Principles Of Linguistic Change Volume Two: Social Factors

This volume presents the long-anticipated results of several decades of inquiry into the social origins and social motivation of linguistic change.

• Written by one of the founders of modern sociolinguistics
• Features the first complete report on the Philadelphia project designed to establish the social location of the leaders of linguistic change
• Includes chapters on social class, neighborhood, ethnicity, gender, and social networks that delineate the leaders of linguistic change as women of the upper working class with a high density of interaction within their neighborhoods and a high proportion of weak ties outside of it

The author is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the co-editor of Language Variation and Change and is author of Sociolinguistic Patterns (1972), Language in the Inner City (1972), and Principles of Linguistic Change, Volume 1: Internal Factors (Blackwell, 1994).

Foreword.

Notational Conventions.

Part I: The Speech Community.

1. The Darwinian Paradox.

2. The Study of Linguistic Change and Variation in Philadelphia.

3. Stable Sociolinguistic Variables.

4. The Philadelphia Vowel System.

Part II: Social Class, Gender, Neighborhood, and Ethnicity.

5. Location of the Leaders in the Socioeconomic Hierarchy.

6. Subjective Dimensions of Change in Progress.

7. Neighborhood and Ethnicity.

8. The Gender Paradox.

9. The Intersection of Gender, Age, and Social Class.

Part III: The Leaders of Linguistic Change.

10. Social Networks.

11. Resolving the Gender Paradox.

12. Portraits of the Leaders.

Part IV: Transmission, Incrementation, and Continuation.

13. Transmission.

14. Incrementation.

15. Continuation.

16. Conclusion.

References.

Index.