vowels whereas Old High German
and Old Norse did not: hence PresE cheese
for German käse and English/Norse
doublets in PresE such as shirt/skirt;
many Hiberno-English dialects (J. Milroy, 1981, and elsewhere) have
[k]-palatalization in words of the type car,
cart, whereas most other English dialects do not. What we observe here are
conflicting patterns of change and stability in languages and dialects of
similar structure. In these examples it seems that the proximity of the velar
consonant to a front vowel may be a necessary
condition for palatalization, but as it does not happen in every case, it is
not a sufficient condition. We need
to find out what the other conditions favouring or preventing the change might
have been, and it seems that in cases where the change was adopted the social conditions must have been
favourable; conversely, when it was not adopted, it may again have been social
conditions that prevented the change. This suggests that to make progress in
understanding actuation we must take into account the activities of speakers in
social contexts in addition to the internal structural properties of a
language.
Indeed,
although linguistic changes are observed to take place in linguistic systems, they must necessarily come about as a result of
the activities of speakers. As we
have noted in chapter 1, languages which have no speakers (or –sometimes
–writers) do not change, and so these remarks may well seem uncontroversial to
any non-specialist who has given a language thought to the matter. After all,
there is no point in having a language if it is not used by human beings. It
seems to be specialist, rather than non-specialists, who think that language
change, can be explained without reference to society. Within orthodox
historical linguists, the emphasis has generally been on the properties of
linguistic systems, and speaker-roles
have been referred to indirectly and sometimes very vaguely. As Lass (1980:
120-2) points out, historical linguists have tended to regard language as an
“autonomous formal system” or natural object and have preferred to believe that
it is “languages that change and not speakers
that change languages”. Thus, historical descriptions and theories of
historical change have generally focused on the structural properties of
languages and not on its speakers. This tendency is very deeply embedded in
historical theorizing, and it is appropriate to look at it a little more
closely here
System-based
Accounts of Change
The orthodox
position as stated by Lass (1980) is not entirely a twentieth-century phenomenon:
the separation of language from speakers has an ancient and honourable
pedigree, and the nineteenth-century emphasis on the independent “life” of
language is by present-day standards very striking. According to Trench (1888:
223-4), language has a life “as surely as a man or a tree”, and creativity in
language in developing new forms is attributed by Max Müller (1881: 33) not to
the creativity of speakers, but to the “marvelous power of language” itself:
according to him (1861: 36) “it is not in the power of man either to produce or
prevent” linguistic change. Müller’s adoption of the biological metaphor is so
strongly started that for him it does not seem to have been a metaphor at all:
linguistics, according to Müller, is literally a physical science on a par with geology, botany and biology, and not
a historical science, such as art,
morals or religion. “Physical science”, including linguistics, “deals with the
works of God” whereas “historical” science deals with the works of man” (1861:
22). Language therefore does not have history,
it has growth. The metaphor has
weakened since Müller wrote, but there have been many publications on language
history since then that have been based on the idea of the independent “life”
of language. Indeed, the metaphor is by no means dead: this is amply
demonstrated by continued references in recent work to “language birth”,
“language death” and the “roots” of language.
Of course, it
is not true that language is a living thing (any more than swimming, or
birdsong, is a living thing): it is a vehicle for communication between living things, namely human
beings. Hence, the metaphor has been largely replaced since the nineteenth
century by a new metaphor based on the machine age: language is now more often
seen as a self-contained system, like
a working machine. The acceptance of this metaphor is widespread enough for it
to appear in the title of a book on linguistics –The Twitter Machine (Smith, 1989) –and it is clearly greatly
encouraged by developments in computer modeling of language. However, whereas
the nineteenth-century metaphor could readily incorporate the idea of change
(as language was said to have “growth” within it, like a plant), this
system-based approach cannot so easily do so. Internal combustion engines, for
example, do not initiate structural changes within themselves. From this point
of view, therefore, the system-based model may seem to be an unsuitable one to
use as the basis for studying language change. What is certainly clear is that
within this perspective our attempts at explanation continue to be essentially
language-internal. When speakers are referred to, they are decontextualized and
asocial abstractions.
Possibly as a
result of the emphasis on internal language systems, descriptive accounts (such
as histories of English) commonly separate the internal history of a language from its external history (that is, the political, social and attitudinal
contexts of a language). Thus, some historical accounts of English, such as
Wyld (1927), have been mainly internal (typically focusing on sound-change and
morphological change), whereas others (such as McKnight, 1928) have been about
the external history of the language, discussing, for example,
speaker-attitudes to variation as they were expressed by seventeenth- and
eighteenth-century commentators. Both of these approaches can of course yield
insights; however, it is commonly believed that the “real” history of a
language is its internal system-based history and that the external history is
relatively unimportant. The traditional position on internal and external
histories has again been clearly stated by Lass (1987: 34-5), who claims quite
explicitly that in most respects “external” accounts do not help to explain
changes in linguistic structure. According to him, “there was nothing in the 17th
century English political or social climate” that could account, for example,
the merger of the formerly distinct vowels in words of the type bird, fern, hurt; he further states that
“at the structural level there is no connection between language and society”
and that “the internal life of language is close to autonomous.” My position,
which I shall further develop below, is –on the contrary –that we cannot hope
to explain change without inquiring
into social factors.
One reason for
this is that intra-linguistic arguments with only vague references to speakers,
or accounts that explicitly reject speakers, are not in themselves capable of
dealing with actuation, as it is
speakers who actuate changes. Nevertheless, the causes of change (like the
causes of illness) are multiple; therefore, we need to take both speakers and
systems into account and, if possible, specify the link between
speaker-activity and change in language systems. As for intra-linguistic
theorizing, its main contribution has been to specify in a more and more
refined way the linguistic constraints
on change, not its causes. In order to exemplify the mode of argument used in
system-based accounts, we can consider here Kiparsky’s recent review (1988) of
progress in the study of phonological change.
This account
is system-based and set in the traditional controversy about whether
sound-change operates blindly and without exceptions (the Neogrammarian exceptionlessness hypothesis), or
whether other approaches over the last century (such as lexical diffusion) have invalidated the hypothesis. The lexical
diffusion model (Wang, 1969) holds that sound –changes may be lexically
gradual: thus, in a change from /e:/ to /i:/ (such as the EModE (Early Modern
English) change in words of the type meat,
peace, leave), items are transferred to the new class at differential
rates, often leaving a residue of items that do not get transferred (in this
case such words as great, break, steak).
Neogrammarian theory, however, has generally been interpreted to mean that the
relevant class of items all undergo the change at the same time, that is, that
sound-change is phonetically gradual and lexical sudden.
Kiparsky
reconciles these approaches by arguing in terms of lexical phonology: those changes that appear not to fit into the
Neogrammarian hypothesis (including instances of lexical diffusion, in which
items in a class are not affected simultaneously by a change) are part of the lexical rule component, whereas
Neogrammarian exceptionless change is accounted for by post-lexical rules. There is more to his argument than this, but I
am not concerned here, of course, with the precise content of the argument
–although I have tried not to do any gross injustice to it –but with its intellectual
background, and specifically its intra-linguistic nature. In this argument,
certain points are evident. First, the argument is system-oriented and not
speaker-oriented (specifically, it is about phonological rules), and its goal
is a “grammar” of linguistic change; the activities of speakers are not given
prominence in the argument. Second, it is set in the traditional controversy
about the regularity of sound-change in language systems (and certain other
binary distinctions that arise from it, which attempt to specify constraints of
change: for example, whether sound-change is lexically gradual or sudden).
Third, it is proposed that the two patterns of change can be accounted for by
fitting them into a new binary taxonomy based on lexical phonology. Thus, the
discussion casts new light on an old controversy by redefining the controversy
within a non-social system-based linguistics; it specifies the problem in a
more refined and elegant way, and its proposals are then subject to critical
discussion, testing and further refinements.
But this
account, like many others, does not primarily address the actuation problem,
and the question why (and how) speakers
initiate changes is not central to the intellectual context in which it is
conceived. It is true that there are two pages on “causes of sound change” that
acknowledge the work of sociolinguists in this area –particularly Labov, Yaeger
and Steiner (1972) and Kroch (1978) –but the discussion of “causes” does not
form the backbone of the account. The main aim of historical phonology, as
represented here, is the construction of sophisticated system-based grammars of change, and the problem of
how speakers actuate changes is not
directly addressed. It is interesting (and much to be welcomed), therefore,
that Kiparsky includes an extensive and skilful discussion of the Labov-Sankoff
variable rule paradigm. The
significance of this here is that variable rules are, of course, themselves
explicitly system-based (Cerdegren
and Sankoff, 1974, and see chapter 6, below, for a fuller discussion of this
point): there are grammars of language and not accounts of actuation. Thus,
whereas speakers-based studies cannot easily be incorporated into orthodox
system-based accounts, variable rules can fit perfectly and add sophistication
to grammars of change.
A second quite
recent example of intra-linguistic argumentation is Lass’s On Explaining Language Change (1980), to which I have referred
above. Lass sates that linguists have proceeded language –internally –and have
taken the view that it is languages that change, not speakers that change
languages. But he is also critical of sociolinguistic accounts of change and
seems to dismiss them. He says that when attempts have been made to introduce
the speaker into explanations of language change, these attempts have been
“superficial and otiose”, and he considers (p. 121) even Labov’s notion of
“speech community” to be a “very tenuous abstraction” (more on this below).
Taking his cue from the tradition, he points out that the most fruitful results
for theories of language change have come about precisely because historical
linguistics has studied “formal objects and their mutations over time, not …
their inventors or users”.
The point that
great advances in the past have come about through intra-linguistic
argumentation cannot be disputed. One thinks especially of the great innovators
of the nineteenth century, such as Bopp, Rask, Grimm and Verner, but also of
modern advances, such as work on language universals, lexical phonology and
many other areas. However, it plainly does not follow from any of this that we
should therefore neglect the role of speakers in linguistic change. If we do
not know what role speakers play, it seems appropriate that we should
investigate it empirically.
Before we look
at this more fully, however, we need to notice that it would not be correct to
infer from what Lass says that older generations of scholars always neglected
the role of speakers. On the contrary, there are several great names who
assumed that linguistic change must have social origins (amongst others) and
who did not think it beneath them to write extensively on this, while at the
same time contributing fully to system-based accounts of language. Among these
are Henry Sweet, H. C. Wyld, E. H. Sturtevant and Otto Jespersen. In
Sturtevant’s Linguistic Change
(1917), we find an emphasis on the idea of social norm-enforcement, childish
errors and slips of the tongue, and (incidentally) a plea for the study of
universals of language change. All this is presented in a framework that
distinguishes primary change
(effectively, linguistic change as admitted into grammars of language). Thus, a
speaker/system distinction similar to that which we have proposed (J: Milroy
and L. Milroy, 1985b) is considered by Sturtevant, and he attempts to integrate
the two sides of the question. Jespersen’s Language
(1922), which is a better-known book, reads in places like a research proposal
for modern sociolinguistics and language acquisition studies: the possible
causes of change include features of children’s language, sex-differences
(there is a chapter on “The Woman”), taboo and euphemism (unfashionable at the
moment, but unquestionably very important), language contact and Pidgin and
Creole development.
It seems that
if speaker-based arguments have since that time been found unsatisfactory,
there may have been contingent reasons for this. The correct generalization
seems to be, not that speakers are irrelevant to change in language systems,
but simply that it has in the past been extremely difficult to study
speaker-behaviour in a systematic and accountable way. As we noticed in chapter
1, early investigators, such as Wyld, did not have the necessary technology –in
particular they did not have tape-recorders. So, until about 1960 it was very
difficult to explore their ideas further by experiment or systematic
observation and impossible to study conversational interaction in a reliable
way. Dialect investigators were usually limited to single-word citation forms,
and the empirical study of discourse in situational contexts could hardly have
been contemplated. This, clearly, is no longer true. Although we are still
interested in “formal objects and their mutations over time”, advances in data
collection from live speakers, and the analysis of such data, have put us in a
position to inquire into the role of speakers in change. If we do not know what
role of speakers play in implementing changes –we do not need any longer to
dismiss it as impossible to explain.
Before we go on
in the next section to amplify this discussion by looking at the functions of change, we can draw
together the strands of the argument so far. Historical linguistics in this
century has largely depended on the idea that language is a self-contained
system, and investigators have generally not systematically addressed the
question of how speakers can
introduce changes into the structural parts of language. Thus, complaints about
the superficiality of “external” explanations of change are in a sense self-fulfilling
prophecies. Clearly, if you concentrate exclusively on abstract systems of
language and do not develop a coherent and accountable theory of the social
embedding of language change, your
comments on the possible social reasons for changes will inevitably be ad soc and superficial.
But although
the above remarks are concerned with theory rather than description, they are
relevant to descriptive accounts also: for example, to historical descriptions
of English. It is impossible to write a reasonably full history of English
without making at least some reference to social categories, such as class, and
to institutional aspects of language, such as standardization. Indeed,
system-based accounts, such as that of Lass (1987) himself, do routinely make reference
to “class”, “prestige” and other socially-based “external” categories. What
most of these histories of language have done is to refer to these social
matters in an ad hoc way, without
contemplating an accountable theory of the social embedding and motivation of
language change. Indeed, as we noticed in a social matrix, have filtered their
social explanations through their own “common sense” views of social class and
social prestige, without clearly acknowledging that these are themselves
complex theoretical concepts, and certainly not “common sense”.
There seems to
be no reason why we should not inquire further into social structures and
processes as part of an inquiry into linguistic change, and no reason why we
should not also think of linguistic change as being an aspect of social change
in general, that is, to think of it an entirely new perspective. But to do
these things is not to exclude the possibility of also developing sophisticated
internal accounts of language change. Both kinds of approach are needed –and
one should contribute to the other –because although linguistic change must be
initiated by speakers (and is therefore a social phenomenon) it is manifested
as internal to language. Bearing these questions in mind, therefore, I shall
move on in section 2.2 to consider in what senses linguistic variation and
change can be shown to be functional.
It is important to consider this question, because from an intra-linguistic
point of view variation and change can actually appear to be dysfunctional.
The Functions
and Malfunctions of Change and Variation
In the
introductory sections of chapter 1, we were mainly concerned with structural
aspects of language, exploring the apparent conflict between the structuralist
axiom –that a language is a coherent self-contained system of interdependent
parts –and the fact that language is continuously changing. In what follows I
am concerned with function: I want to
consider whether linguistic change is functional, that is, whether it serves a
purpose of some kind, and if so in what sense it is functional. Here we need to
recall that it is very widely asserted by linguistic scholars that a language
system is at any given time equally well adapted to the functions for which it
is used: sometimes it is said to be perfectly
adapted. Whether or not this is true, it is reasonable to assume that
linguistic structure is very sensitive to the changing social and communicative
needs of speakers. Furthermore, Weinreich, Labov and Herzog (1968) have claimed
that linguistic variation (which can be a symptom of language change) is not
only structured, but also functional, and that it is the absence of variation that would be dysfunctional. In
order to investigate the functions of language, however, we have to look at
language in use, but as the functions of language in use are social and
pragmatic, they are not readily accounted for within an exclusively
system-based theory of language structure. We therefore have to look at speakers in addition to systems.
Traditional speculation as to whether linguistic change is functional or not
has, however, been based on the configuration of systems rather than on
speaker-use of language.
Speculation
about the functions of change has been common in the past: it has, for example,
been suggested that there is a theology, or overall purpose, in language change
(for a discussion of this, see Lass, 1980), and even that change in language
structures may follow a predestined path. This is plainly related to the idea
of language as an independent “growth” with a “life” of its own. In this view
of language, however, speakers would play little part in this development and
could do very little about linguistic change, as the blind force of language in
its purposive quest would overrule them (recall again the views of Müller,
1861). Related to these ideas in a general way is Sapir’s (1921) notion of
“drift”. It is striking, as Prokosch (1939) points out, that related languages
can undergo the same changes apparently independently: all the early Germanic
languages, for example (except Gothic, records of which are too early),
independently underwent the important change known as front-mutation or i-umlaut.
It is as if the “parent” language was programmed in such a way that the
conditions were already present in it for the change to take place in all the
“daughter” languages.
It has also
been suggested that language can make progress and improve in the course of
time: for Henry Sweet (Henderson, 1971), the loss of grammatical gender in
English constituted progress, as grammatical gender, according to him, is
“illogical”; Jespersen (1922) argued that modern languages of “analytic”
(weakly inflected) structure, such as English and Danish, have envolved to a
higher stage than “synthetic” (heavily inflected) languages, such as classical
Latin, and are more efficient instruments of communication, mainly because they
are thought to have a more transparent one-to-one relationship between meaning
and form. For example, an auxiliary verb phrase, such as English I have said…, is more transparent than
the Latin equivalent dixi because
person, tense and aspect in English are expressed in separate units, whereas in
Latin they are all carried in the second syllable of dixi and cannot be unraveled from its surface form. Jespersen’s
judgement here depends, of course, on the assumption that transparency in
language structure is a desirable thing. Clearly, however, if some other
criterion were used (and such criteria as euphony, economy and elegance have
also been used), completely different conclusions might be drawn, and Latin
might then be held to be superior to English, as it often has been; therefore,
it is safer to assume that differences in overall grammatical structure are
neutral. They can all be used equally efficiently or inefficiently by the
speakers of the language concerned.
I have
described these kinds of argument as speculative because it is impossible to
test them empirically: they are based on value judgements, which are often
ethnocentric or class-based, and in the wrong hands they can sometimes lead to
quite damaging opinions. For example, if it is believed that the structure of
one language is superior to that of another, it can then be suggested that this
is due to the cognitive superiority of its speakers. In fact, there seems to be
nothing inherent in the structural properties
of a language to suggest that change has a positive function within language
structure. Within these structural parts –phonology, grammar, lexical and
semantic structure –it is quite impossible to demonstrate empirically that
language systems have in-built
tendencies towards progress or decay, that one language is more or less
“efficient” than another, or that there is a teleology in linguistic change. If
change is functional, it must be speaker-functions that are involved.
In fact, if we
focus exclusively on the internal properties of language, it is much easier to
make a prima facie case for the
argument that variation and change in language are dysfunctional, rather than functional. This is because dialect
divergence and language change lead to the difficulties in communication
between speakers –a fact that is obvious to any fieldworker who studies a
“divergent” dialect, and to any analyst who transcribes the tape-recordings
(they can be very difficult to understand); it is also familiar to anyone who
tries to read an early English text. Therefore, if linguistic structure exists
for the purpose of successful communication, why does language change? Why do
languages diverge from one another in the course of time, and why are some
dialects of a language partly or wholly incomprehensible to speakers of other
dialects? The apparent paradox has of course been noticed by many, and it has
been quite recently commented on by Francis (1983: 15-16):
If the purpose
of language is communication, it would seem that the more homogeneous the
language, the more efficient the communication. Why, then, does the increasing
variation resulting from differential change not make communication difficult,
unreliable, and eventually impossible? If so, the propensity for language to
change would ultimately lead to break down in the principal function for which
language exists.
It is
interesting that Francis –as the dialectologist –seems to presuppose here that
increasing divergence does not lead
to breakdown of communication. One only has to look at the histories of related
languages that were at one time dialects of the same language to realize, of
course, that it does lead to
breakdown. There is no need to disagree with Wyld (1936: 7): “the process of
differentiation is almost infinite, and the tendency of language is not, as it
has sometimes been wrongly said, in the direction of uniformity, but of
variety.” Language change can, and does, lead to breakdown of communication.
The belief
that language change is dysfunctional is most clearly expressed in popular
attitudes to language. These commonly conceive of languages as ideal and
perfect structures, and of speakers as awkward creatures who violate these
perfect structures by misusing and corrupting “language”: this is essentially a
belief in the rape of language by speakers. These attitudes are strongly
expressed and highly resistant to rational examination. So strong is this
intolerance of speaker-variation and change that in many countries academies
have been set up to enforce a uniform “correct” usage and to prevent
uncontrolled divergence; indeed, in the biblical story of the Tower of Babel,
language diversity is attributed to original sin. There are, of course,
socio-political and economic reasons for these attitudes, which we have
discussed elsewhere (J. Milroy and L. Milroy, 1985a), but they are powerful and
deep-seated and they cannot be ignored.
In so far as
these prescriptive agencies have a rational purpose, this purpose seems to be
maintenance of communicative efficiency in carrying information-bearing
messages over long distances and periods of time. For conveying information in
these ways, uniformity and standardization of language are highly valued, and
it is usually in the written channel that the highest level of this kind of
efficiency is achieved. Spoken language, as far as we can tell, continues to
vary and change, and it is in spoken language, and not in writing, that
structural (for example, phonological) change is implemented. Writing systems
promote uniformity and suppress variation and change it is typically in the
day-to-day situational contexts of speaker-interaction that structural changes
take place, and it is in these contexts that they have to be investigated. That
is why Principle 1, which I put forward in chapter 1, should be borne in mind.
Popularly
expressed attitudes to correctness and uniformity, therefore, do not square
with what human beings actually do in conversational contexts. On the one hand,
they believe in uniformity, while on the other they promote diversity. Clearly,
if speakers consistently carried their expressed beliefs into practice, the
result would be a uniform and stable state of language –the world of the
idealized native speaker in a perfectly homogeneous speech community –and not
the diversity that exists in the real world. It seems, therefore, that in
expressing adverse judgements on variation, speakers are subscribing to the
notion that the main function of language should
be the successful communication of information-bearing messages (as in the
writing system), and there is plenty of evidence that from this point of view
variation and change can indeed be dysfunctional. But there is also plenty of
evidence that the successful communication of information-bearing messages is
not the only function (or necessarily the main function) of language in use. To
clarify the argument, I shall now consider some examples of communication
difficulties that arise from language diversity.
Malfunctions
of Language Diversity
Cross-dialectal
miscomprehension was one of the interests that led to the setting-up of the
Belfast research programme. We were interested in the first place in how
commonly differential linguistic structures could lead to miscomprehension, and
more specifically whether “non-standard” speakers actually have the easy access
to standard English that is so often assumed. This has further theoretical
implications –especially for the idea of the “polylectal” or “pan-lectal”
grammar of English, which was a current interest in the 1970s. within the
projects, we collected many examples of cross-dialectal divergence and
miscomprehension, of which the following is an example. Speaker A is a speaker
of a Hiberno-English dialect, and B and C are “standard” speakers:
(1) A How long are
yous here?
B Oh, we’re staying till next week.
(Silence of about 2 seconds)
C We’ve been here since Tuesday.
A Ah well, yous are here a while then
The
miscomprehension here is indicated by the period of silence after B’s reply,
and it arises from the class between different linguistic systems. In certain
constructions Hiberno-English dialects consistently use the present tense where standard English
uses the present perfect. Thus, “How
long are yous here?” (In HibE) means How
long have you been going here? Whereas in SE (Standard English) the present
tense form means (or at least implies) How
long are you going to stay here? Or What
is the total length of your stay? Speaker B construes the HibE utterance
according to the SE rules. An “appropriate” response, however (one which would
be immediately perceived as relevant to
the question in this conversation), would in HibE refer to the past (for
example, “since Tuesday”) and not to the future. While it is true that
breakdowns occur for many reasons other than this, there is no doubt that
breakdowns arising from the different structures of divergent dialects are
quite common (see also Berdan, 1977; Trudgill, 1981), and that they are
naturally perceived as inconvenient when they are noticed.
Sometimes,
however, there is no period of silence or hesitation, as in (1), and the
conversation proceeds apparently normally, even though there actually has been
a misunderstanding. The hearer continue to believe that the first speaker has
said something quite different from what was intended, or the hearer may wait
for the miscommunication to be “repaired”, or it may simply not seem to matter
very much at the time. But we do have attested cases where the miscomprehension
could be quite serious. In some Hiberno-English (and Scottish) dialects, the
conjunction whenever is used almost
equivalent to when. Thus, if someone
says “whenever my husband came in he beat me”, we know from observing Ulster
usage that the reference is to one occasion only the speaker is not suggesting that her husband beat her
every time that he came in. an
outsider, however, is likely to interpret this to mean that the husband beat
her many times. Consider also the following example:
(2) A Do you think
he’s going to die?
B I doubt so
B, who is a
speaker of Hiberno-English, does not mean that he believes that the person will
not die; his meaning is the opposite.
He is saying that he is afraid that the person will die (the utterance means approximately “I’m afraid so”). In
this case, I was Speaker A, and the usage was known to me as widely distributed
one in Scots and Irish dialects. If the interlocutors do not have access to the
two different systems, however, there will be a miscomprehension. Thus, if a
newscaster says “Mr. Major doubts that the economy will deteriorate”, speakers
of these dialects may interpret this to means that he is afraid the economy will deteriorate, when the speaker
actually means that he thinks that it won’t
deteriorate.
These cases of
breakdown arise from deep-lying differences in the syntactic structures of the
different dialects, which make the pandialectal grammar (Bailey, 1973) of
English a dubious proposition. The semantic distinctions carried in the
Hiberno-English tense/aspect system are structured totally different from
Standard English (Harris, 1984; J. Milroy and L. Milroy, 1985a); thus, the
miscommunication in example (1) is due to major differences in the abstract
rule-systems of these dialects. Furthermore, all those involved in the
miscommunications reported above are native speakers of English, but it appears
that their “native speaker intuitions” (or competences) do not extend to the
rules of all relevant varieties. These examples also show, therefore, that our
native speaker competence does not necessarily guarantee comprehension of
varieties that are removed from us in time, space or social space. To put it
simply –we do not have total comprehension of dialects divergent from our own.
The assumption
that speakers of a language are (or should be) mutually comprehensible is
rather basic in popular attitudes to language, and it also seems to underlie
some professional linguistic approaches (for example, Smith and Wilson, 1981).
Clearly, if there can be miscomprehensions arising from structural differences
in the dimensions of spatial and social variation, it is likely that in the
chronological dimension of change there will also be miscomprehensions. A
change entering the language of a younger generation, for example, may well be
miscomprehended by older generation speakers. However, the idea that mutual
comprehensibility between generations is a constraint
on possible changes is quite deep-rooted amongst historical linguists (see
Lightfoot, 1979: 376, for a justification), and is often taken for granted. But
it is dangerous to assume this too lightly: we cannot demonstrate that mutual
comprehensibility between generations (or between groups of other kinds) is
always a necessary factor in determining
which linguistic changes are possible and which are impossible, and
sociolinguistic investigations (from which most of the data reported in this
book are derived) strongly suggest that it is not always primary. It may be
that some innovative groups do not particularly wish to be comprehensible to
others, or that rapid social change (for example, in the genesis of
Pidgin/Creole languages) overrides the principle of mutual comprehensibility.
The constraint proposed by Lightfoot is, it seems, a variant of the idea that
heterogeneity is necessarily dysfunctional, and that mutual intelligibility is
functional. It seems to me, however, that the question we should be asking is
why linguistic changes that lead to miscomprehension (and divergence into
mutually incomprehensible varieties) can happen at all. What is the motivation
for such changes, and what is their function?
The examples
discussed above concern variations in language structure that lead to
comprehension difficulties, but they have also raised, in a much more general
way, the question of what actually happens in conversational exchanges between
speakers. In section 2.4, I shall be concerned with this latter point: I shall
attempt to show that is the multiple speaker-functions of language in use that
make linguistic change possible and suggest that we must look at these
speaker-functions if we are to make progress in understanding the nature of the
language change. This implies a modeling of the locus of linguistic change that
differs from system-based models of the kind that we have discussed. The
language-internal pressuppotions of these models have been projected on to the
mental capacities of human beings, and linguistic change has thus been seen as
consisting primarily of changes in the mental representations of the speaker in
the form of rule-addition, rule-loss, and other rule-changes. But as we cannot
directly observe mental representations (whether they are described as rules or
in some other way, for example, as parameter-settings), suggestions of this
kind are somewhat more speculative than matters that can be verified by
observing speaking-interaction. In order to propose a more socially realistic
account of change, therefore, Labov has argued that the locus of change is not
in the individual speaker, but in the group, or at least that we have to look
for it in group behaviour. What is implied here is more specific than that: it
is that linguistic change is located in speaker-interaction and it is negotiated between speakers in the course of interaction,
much as other aspects of discourse are negotiated between them. Bearing in mind
this speaker/system distinction, therefore, I shall introduce the discussion of
speaker-function in section 2.4 by first considering the way in which
functional change has been handled in system-based historical linguistics.
The
System-oriented Approach to Function
The
system-oriented (as opposed to speaker-oriented) approach to functional change
originates with Martinet (1955) whose arguments depend on the information-bearing
function of the language and the presume need to preserve mutual
intelligibility. I have commented briefly on this chapter 1. Martinet proposes
that in phonetic/phonological change a phonetic opposition that is useful in
maintaining meaning-bearing distinctions will, other things being equal, resist
neutralization and loss of distinctiveness. Thus, for example, if the speakers
of English had found it useful in communicating information to maintain the
EModE phonetic distinction between words of the meet, beet class of words of the meat, beat class, they would, according to the theory, have been
inclined to maintain it. The fact that they did not (in some dialects) requires
a functional explanation, which in effect proposes that the distinction between
the two phoneme classes was no longer useful in maintaining meaning-bearing
distinctions, and this is generally argued in terms of functional load (see specially Samuels, 1972). It is suggested that
one of the two categories had low functional load in distinguishing between
words in ordinary usage; for example, the words in that class might not have
been used very often, and when they were used, they were perhaps used in
contexts where confusion with the other class was unlikely to occur (thus, as meet is a verb, whereas meat is a noun, it is unlikely that you
will misunderstand I meet him as * I meat him).
This type of
functional argument can also been used to explain exceptions to “regular”
changes. For example, the idea of homonymic
clash may be used to explain what certain items in early English did not
undergo regular development: if they had, they would have become phonetically
identical with other forms. Lass (1980) cites the item shut, which if it had developed regularly would have become identical
with shit: according to the theory
this was prevented by the functional need to keep the items distinct. However,
it is easy to find counter-examples, where the need to prevent homonymy did not
operate: for example, homonymy of rush
(‘hasten’) with rush (a plant) has
not been prevented. In some circumstances quite dramatic loss of distinctions
can take place, and there are examples in the literature of wholesale merger of
previously distinct classes of items: Labov, Yaeger and Steiner (1972) cite the
reduction of five distinct vowel phonemes of ancient Greek to one (/i/) in modern Greek. Because of
apparent counter-examples like these, Lass (1980: 75-80) points out that these
functional arguments as applied to given cases are unsatisfactory. Social dialectologists
are in little doubt that speakers will happily tolerate a great deal of
phonemic merger, allophonic overlap and approximation, and homonymic clash.
None of this,
however, detracts from Martinet’s original insight, which recognizes the
importance of speaker-function –in this case the information-bearing function:
the apparent circularity in arguing about given instances is probably very
largely due to the limitations of the historical database (which is incomplete
and deprived of situational context), and to some reluctance to investigate
what happens in load can be more fully tested. Historical linguists know that
language is used to convey information, but they cannot specify very easily
what additional social and pragmatic functions might have been involved in
particular changes (which after all took place long ago in circumstances that
we cannot fully investigate). Yet, although the information-bearing function is
the one that comes most easily to mind, it is only one of the functions of language in use: other functions interact
with it. Thus, in historical change, the need for mutual intelligibility over
distances and the maintenance of meaning-bearing distinctions can be overridden
by these other functions –by the identity function, for example –This is
suggested by the cross-dialectal miscomprehensions discussed above, by the
pattern of multiple merger in Greek cited by Labov, Yaeger and Steiner (1972),
and by many other instances.
In this
connection, it is useful to recall the metaphor that I appealed to in chapter 1
–the idea that in viewing language as a system où tout se tient we are
implicitly comparing it to a machine. The function of a machine is known
beforehand: the function of an internal combustion engine is to propel a
vehicle, and if it does not succeed in propelling the vehicle, we know that it
has malfunctioned. If we believe that we know beforehand that the principal
function of a language in use is to communicate decontextualized
information-bearing messages explicitly and unambiguously, then –pursuing the
system-based metaphor –we shall have to view communicative breakdowns as
malfunctions. Of course, in given situations, they may be perceived in this
way, and if we put the argument on a more abstract and general plane, we shall
then have to conclude that language change and variation are in general
dysfunctional. But if this is so, why then do human languages vary and change?
We can draw
only one conclusion, which is that variation and change must also be functional
for speakers of languages: if this were not so, languages would be uniform and
they would not change. Indeed, there is a case for claiming that if linguistic
change were impossible, speakers could not function adequately in speech
communities. But the functions of language in speech communities are multiple
and are not limited to the information-bearing function. In social dialectology
we attempt to explore the question of function by observing and analyzing the
language of ordinary speakers in conversational contexts. To return to the
machine metaphor: we can take for granted the function of a machine, but we
cannot take for granted the functions of language. Thus, as we do not know
beforehand what all the functions of language in the speech community might be,
we have to find out what they are and how they interact with one another by
exploring the speech community. This is by far the single strongest
justification for research in social dialectology of the kind that we and
others have carried out.
Speaker
Functions in Discourse and Conversation
What I intend
to do here is to tackle the question of discourse functions in an introductory
way, without venturing too far into the enormous literature on discourse and
conversational analysis. We can start by noticing some of the binary
distinctions between types of
discourse that have been suggested. Ochs (1979) proposes that discourse can be
divided into two broad types: planned
and unplanned. Brown’s (1982)
distinction between message-oriented
and listener-oriented speech is based
explicitly on the functions of
discourse in social settings. Message-oriented speech is characterized by
explicitness and independence of situational context or shared knowledge
between participants. According to Brown (p. 77), message-oriented speech is
“goal-directed. It matters… that the listener understands… and that he
understands… correctly. The point of the utterance is… communication of a
propositional or cognitive (information-bearing) message to the listener.”
Listener-oriented speech, on the other hand, is characterized by inexplicitness
and vagueness, with primary attention to the feelings and attitudes of
conversational partners. As Brown comments:” it is often the case that speakers
in primarily listener-oriented dialogue don’t seem to be talking about anything
very much… we may judge it to be successful if the participants succeed in
maintaining friendly relationships.”
Historical
linguistic views of language function tend to assume without comment that the function of language is something
like the message-oriented function –which is often described as communicative –and not like the
listener-oriented function (in which the meanings conveyed are social or
context-depended); they assume that communication between speakers is, or ought
to be, explicit and context-independent in the interests of conveying cognitive
propositions efficiently from speaker A to speaker B, in a context where the
aim is to convey new information to someone who does not already know it. Let
us consider, however, what this would actually mean in terms of the use of
language in social contexts.
Clearly, it
would allow the written medium, as the function of writing is to communicate
messages outside the immediate interpersonal context, and, to be effective, it
must be explicit. It would also allow certain kinds of speech event, such as
reports or lectures, for much the same reasons. In conversational exchange,
however, such a view of language use would account for only those parts of
conversations in which “new” and explicit information is given and received;
for example, the information that is passed in question-answer adjacency pairs
of the kind.:
(3) A Where were
you on the night of 15 August?
B I was
looking after Mother at the motel
Such exchanges
are, however, especially characteristic of, and frequent in, formal settings,
such as classrooms, courtrooms and interviews of various kinds (including some
sociolinguistic ones) and may indeed be required in such settings: they are not
especially characteristic of conversation. The conversations that we collected
and analyzed in the inner-city Belfast projects (L. Milroy and J. Milroy,
1977), for example, could not have been adequately described in these terms.
Speakers in most conversational contexts are not solely (or even mainly)
concerned with passing decontextualized new information to one another, and the
casual conversations that sociolinguists record are not mainly made up of
question-answer adjacency pairs or elicitation-response sequences. On the
contrary, much of our discourse is unplanned
and listener-oriented, in which
speakers “don’t seem to be talking about anything very much” and in which the
primary goal seems to be maintenance of “friendly relationships” (Brown, 1982:
77). It can be assumed, therefore, that speakers in casual social contexts are
not usually concerned with avoiding homonymic clash or with being especially
clear and explicit: they are satisfied if the conversation progresses
successfully, and the success of the conversation is judged in social terms. If
misunderstandings occur because of homonymic clash or for any other reason,
they can be repaired if necessary: speakers appear to accept the results of
vagueness and ambiguity on the assumption that “intended” meanings will be
clarified if necessary as the
conversation proceeds.
Underlying the
distinction between discourse functions there is another more general
distinction. This is the stark contrast between what is desirable in the
written medium (or context-independent speech- styles such as lectures) and
what is desirable in, and characteristic of, speech-exchanges in social
settings. It is very clear that much of the historical linguistic tradition has
been based on assumptions derived from the functions of writing, rather than
speech. However, such features as redundancy, vagueness and ambiguity, which
are disfavoured in writing, are wholly characteristic of everyday speech.
Furthermore, many of the features that are positively dysfunctional in
context-independent language are actually functional and necessary in the
conduct of successful conversation: lack of explicitness, hesitation,
ambiguity, incompleteness and repetition are themselves very important aspects
of how conversation is organized.
This has been
clearly demonstrated by conversational analysts such as Schegloff (1979). Far
from being random and disorganized, ambiguity and the other characteristics we
have mentioned are systematic strategies of conversational interaction. They
are used for monitoring the reactions of conversational partners and for
clarifying and repairing the mistakes or misunderstandings that might have
occurred in the interaction. In fact, one of the most important aspects of
conversation is the very high value that is placed on indirectness: this is in obvious contrast to message-oriented
styles, in which directness is valued and indirectness disvalued. Direct
imperatives (demanding actions), for example, and direct interrogatives
(demanding relevant responses, as in (3)) are quite rare in conversation. This
is because exchanges in speech are social and personal: the high value placed
on indirectness is a result of the speakers’ concern for their own “face” and
that of their partners (Brown and Levison, 1987): they are often much more
concerned with being polite, that is, avoiding threats to “face”, than with
passing information efficiently and economically. In spoken contexts, the
directness that is so highly valued in information-bearing styles is perceived
as threatening.
These remarks
may be sufficient here to draw our attention to some of the functions of
language in use apart from the message-oriented function, and they have some
consequences for our ideas about how linguistic changes are implemented.
Theories based exclusively on the message-oriented function of language must
plainly be insufficient: it seems very unlikely that linguistic changes over
time could have been implemented mainly in this function, that is, in formal
styles such as lectures, or in formal settings such as courtrooms or
classrooms, especially since this function values stability and resist change;
for the most part, changes have been initiated in countless millions of casual
(mainly unplanned, listener-oriented and context-dependent) encounters between
speakers. It is in these casual exchanges (and not primarily in formal
settings) that the sociolinguist looks for the evidence of change in progress.
It is the use of speech in these context-tied situations that actually allows
linguistic change to be negotiated between speakers, and we need to emphasize
this here, because linguistic innovations
plainly belong to the class of phenomena that may be miscomprehended in
context.
If we can
accept that is characteristic of conversation that some utterances will be
miscomprehended, we can also presumably accept that is the principles of
conversational organization that permit repair
of such miscomprehensions. Clearly, it is possible that in the course of a
conversation innovations may be introduced, and, as they may be unfamiliar to
some participants, they may be miscomprehended; however, as we have seen, the
principles of conversation allow for clarification of these miscomprehensions.
For this reason, and for other contextual reasons, the principles of
conversation permit linguistic changes to be negotiated between speakers and
thus admitted into the language system: it is the conversational context that
provides the conditions for change to be accommodated. Decontextualized
discourse, on the other hand, does not in principle cater for these misunderstandings:
it therefore resists ambiguity and vagueness, and in the present perspective it
is hardly surprising that in its written forms especially it has also been
observed to resist structural change.
Speaker-Functions:
Marking Social Roles
The discussion
so far has focused on the functions of discourse in conversational settings,
and I shall continue to refer to these pragmatic aspects of language from time
to time. However, there is another relevant aspect which is largely independent
of the idea of discourse types, and which has been prominent in social
dialectology since Labov’s (1966) New York City study. This proposes that
variation within the structural parts of language (such as phonological and
morphological variation) is used by speakers to mark varying social roles.
Social meanings –in the words of Blom and Gumperz (1972) –are carried in
linguistic structures. Style-shifting and code-switching (switching from one
language or dialect to another) are socially functional: they are related to changes
in the situational contexts of speech events, to the social characteristics of
the participants, and to the varying purposes of exchanges in speech.
Furthermore, speakers normally attach great importance to this kind of
variation and assign strong social values to what are essentially arbitrary
differences. To exemplify this kind of function, I shall now briefly consider
the question of style-shifting (which functions in essentially the same way as
code-switching)
The fact that
style-shifting is functional is rather neatly demonstrated in cases where the
expected variation is, apparently, absent. We have discussed such a case in
some detail elsewhere (J. Milroy and L. Milroy, 1985a: 123-5), and this example
is a useful demonstration of Weinreich, Labov and Herzog’s (1968) point –that
the absence of variation is dysfunctional. According to Lavandera (1978),
members of the Argentinian Italian community, who are bilingual speakers of
Italian and the cocoliche dialect of
Spanish, are perceived by monolinguals as deficient in their Spanish. However,
there is actually nothing deficient about the structure of their Spanish (as
Lavandera shows): what is lacking is the stylistic
variation, sensitive to occasion of use (and other factors), that monolinguals
observe. There is a lack of stylistic variability, not a deficiency in command
of the “core” structure of the language. The perceived absence of variation in
this case demonstrates, of course, that stylistic variation is –for the
monolinguals –functional; that is why we notice it. For cocoliche speakers, on the other hand, it is their bilingualism
that is functional: their communicative competence is exhibited in their
command of two languages, rather than in observing the stylistic variation
inherent in one of them.
But it is also
clear that speakers may have very strong feelings about particular regional or
social dialects, even though in linguistic terms the differences between
dialects are arbitrary. One of the first things I noticed in my early
descriptions of Belfast vernacular was the strong “stigma” associated with
certain non-standard pronunciations. In a dynamic account of the phonology (J.
Milroy, 1976a), I found it most convenient to think in terms of the avoidance
of stigma rather than convergence towards a higher-class or standard form, but
it was not clear why some non-standard forms were avoided and others favoured.
Amongst younger inner-city speakers, it was clear that stigma was attached to
certain forms of rural origin (such as palatalized /k/ and dental /t/), but not
to the others (the raising of /a/ before velars showed no recessive
tendencies). Thus, it seems that communities can disfavour pronunciations that
were formerly favoured; and despite the fact that sound-segments do not carry
meaning in the ususal sense, this phenomenon seems to have something in common
with the operation of taboo, which is so well attested in the vocabulary. It is
also associated with the “face” and politeness.
These brief
discussions of social dialect, style-shifting and conversational functions are
sufficient, I think, to indicate that there is more to language in use than the
communication of decontextualized information of a purely cognitive kind. It
now seems appropriate to summarize the main points, as I have not been trying
to argue merely that language in use has multiple functions –this is a view
that will be readily accepted by any sociolinguist. I have been concerned with
the limitations of what I have called system-based historical linguistics. By
this I mean virtually any approach to historical linguistics (traditional or
current) that is centred entirely, or almost entirely, on the properties of
language as an abstract object, and that excludes the systematically observed
behaviour of speakers of languages. These language-internal approaches have
made immense progress in producing sophisticated “grammars” and models of
linguistic change, but they have not come very close to the actuation problem
and the causes of change. Furthermore, as we have noticed above, when
speaker-roles are referred to in system-based arguments, they tend to be
referred to in a rather ad hoc and
unsystematic way, usually on the assumption that the message-oriented function
of the discourse is the one that matters. We therefore need a theory of the
embedding of language change in society, but we do not so far have a social theory
of this kind that can rival the sophistication of system-based linguistic
theory. Yet, it seems that we cannot develop such a theory if we remain wholly
within the constraints of orthodox historical linguistics. In section 2.7,
therefore, I shall conclude this chapter by commenting on a state of affairs
that underlies some of the matters raised in this introduction, that is, the
limited nature of the database of
historical linguistics. By discussing this we can focus on the methodological
interface between historical and social linguistics and go in later chapters to
suggest what we involved in a socially-based theory of language change.
Limitations of
Historical Inquiry
It is obvious
that data preserved from the past are likely to be more limited in certain ways
than data collected at the present day. Here we notice two major limitations.
The first is that past states of language are attested in writing, rather than
in speech. This has many consequences, of which the most general ones depend on
the fact that written language tends to be message-oriented and is deprived of
the social and situational contexts in which speech events occur. This is
relevant, of course, to our discussion of function, above, and to other matters
that will arise in later chapters: for example, interpreting written texts as
evidence for pronunciation.
The second
limitation is that historical data have been accidentally preserved and are therefore
not equally representative of all aspects of the language of past states. Thus,
whereas research into present-day states proceeds in a controlled way by
collecting and analyzing data for the specific purpose of drawing
generalizations about language and about specified aspects of language, the
researcher into past states must use materials which were not in the first
place collected for this purpose. Some styles and varieties may therefore be
over-represented in the data, while others are under-represented. For some
periods of time there may be a great deal of surviving information: for other
periods there may be very little or none at all. It is reasonable to say that
the database of historical linguistics, as compared with that of
sociolinguistics, is impoverished.
To the extent that historical linguistics is
subject to these limitations, it is what Diaconis (1985) has called an
“uncomfortable” science. In this respect it is similar to some aspects of other
sciences such as geophysics, macro-economics or astronomy, in which the
scientist has relatively little control over the database. The astronomer, for
example, does not have experimental control over the visits of Halley’s Comet:
thus, just as the astronomer does not have control over space, so the
historical linguist does not have control over time; to be more specific,
historical linguistics does not have experimental
control of its database, and so it cannot always isolate the variables that may
be involved in an explanation. It is quite appropriate here to mention the
analogy of the blind men and the elephant, which has so often been mentioned
before, or to use metaphors of the “tip-of-the-iceberg” type, because it is
very much a matter of proceeding from a base of very limited knowledge. Thus,
whereas social dialectology can plausibly claim to be some to some extent an
experimental science (because it is possible to control some variables in the
frame of the investigation), historical linguistics cannot. Sometimes the data
may be so impoverished that decisions cannot be made as to what is the best
description amongst a set of possible descriptions, or what is the best
explanation amongst a set of possible explanations. The result is that
interpretations of the surviving evidence are often strongly dependent of
current theoretical assumptions (which may of course be dubious) and, more
widely, on current ideological positions (which are even more dubious). Many
examples of this difficulty can be cited: here I shall refer one briefly to a
rather general one.
One example of
a difficult area for the historical investigator is the chronology of
sound-changes in the history of a language: this can often be uncertain and
controversial. As a result of the limitations we have noticed, and the
imposition of certain theoretical orthodoxies on what is or is not possible in
sound-change, there has been a strong tendency in historical descriptions to
assign a date to a sound-change at what seems to be a time of its completion,
and (until recently) for relatively little interest to be shown in the earlier
stages of change. Indeed, sometimes it seems as if change in a whole phoneme
class is believed to have taken place all at once with simultaneous actuation
and completion –perhaps overnight at some date in the earlier seventeenth
century. However, if we are to understand the nature of change, we want to
known as much as possible about its actuation, implementation and diffusion;
therefore, we want to explore the early stages if possible (I shall discuss
this further in later chapters). But the limitations of historical databases
often make this difficult. Because of these limitations, therefore, it seems
that our understanding of the nature of linguistic change will ultimately
depend not mainly on historical data, but (recalling Principle 1) on our
ability to observe it systematically at the present day in social contexts of
use, because that is where we can most readily locate change in progress in a
specifiable social context.
This in turn
makes it possible to project backwards. By using the insights we are able to
derive from the much richer data of present-day researches we should be able to
understand more fully what happened in the history of the language, and I shall
return to this in later chapters. However, the main point here is that in order
to observe in a detailed way the contexts in which linguistic change takes
place we need to focus on present-day data. Accordingly, in the following
chapters, my aim is to build up a theoretical approach to the social origins of
linguistic change by focusing on present-day data. In chapters 3 and 4, we
focus on analyzing and interpreting patterns of variation in the speech
community.