Contents
1. Introduction
2. A change of paradigm
3. The
relationship between synchronic and diachronic
3.1.
Synchronic versus diachronic
3.2.
Diachronic versus synchronic
4. Internal and external variation
5. Change
in apparent time and change in real time
5.1
Change in apparent time
5.2
Change in real time versus change in apparent time
5.3
Change in real time
5.3.1 Reviewing the past
5.3.2.
Repeating the past and returning to the scene
5.3.2.1
Replica studies
5.3.2.2
"Sampling studies"
6.
The relationship between linguistic change in apparent time and change in real
time
7.
Research prospects for language variation and change in Catalan in real time
8. Bibliography
1. Introduction
The notions of
apparent time and real time are not specific to the more recent studies on
sociolinguistic variation and of change in progress. In fact, they have been present in
the linguistics literature since the early days of the structuralists (Bloomfield 1933,
Hockett 1950) and especially since the restructuring known as the Change of Paradigm:
Weinreich (1953); Herzog, Labov and Weinreich (1968). For Hockett (1950), for example,
differential distribution of use of a given variable across different age groups might not
represent any change in the variety of a particular speech community, and instead might
represent a pattern typical of age grading, repeated generation after generation.
In fact,
sociolinguistic research into variation has shown that many sociolinguistic variables
exhibit this graded behaviour, whereby adolescents and young people in a given speech
community will employ, if they are observed, stigmatised forms with much more
unselfconscious freedom than for example middle aged speakers. However, the question to be
addressed here is, whether we can simply note the distribution of linguistic variables in
different age groups, from young to old, in a given community, observing them at the same
instant or the same synchronic point of time thus collecting data in apparent
time and then on that basis alone deduce that there is a linguistic change in
progress in the speech community.
This article
sets out to develop theorectical and methodological aspects that surround the treatment of
notions of apparent time and real time in studies of sociolinguistic
variation. However, before beginning that exercise, it is essential that we situate this
treatment within the framework of the Change of Linguistic Paradigm in which it becomes
meaningful to specify a bi-directional relationship between synchronic and diachronic
aspects, and internal and external variation.
2.
A change of paradigm
If we had to
place the change of linguistic paradigm we have just mentioned from the point of view of
the history of linguistics, the most relevant reference points that would allow us to take
account of this change would be found in various articles which I see as fundamental, as
laying the foundations: Weinreich, Labov, and Herzog (1968) "Empi rical foundations
for a theory of language change", in W. Lehmann and Y. Malkiel (eds.), Directions
in Historical Linguistics I, Hymes (1970). "Introduction", Language in
Society, no. 1; Labov (1975) "What is a linguistic fact?"; and Labov
(1981) "Building on empirical foundations", in W. Lehmann and Y. Malkiel, Directions
in Historical Linguistics, II.
Let us be
clear that this new movement had as its aim to look anew at the relationship between
language and speech, but not to ignore or supplant the work in linguistics that had come
before. Instead it set out to give support to the results of such previous work and to
develop it further. The justification for this epistemological proposal, which began to
take shape at the end of the sixties, necessarily arose out of the realisation that the
intuitions of native speakers of a language the basis for linguistic descriptions
carried out between 1925 and 1975 and even later, and the intuitive data arising from
them were found to be increasingly limited and erroneous. This especially when it
came to giving support to the theoretical constructs of linguists of that time.
According to
Labov (1975), all linguists of the time (the nineteen seventies) were interested in the
empirical foundations of linguistics and considered linguistics to be an empirical
science, even though some of these same linguists, the heirs of the purest rationalism,
were intent on differentiating themselves from it. In other words, all took linguistic
phenomena as their point of departure: some took them as items that had to be explained by
their theories and others as means of explaining theories that had already been
formulated.
Naturally, the
methods used differ greatly: the structralists based their work on unknown languages and
on intuitions and conclusions, or introspective generalisations not their own but
those of others, that is to say, of the speakers of these languages. Generativists on the
other hand took themselves as informants and proposed generalisations based on the
generalisations drawn from other languages; lastly, the American dialectologists
structured this introspective evidence on the basis of their own personal dialect.
In point of
fact, at this juncture in the development of lingüistic thought, the operative modus
operandi and the raison d'être of linguistics, could be summarised as the attempt to
resolve the apparent contradicton that some linguistic differences apparently do not make
any difference, and therefore, constitute free variation. This attempt arose out of
certain postulates from the Structuralists that led to the search for invariance
("some sentences are the same" (Bloomfield 1933)) and from Phonology, based on
the recognition of variance, such that "no two sentences are the same".
Thus, the
issue of the signifié, which subsequently was to generate so much literature
(Lavandera 1981; Romaine 1981) in sociolinguistic variation, emerged as a crucial
consideration in the arguments of the linguists in the sixties and seventies. In this
respect, it was argued that the linguistic signifié of a variable is not the
equivalent of any signifié from the point of view of its social meaning or
emphasis. No one had yet shown that the difference in formality between specific variants
was a difference of meaning in the linguistic sense.
Accordingly,
following the analysis by Labov (1975) of the linguistic research scene of those years,
this consensus of concept and method among the linguists of the time, regarding the notion
that linguistic phenomena are invariant (in the sense that there is an equivalence among
variants) made it possible to optimise the Saussurian paradox. This in turn made it
possible to study the social aspects of language, (langue), using the intuitions of
one or two individuals in the context of a homogenous speech community. To be sure, this
approach made it possible to collect linguistic data from a great variety of languages. In
fact, interest in the search for general principles of language or universals came into
being thanks to this approach.
On the other
hand, as Labov also points out, if each linguistic fact were to be examined by means of
representative samples, with an established research design for the observation and
linguistic description, it would never go beyond the simplest of structures of the most
known and described languages. Or, to put it another way, it seems that this general
agreement on method and lack of interest in empirical the basis resulted from the simple
uniformity of the phenomena studied by many linguists in those days
Additionally,
given the prevailing logic of that time, it was almost as if linguists set out to solve
problems caused by disagreements by going out of their way to avoid obscure or unclear
cases and concentrating on the clear cases: the invariant phenomena or facts, which fitted
into the categorical view of language. The latter included discrete, invariant categories
that were common to the whole speech community. It was against this background that
Bloomfields disciples gradually developed the notion of idiolect, in order to
exclude variable phenomena, and established a reduction of the scope of analysis to one
informant, one topic, over a short period of time. Moreover, for many years the
Generativists ignored the problems posed by variation, and excluded from their analysis
any data that might be in competition with their "dialect", because they
considered variation as an interference with the consensus alluded to above.
Nonetheless,
what emerges most clearly is that resorting to the study of the idiolect, in order to
avoid the contradictions that might derive from competing data, has even more serious
consequences and that is that each scholar of the general structure of the language might
end up with a different set of linguistic phenomena and facts, which would constitute an
implicit attack on the Saussurian notion of langue as a general property of the
speech community and on Chomskys principle of constructing a theory of the language
based on "clear phenomena".
According to
Labov, studies carried out based on the analysis of introspective generalisations
demonstrate that linguistic variation is extensive, uncontrollable and
"chaotic", and therefore, given that this is demonstrably so, it would seem a)
that there should be a sweeping rejection of linguists generalisations when
paradoxically what linguistics sets out to do is generalise, and b) that
"idiolectal" dialects would have to be rejected for their instability, while the
results that derive from another type of evidence the study of dialects with a
social and geographical basis were going in the opposite direction of the research
into idiolects. All this indicates that the members of a speech community have access to
the same set of norms of interpretation even though they may not use certain forms.
Perhaps the
conceptual and epistemological concept that will allow us to best capture the change of
paradigm that began to be discerned around the end of the sixties and beginning of the
seventies is the question of the theoretical (and thus methodological) focus which emerged
as a result. The dominant thinking implied on the one hand, that the proposed linguistic
model should correspond point by with each element of the structure, and, on the other,
that the rules formulated should make it possible to relate parts of the model among
themselves and with the empirical phenomena under consideration.
The focus
inherent in the New Paradigm, as established in one of its founding articles, What is a
linguistic fact? (Labov 1975), situated itself nearer the evolutionary sciences such
as geology and biology than to logic or information science. And it was structured around
the following points:
a)
Communities are selected that exhibit progressive change, observations are made of a
representative sample and inferences are drawn on what is happening to the community as a
whole.
b)
Other communities are selected that seem suited to confirming or otherwise the general
conclusions or inferences already made.
c)
The result of this expansion of our knowledge will be a small number of generalisations,
or principles, which it seems reasonable to suppose are true. This set of related
principles would logically deserve the name of theory. The fundamental value of such a
theory is, above all, to serve to establish the most important aspects of linguistics.
d)
Later it would become possible to deduce what patterns of linguistic change other.
communities might be undergoing. Such deductions are actually strategies for finding
contexts for an evaluation and refinement of such principles.
e)
The global or overall objective here is to proceed from that which is known to that which
is not known, increasing the pool of knowledge by means of observation and experimentation
in an accumulative way.
f) It
was hoped that these linguistic generalisations or principles would form a series of
interrelations in such a way that they could be combined in more simple and more general
formulations. These simplifications are often called synchronic and diachronic
explanations.
It is
important to note that these formulations, which were produced (in the words of Labov) as
a desideratum in 1975, have been exhaustively described in two works by
Labov published recently: one on internal factors, Principles of Linguistic Change.
Internal Factors (1994) and another on internal/external factors (Principles of
Linguistic Change. Social Factors (2001). Now a third is about to see the light, on
cognitive factors. These exhaustive works review the research on internal linguistic
variation, internal / external sociolinguistic variation, and linguistic change over the
last 30 years, and will certainly lay the foundations for the historiography of
linguistics for the twenty-first century, despite the more exclusive attitudes of some
schools which do not look beyond their own models. As Peter Trudgill, the editor of the
Blackwell series that publishes these works, stated (1994), "the study of the
language of real people, based on the speech used over the course of their lives may
perhaps not be the only way, and certainly not the easiest way, of doing linguistics, but
it is the most essential and the most gratifying". |