research for computer lesson- Labovs New York research

Labov's research in the New York Department store 1966 found that ‘individuals speech patterns were part of a highly systematic structure of social and stylistic stratification'. He studied how the letter ‘R’ was pronounced a word with the variable of the place the letting ‘R’ sits on the word. 

• New York is seen as a prestigious city when it come to their language, so it can be measured accurately and as the letter is used often in words is easier to collect a large amount of data quickly.

He knew that the new York accent didn’t have to letter ‘r’ featuring in their language and it was only nearer to the 1960’s that it had been reintroduced.

He had three different locations in his study, these were; 

• saks fifth avenue (expensive upper class shop) 
• Macy’s (less expensive middle- class store) 
• S. Klein (a discount store used by working class people)
•  in all three of these stores he analysed the language of the employees.

In order to collect the data he needed he aimed questions at them which would allow him to hear the letter ‘R’ four times.

•  He asked the questions- Where can I find the lamps? Which he knew the answer would be ‘fourth floor and the second question being 
• ‘excuse me?’ so the answer was repeated more carefully so he can hear how they say it more clearly.

From his findings he found that for the New York citizens the strength of their ‘R’ sounds depended on their social class- the letter was more common in the speech of in people with higher social class.
This differs to the RP language as it is set in New York therefore it is hard to generalise his findings to English speaking people as the accents are very different. Also language in the 60’s may have changed dramatically to what it is like now, we have adapted our language to fit in with people, because of this the English accent may have changed to be more like the New York accent as it often features on TV and on films that are broadcasted in the UK. 

Bibliography; http://www.ello.uos.de/field.php/Sociolinguistics/Exemplarystudylabov

http://www.putlearningfirst.com/language/research/labovny.html