Jan Tillery

The apparent time construct

The use of apparent time differences to study language change in progress has been a basic analytical construct in quantitative sociolinguistics for over 30 years. The basic assumption underlying the construct is that, unless there is evidence to the contrary, differences among generations of similar adults mirror actual diachronic developments in a language: the speech of each generation is assumed to reflect the language more or less as it existed at the time when that generation learned the language. In providing a mirror of real time change, apparent time forms the basis of a conceptual framework for exploring language change in progress. However, the basic assumptions that underlie apparent time have never been fully tested. This article tests those assumptions by comparing apparent time data from two recent random sample telephone surveys of Texas speech with real time data from the Linguistic Atlas of the Gulf States, which was conducted some 15 years before the telephone surveys. The real time differences between the linguistic atlas data and the data from the telephone surveys provide strong support for the apparent time construct. Whenever apparent time data in the telephone surveys clearly suggest change in progress, the atlas data show substantially fewer innovative forms. Whenever the apparent time data suggest stable variation, the atlas data are virtually identical to that from the more recent surveys. Whenever the relationships between real and apparent time data are unclear, sorting out mitigating factors, such as nativity and subregional residence, clarifies and confirms the relationships. The results of our test of the apparent time construct suggest that it is unquestionably a valid and useful analytical tool.

Some patterns of linguistic diffusion

Although variationists have explored the diffusion of linguistic changes from one social group to another and from one linguistic environment to another in some detail, they have done much less work on the spatial diffusion of changes. In fact, Trudgills (1974, 1975) use of Hagerstrands gravity model to explain in hierarchical diffusion of innovations in East Anglia and Norway was the only systematic account of spatial diffusion in the literature. This article uses data from the random sample telephone survey portion of a Survey of Oklahoma Dialects (SOD) to explore the spatial diffusion of linguistic innovations in Oklahoma. It analyzes that data using a variety of techniques of computer cartography and the General Linear Models procedure in SAS. The data clearly show that, whereas some linguistic innovations diffuse hierarchically (as linguists have long contended), others diffuse contrahierarchically, while still others diffuse in complex patterns that show characteristics of both contagious and hierarchical diffusion. An analysis of the barriers to and amplifiers of diffusion suggests that these different types of diffusion are a consequence of the different social meanings that linguistic forms carry.

SOME EFFECTS OF TRANSCRIBERS ON DATA IN DIALECTOLOGY

The transcription of speech into a graphic code is a basic procedure in both dialectology and sociolinguistics, and typically, it is this graphic analog of speech that forms the data for analysis in both disciplines. The act of transcription, however, affects linguistic data in subtle, difficult-to-detect ways. This paper demonstrates some of those effects by examining impressionistic phonetic data in American linguistic atlases. The paper identifies three sources of transcriber effects in the data: (1) conceptual differences regarding the phonetic status of particular sounds (e.g., offglides of diphthongs) and how they should be transcribed, (2) normative differences regarding the phonetic values of particular symbols, and (3) changing scribal practices as transcribers discover the importance of phonetic details that they had previously overlooked. When transcriber effects such as these are not identified and accounted for in the analysis of the data, they can create misleading results

Demographic change and American dialectology in the twenty-first century

Dramatic demographic changes are rapidly reshaping the population of the United States in ways that make the research questions that motivated twentieth-century dialectology outmoded. This paper outlines some of the most important demographic changes currently affecting the United States and suggests some research questions that are implicit in those developments. While twentieth-century dialectology was driven by questions regarding the sociospatial structure of the Founder Dialects and their relationships to settlement history and British regional varieties, twenty-first-century dialectology must examine the linguistic consequences of newly emerging demographic divisions, the consequences of widespread urbanization, and the relationships between Anglo dialects and a rapidly growing non-Anglo population. These questions require some fundamental changes in how we do dialectology, but they also position the discipline in a way that will enable it to address fundamental social and educational issues that stand at the center of the intellectual life of the twenty-first century.