Variation in style
-
Aria Adli
Abstract
This study presents a sociolinguistic analysis of two linguistic variables of French, subject doubling and subject-verb inversion in wh-questions. First, factor and cluster analyses led to a grouping of the sample into four distinct lifestyle types. Then, statistical tests show that lifestyle, gender, and age are significant external factors, and that lifestyle exhibits the most salient effect. While the lifestyle associated with orthodoxy correlates with a high inversion rate (formal linguistic style) and low doubling rate (informal linguistic style), the group associated with heterodoxy demonstrates the inverse pattern. It stands to reason that sociolinguistic studies can uncover more patterns of variation if they go beyond the standard sociodemographic variables (such as age, gender, etc.) and a ‘narrow’ concept of class.
Abstract
This study presents a sociolinguistic analysis of two linguistic variables of French, subject doubling and subject-verb inversion in wh-questions. First, factor and cluster analyses led to a grouping of the sample into four distinct lifestyle types. Then, statistical tests show that lifestyle, gender, and age are significant external factors, and that lifestyle exhibits the most salient effect. While the lifestyle associated with orthodoxy correlates with a high inversion rate (formal linguistic style) and low doubling rate (informal linguistic style), the group associated with heterodoxy demonstrates the inverse pattern. It stands to reason that sociolinguistic studies can uncover more patterns of variation if they go beyond the standard sociodemographic variables (such as age, gender, etc.) and a ‘narrow’ concept of class.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Introduction vii
-
Plenaries
- Analytic and synthetic 3
- A case for clustering speakers and linguistic variables 23
- Dynamics, variation and the brain 47
-
Individual chapters
- Aggregate analysis of lexical variation in Galician 71
- Inter-individual variation among young children growing up in a bidialectal community 85
- The unruly dialect variant [a] 99
- Vowel raising and vowel deletion as sociolinguistic variables in Northern Greek 113
- Between local and standard varieties 125
- Syntactic doubling and variation 141
- Variation in style 157
- A corpus-based study of concessive conjunctions in three L1-varieties of English 173
- Variation in the structure of conjunctions in Luxembourgish German in the 19th century 185
- Geolinguistic documentation of multilingual areas 199
- Variation in Croatian 215
- Index 233
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Introduction vii
-
Plenaries
- Analytic and synthetic 3
- A case for clustering speakers and linguistic variables 23
- Dynamics, variation and the brain 47
-
Individual chapters
- Aggregate analysis of lexical variation in Galician 71
- Inter-individual variation among young children growing up in a bidialectal community 85
- The unruly dialect variant [a] 99
- Vowel raising and vowel deletion as sociolinguistic variables in Northern Greek 113
- Between local and standard varieties 125
- Syntactic doubling and variation 141
- Variation in style 157
- A corpus-based study of concessive conjunctions in three L1-varieties of English 173
- Variation in the structure of conjunctions in Luxembourgish German in the 19th century 185
- Geolinguistic documentation of multilingual areas 199
- Variation in Croatian 215
- Index 233
