Change in language styles

The linguistic situation reflects the social situation. This is not nec­essarily static. Any change in the social relationships is likely to be mirrored in changing language styles. An example of a change of this type occurred in the gradual meaning change in the two forms of the pronouns you in European languages.

Originally, in Latin, there was a singular form tu and a plural form vos. For some reason (the cause is disputed), the plural came to be used as a polite form of address for speaking to a single person in authority. One theory is that when there were two Roman emperors -one in Constantinople, the other in the west in Rome - it became cus­tomary to address each of them as vos, since both emperors were implicitly being addressed at the same time. This began a general trend for using vos to anyone in authority. It gradually became cus

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tomary for a working-class person to address a member of the aristoc­racy as vos, while the upper classes still used tu to a lower-class individ­ual. Meanwhile, as a mark of respect, the aristocracy began to address one another as vos, although the lower classes continued to address one another as tu. This situation is shown in Figure 48. This linguistic situa­tion reflected the social situation. There existed a feudal society in which the power of one class over another was all-important.

	To upper class	To lower class
Upper class	vos	tu
Lower class.	vos	tu

Fig. 48

However, as feudalism died out, so did this structuring of tu and vos. Gradually (according to one theory), people ceased to feel such respect for those in power, and instead, they merely felt remote from them. Vos (it is claimed) came to be imt so much a mark of respect, as one of non-intimacy. Tu came to be thought of as indicating intimacy, companionship and solidarity: People involved in friendships or close relationships started to call one another tu irrespective of the power situation. And this is the state of affairs today in the numerous European languages which have two forms of the word you.

The 'power' to 'solidarity' switch is possibly only one of several fac­tors involved in the change from vos to tu, and some have disputed its importance. However, a similar phenomenon seems to be occurring in other parts of the world also: in India, in the Hindi and Gujarati lan­guages, there was formerly a power pattern shown in the non-recipro­cal nature of the forms of address between husband and wife, and older and younger brother. Nowadays this is dying out. Reciprocal relations are gradually becoming more important than the power of one person over another, and members of Indian families are begin­ning to address one another with the intimate you forms.

Charting phonological variation

Speakers vary not only their vocabulary and syntax, but also the sound structure. Phonological variation, both between speakers and

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within a single speaker, is immensely important as a reflection of vari­ous social factors. Speakers of a language alter their phonology to suit a particular situation, often without realizing it. For example, someone from Devon is likely to pronounce the [r] in a word such as farm when chatting with friends at home, but would probably attempt to suppress it in a formal interview in London. In this case, the speaker may well be aware of the change in pronunciation. On the other hand, few speakers of standard British English realize that in informal situations they often omit the [t] at the end of words such as last in phrases such as last thing.

At one time, it was thought that such variation was fairly random, and that no precise statements could be made about it. But an American sociolinguist, William Labov, showed that this was not so. In a piece of work which has now become famous he examined the pronunciation of words such as car, park in New York. New Yorkers sometimes pronounce an [r] in these words, and sometimes do not. Although Labov was unable to tell which words were likely to be pro­nounced with [r], and which without, he found that he could predict the percentage of (r] sounds which each socio-economic class and each age group would use in any given type of speech.

Labov started his work on [r] in a highly amusing way. First, he found out which departments were on the fourth floor in three New York department stores. He then asked as many shop assistants as possible a question such as 'Excuse me, where are children's coats?'The answer to each of these queries was, of course, 'On the fourth floor', which included two words that could each contain an [r]. It is well-known that sales-staff tend to mimic the speech of their customers, and, as Labov predicted, he found that in the store that was considered socially inferior, the number of [r] sounds was low, under 20%. In the middle-ranking store, [r] was inserted about 50% of the time, and in the store considered socially supe­rior, [r] was used over 60% of the time. These preliminary results dearly showed that the use of |r] in New York was a useful guide to social status.

After this preliminary survey, Labov then examined the speech of each class of person in more detail. Perhaps predictably, he found that [r] was inserted much more frequently in careful speech and in the reading of word lists than in casual speech. This was true of all social classes. There was, however, one unexpected finding. When reading word lists, lower-middle-class speakers inserted [r] more often than upper-middle-class speakers - even though in casual speech, the situ­ation was reversed, with lower-middle-class speech containing fewer [r] sounds. This suggests that lower-middle-class speakers are more consciously aware of speech as an indicator of social class, and are making efforts to improve their status.

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