William Labov

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William Labov (born December 4, 1927 in Rutherford , New Jersey ) is an American linguist who primarily researches language change and language variation .

life and work

Labov is a student of the linguist and Yiddish researcher Uriel Weinreich , who dealt intensively with language change in dialectological variation and language contact. In the 1960s, Labov laid the foundation for empirical research into linguistic changes. His study area are the dialects of Philadelphia and New York . His studies are mainly related to sociolinguistics . William Labov was Professor of Linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania until his retirement in 2015 .

William Labov was born in Rutherford, New Jersey , a small town outside of New York in 1927 . In 1939 he moved to Fort Lee , where he first noticed that people pronounce the same words differently. At that time Labov was watching the film " Pygmalion ", in which the main character wrote down every sound that his opponent uttered. The main role of Henry Higgins was modeled on Henry Sweet , the great English phonologist who was admired by Labov. From him he took some knowledge of the principles of changing the language and converted it into a more modern version. After college, Labov first worked for some time in a company, where he used the knowledge he had acquired in chemistry about chemistry.

When he left industry in 1961, he went back to university to do research on the English language.

In 1963, Labov explored the language on the tiny island of Martha's Vineyard near Cape Cod . There Labov noticed a special pronunciation of the words " right ", " ice " and " sight " in which the vowel is pronounced in the middle of the mouth. This abnormality was more pronounced in young people; it varied from person to person, depending on what profession they were doing, where they lived on the island and what migration background they had. For example, there was a difference between the descendants of Native Americans and Portuguese.

In his department store study carried out in 1966 , he showed the connection between social and linguistic character in the New York department store environment.

In 1968, Labov started a survey project to find out whether the dialect spoken among African-American youth in Harlem had anything to do with deficiencies in teaching reading in schools. Along with his white and African American counterparts, Labov began a detailed study of all social groups in Harlem by observing these groups. The result showed that there were large differences between African American and white speech patterns. Labov wrote a book about this that defended the native language of African American people as perfectly suitable for logical thinking and reading.

Labov was also able to use his projects and surveys as evidence in court, because in 1987 there were several phone calls with bomb threats at the Los Angeles airport . A man named Paul Prinzivalli was accused of making these threats because his voice was identified. The defendant's defense lawyers sent the recordings to Labov because he was supposed to distinguish two different types of New York dialect. Labov decided relatively quickly that there was no way the defendant was the caller. Labov also used all of his previous research and work, including the project on Martha's Vineyard, for the defense letter for Prinzivalli. In the end, the defendant was acquitted because, in the opinion of the court, Labov had provided objective and strong evidence.

Labov has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1976 and a member of the National Academy of Sciences since 1993 . He was awarded the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Cognitive Science for 2013.

Works (in selection)

  • What is a Linguistic Fact? Peter de Ridder Press, Lisse 1975, ISBN 90-316-0075-X .
  • Language in a social context. Description and explanation of the structural and social meaning of language variation , edited by Norbert Dittmar and Bert-Olaf Rieck. Volume 1: Scriptor, Kronberg / Taunus 1976, ISBN 3-589-20022-7 ; Volume 2, 1978, ISBN 3-589-20576-8 .
  • Principles of Linguistic Change. Volume 1: Internal Factors. Blackwell, Oxfort UK & Cambridge USA 1994, ISBN 0-631-17913-5 .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Labov, William
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American linguist
DATE OF BIRTH 4th December 1927
PLACE OF BIRTH Rutherford, New Jersey