Introduction 3subconscious awareness of variation also lends itself well to experimental
work, both in production and perception.
In summary, we suggest that sociophonetics is the sub-branch of the
discipline that has attracted the greatest attention over the last few decades,
although the interest in phonetic factors in language variation studies is
long-standing. Recent advances in speech science and inexpensive computer
implementations of them allow increasingly sophisticated studies of the prog-
ress of language variation, contact, and change, and on-going studies of many
dramatic changes show that language variety is not only robust in the modern
age, a fact often denied by popular media pundits, but also socially embed-
ded in interesting ways. Even more recently, instrumental studies of language
variety, contact, and change have focused on the role of social categories and
attitudes in perception as well as production.
The studies presented here look at the role of social factors—age, sex, sta-
tus, ethnicity, network, and ideology—in the formation, progress, and deter-
rence of intra- and interlingual contact and change at the phonetic level; they
also look at the ways in which social identities and beliefs shape and inÀ uence
a listener’s ability to identify and even comprehend as well as socially evalu-
ate varieties.
The book is organized into three parts; the ¿ rst deals with the correlation
of variable phonetic facts and aspects of social identity and relationships, the
second with the perception of phonetic variables (including social facts about
speakers as well as perceivers), and the last with studies that combine ele-
ments of both production and perception.
Part I: Production
The ¿ rst part, on production, begins with a chapter on historical sociolinguis-
tics that explores one of the Labovian contributions mentioned previously—
the puzzle of near-mergers (e.g., Labov 1994). Faber, Di Paolo and Best explore
͑ઓ(Middle English long ͑), contending from internal evidence (following the
uniformitarian principle) and traditional dialect accounts that a path in which
it nearly merged with
̌ (Middle English long e), merged with
͑ (Middle
English lengthened short ͑), nearly merged with
ǎ (Middle English long
a, e.g., “name”) and/or
M(the Middle English diphthong, e.g., “day”), and
¿ nally merged with
̌ is the only reasonable story that can account for the
resulting modern standard (where “feed”—Middle English long e, “heap”—
Middle English long ͑, and “speak”—Middle English lengthened short ͑) as
well as the variety of attested dialect forms. As they put it, “Only in a theory