William Labov
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William David Labov ( ; December4, 1927December17, 2024) was an American linguist widely regarded as the founder of the discipline of variationist
sociolinguistics Sociolinguistics is the descriptive, scientific study of how language is shaped by, and used differently within, any given society. The field largely looks at how a language changes between distinct social groups, as well as how it varies unde ...
. He has been described as "an enormously original and influential figure who has created much of the methodology" of sociolinguistics, and "one of the most influential linguists of the 20th and 21st centuries". Labov was a professor in the
linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...
department of the
University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. One of nine colonial colleges, it was chartered in 1755 through the efforts of f ...
in
Philadelphia Philadelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania, most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the List of United States cities by population, sixth-most populous city in the Unit ...
and pursued research in sociolinguistics, language change, and
dialectology Dialectology (from Ancient Greek, Greek , ''dialektos'', "talk, dialect"; and , ''-logy, -logia'') is the scientific study of dialects: subsets of languages. Though in the 19th century a branch of historical linguistics, dialectology is often now c ...
. He retired in 2015 but continued to publish research until his death in 2024.


Early life and education

Labov was born in
Passaic, New Jersey Passaic ( or ) is a City (New Jersey), city in Passaic County, New Jersey, Passaic County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. As of the 2020 United States census, the city was List of municipalities in New Jersey, the state's 16th-most-populous ...
, and raised in Rutherford, moving to Fort Lee at age 12. According to Labov, the physician who delivered him was William Carlos Williams. He attended
Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...
, where he majored in English and philosophy and studied chemistry. He graduated from Harvard in 1948.


Career

After graduating from Harvard, Labov worked as an industrial chemist in his family's business (1949–61) before turning to linguistics. For his MA thesis (1963) he completed a study of change in the dialect of
Martha's Vineyard Martha's Vineyard, often simply called the Vineyard, is an island in the U.S. state of Massachusetts, lying just south of Cape Cod. It is known for being a popular, affluent summer colony, and includes the smaller peninsula Chappaquiddick Isla ...
, which he presented before the Linguistic Society of America. Labov took his PhD (1964) at
Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...
, studying under Uriel Weinreich. He was an
assistant professor Assistant professor is an academic rank just below the rank of an associate professor used in universities or colleges, mainly in the United States, Canada, Japan, and South Korea. Overview This position is generally taken after earning a doct ...
of linguistics at Columbia (1964–70) before becoming an
associate professor Associate professor is an academic title with two principal meanings: in the North American system and that of the ''Commonwealth system''. In the ''North American system'', used in the United States and many other countries, it is a position ...
at the
University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. One of nine colonial colleges, it was chartered in 1755 through the efforts of f ...
in 1971, then a
full professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a 'person who professes'. Professors ...
, and in 1976 becoming director of the university's Linguistics Laboratory.


Linguistic research

The methods Labov used to collect data for his study of the varieties of English spoken in
New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...
, published as ''The Social Stratification of English in New York City'' (1966), have been influential in social dialectology. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, his studies of the linguistic features of
African American Vernacular English African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) is the variety of English natively spoken, particularly in urban communities, by most working- and middle-class African Americans and some Black Canadians. Having its own unique grammatical, voca ...
(AAVE) were also influential: he argued that AAVE should not be stigmatized as substandard, but rather respected as a variety of English with its own grammatical rules. He also pursued research in referential indeterminacy and is noted for his studies of the way ordinary people structure narrative stories of their own lives. Several of his classes were service-based, with students going to West Philadelphia to help tutor young children while simultaneously learning linguistics from different dialects such as AAVE. Later, Labov studied ongoing changes in the phonology of English as spoken in the U.S., as well as the origins and patterns of
chain shift In historical linguistics, a chain shift is a set of sound changes in which the change in pronunciation of one speech sound (typically, a phoneme) is linked to, and presumably causes, a change in pronunciation of other sounds. The sounds invo ...
s of vowels (one sound replacing a second, replacing a third, in a complete chain). In the ''Atlas of North American English'' (2006), he and his co-authors find three major divergent chain shifts taking place today: a Southern Shift (in
Appalachia Appalachia ( ) is a geographic region located in the Appalachian Mountains#Regions, central and southern sections of the Appalachian Mountains in the east of North America. In the north, its boundaries stretch from the western Catskill Mountai ...
and southern coastal regions); a
Northern Cities Vowel Shift Inland Northern (American) English, also known in American linguistics as the Inland North or Great Lakes dialect, is an American English dialect spoken primarily by White Americans throughout much of the U.S. Great Lakes region. The most di ...
affecting a region from
Madison, Wisconsin Madison is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the U.S. state of Wisconsin. It is the List of municipalities in Wisconsin by population, second-most populous city in the state, with a population of 269,840 at the 2020 Uni ...
, east to
Utica, New York Utica () is the county seat of Oneida County, New York, United States. The tenth-most populous city in New York, its population was 65,283 in the 2020 census. It is located on the Mohawk River in the Mohawk Valley at the foot of the Adiro ...
; and a Canadian Shift affecting most of Canada, in addition to several minor chain shifts in smaller regions. Among Labov's well-known students are Charles Boberg, Anne H. Charity Hudley,
Penelope Eckert Penelope "Penny" Eckert (born 1942) is Albert Ray Lang Professor Emerita of Linguistics at Stanford University. She specializes in variationist sociolinguistics and is the author of several scholarly works on language and gender. She served as ...
, Gregory Guy, Robert A. Leonard, Geoffrey Nunberg, Shana Poplack, and John R. Rickford. His methods were adopted in England around 1972 by
Peter Trudgill Peter Trudgill, ( ; born 7 November 1943) is an English sociolinguist, academic and author. Biography Trudgill was born in Norwich, England, and grew up in the area of Thorpe St Andrew. He attended the City of Norwich School from 1955. T ...
for Norwich speech and K. M. Petyt for West Yorkshire speech. On a sabbatical in England shortly after, J. K. Chambers, reading Trudgill's tattered copy of ''Sociolinguistic Patterns'', left formal linguistics to become a sociolinguist. Labov's works include ''The Study of Nonstandard English'' (1969), ''Language in the Inner City: Studies in Black English Vernacular'' (1972), ''Sociolinguistic Patterns'' (1972), ''Principles of Linguistic Change'' (vol.I Internal Factors, 1994; vol.II Social Factors, 2001, vol.III Cognitive and Cultural factors, 2010), and, with Sharon Ash and Charles Boberg, '' The Atlas of North American English'' (2006). The
Franklin Institute The Franklin Institute is a science museum and a center of science education and research in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is named after the American scientist and wikt:statesman, statesman Benjamin Franklin. It houses the Benjamin Franklin ...
awarded Labov the 2013 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Computer and Cognitive Science, citing him for "establishing the cognitive basis of language variation and change through rigorous analysis of linguistic data, and for the study of non-standard dialects with significant social and cultural implications".


Language in use

In "Narrative Analysis: Oral Versions of Personal Experience", Labov and Joshua Waletzky take a sociolinguistic approach to examine how language works between people. This is significant because it contextualizes the study of structure and form, connecting purpose to method. His stated purpose is to "isolate the elements of narrative". This work focuses exclusively on oral narratives. Labov describes narrative as having two functions: referential and evaluative, with its ''referential'' functions orienting and grounding a story in its contextual world by referencing events in sequential order as they originally occurred,Labov, W., & Waletzky, J. (1997). "Narrative analysis: Oral versions of personal experience". p. 32. and its ''evaluative'' functions describing the storyteller's purpose in telling the story.Labov, W., & Waletzky, J. (1997). "Narrative analysis: Oral versions of personal experience". p. 41. Formally analyzing data from orally generated texts obtained via observed group interaction and interview (600 interviews were taken from several studies whose participants included ethnically diverse groups of children and adults from various backgrounds), Labov divides narrative into five or six sections: * ''Abstract'' – gives an overview of the story. * ''Orientation'' – Labov describes this as "referential ree clauses thatserve to orient the listener in respect to person, place, time, and behavioral situation". He specifies that these are contextual clues that precede the main story. * ''Complicating action'' – the main story, during which the narrative unfolds. A story may consist of multiple complication sections. * ''Evaluation'' – author evinces self-awareness, giving explicit or implicit purpose to the retelling of the story. Thus evaluation gives some indication of the significance the author attributes to their story. But evaluation can be done subtly: for instance, "lexical intensifiers re a type ofsemantically defined evaluation". * ''Resolution'' – occurs sequentially following the evaluation. The resolution may give the story a sense of completion. * ''Coda'' – returns listener to the present, drawing them back out of the world of the story into the world of the storytelling event. A coda is not essential to a narrative, and some narratives do not have one. While not every narrative includes all these elements, the purpose of this subdivision is to show that narratives have inherent structural order. Labov argues that narrative units must retell events in the order they were experienced because narrative is ''temporally sequenced''. In other words, events do not occur at random but are connected to one another; thus "the original semantic interpretation" depends on their original order. To demonstrate this sequence, he breaks a story down into its basic parts. He defines ''narrative clause'' as the "basic unit of narrative" around which everything else is built. Clauses can be distinguished from one another by ''temporal junctures'', which indicate a shift in time and separate narrative clauses. Temporal junctures mark temporal sequencing because clauses cannot be rearranged without disrupting their meaning. Labov and Waletzky's findings are important because they derived them from actual data rather than abstract theorization. Labov, Waletzky, &c., set up interviews and documented speech patterns in storytelling, keeping with the ethnographic tradition of tape-recording oral text so it can be referenced exactly. This inductive method creates a new system through which to understand story text.


Linguistic principles

One of Labov's contributions to theories of
language change Language change is the process of alteration in the features of a single language, or of languages in general, over time. It is studied in several subfields of linguistics: historical linguistics, sociolinguistics, and evolutionary linguistic ...
is his ''Golden Age Principle'' (or ''Golden Age Theory''). It claims that any changes in the sounds or the grammar that have come to conscious awareness in a
speech community A speech community is a group of people who share a set of linguistic norms and expectations regarding the use of language. The concept is mostly associated with sociolinguistics and anthropological linguistics. Exactly how to define ''speech ...
trigger a uniformly negative reaction.


Scholarly influence and criticism

Labov's seminal work has been referenced and critically examined by a number of scholars, mainly for its structural rigidity. Kristin Langellier explains that "the purpose of Labovian analysis is to relate the formal properties of the narrative to their functions": clause-level analysis of how text affects transmission of message. This model has several flaws, which Langellier points out: it examines textual structure to the exclusion of context and audience, which often act to shape the text; it is relevant to a specific demographic (may be difficult to extrapolate); and, by categorizing the text at a clausal level, it burdens analysis with theoretical distinctions that may not be illuminating in practice. Anna De Fina remarks that ithin Labov's model"the defining property of narrative is temporal sequence, since the order in which the events are presented in the narrative is expected to match the original events as they occurred", which differs from more contemporary notions of storytelling, in which a naturally time-conscious flow includes jumping forward and back in time as mandated by, for example, anxieties felt about futures and their interplay with subsequent decisions. De Fina and Langellier both note that, though wonderfully descriptive, Labov's model is nevertheless difficult to code, thus potentially limited in application/practice. De Fina also agrees with Langellier that Labov's model ignores the complex and often quite relevant subject of intertextuality in narrative. To an extent, Labov evinces awareness of these concerns, saying "it is clear that these conclusions are restricted to the speech communities that we have examined", and "the overall structure of the narratives we've examined is not uniform". In "Rethinking Ventriloquism", Diane Goldstein uses Labovian notions of tellability—internal coherence in narrative—to inform her concept of ''untellability''.


Personal life and death

Labov had five children from his first marriage to Teresa Gnasso Labov: Susannah Page, Sarah Labov, Simon Labov, Joanna Labov, and Jessie Labov. In 1993, he married fellow sociolinguist Gillian Sankoff, and they had two children: Rebecca Labov and sociologist Alice Goffman, the latter of whom Labov adopted after the death of Sankoff's previous husband,
Erving Goffman Erving Goffman (11 June 1922 – 19 November 1982) was a Canadian-born American sociologist, social psychologist, and writer, considered by some "the most influential American sociologist of the twentieth century". In 2007, '' The Time ...
. William Labov died at his home in Philadelphia on December 17, 2024, at the age of 97 from complications due to Parkinson's.


Honors

In 1968, Labov received the David H. Russell Award for Distinguished Research in Teaching English. He was a
Guggenheim Fellow Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, endowed by the late Simon and Olga Hirsh Guggenheim. These awards are bestowed upon individuals who have demonstrated d ...
in 1970–71 and 1987–88. Labov received honorary doctorates from, among others, the Faculty of Humanities at
Uppsala University Uppsala University (UU) () is a public university, public research university in Uppsala, Sweden. Founded in 1477, it is the List of universities in Sweden, oldest university in Sweden and the Nordic countries still in operation. Initially fou ...
(1985) and
University of Edinburgh The University of Edinburgh (, ; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a Public university, public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Founded by the City of Edinburgh Council, town council under th ...
(2005). In 1996, he won th
Leonard Bloomfield Book Award
from the Linguistic Society of America (LSA) for ''Principles of Linguistic Change, Vol. 1''; he won the Award again in 2008 as a coauthor of the ''Atlas of North American English''. In 2013, Labov received a Franklin Institute Award in Computer and Cognitive Science for "establishing the cognitive basis of language variation and change through rigorous analysis of linguistic data, and for the study of non-standard dialects with significant social and cultural implications." In 2013, Universitat Pompeu Fabra awarded Labov an honorary doctorate for "his brilliant teaching and research track record and for being one of the leading figures in the field of linguistics, founder of variationist and quantitative sociolinguistics". In 2015, he was awarded the Neil and Saras Smith Medal for Linguistics by the
British Academy The British Academy for the Promotion of Historical, Philosophical and Philological Studies is the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and the social sciences. It was established in 1902 and received its royal charter in the sa ...
"for lifetime achievement in the scholarly study of linguistics" and "his significant contribution to linguistics and the language sciences". In 2020, Labov was awarded the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (The Academy) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and other ...
' Talcott Parsons Prize, recognizing "distinguished and original contributions to the social sciences".


References


External links


William Labov's home page

''Journal of English Linguistics'' interview

NPR story "American Accent Undergoing Great Vowel Shift"

Sociolinguistics: an interview with William Labov
ReVEL, vol. 5, n. 9, 2007. {{DEFAULTSORT:Labov, William 1927 births 2024 deaths 20th-century American linguists 21st-century American Jews 21st-century American linguists Columbia University alumni Columbia University faculty Dialectologists Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellows of the Linguistic Society of America Fellows of the Cognitive Science Society Harvard College alumni Jewish American scientists Linguistic Society of America presidents Linguists of English Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences People from Rutherford, New Jersey Recipients of the Neil and Saras Smith Medal for Linguistics American sociolinguists University of Pennsylvania faculty The Benjamin Franklin Medal in Computer and Cognitive Science laureates