geography, gender and age. Language markers can be emblematic for dozens
of different kinds of social allegiances. National origin, socioeconomic
class, ethnicity, occupation, religion, occupation, kinship: all these things
and many more might be signaled linguistically. To add to this complexity,
topic and setting put their own demands on variation.
This is what sociolinguists do: they look at active, socially structured
variation to try to understand the process of language change. How it is
initiated, how it moves, what it means. We try to identify universals in the
power and solidarity structures which are relevant to language communities
of all types, from inner city neighborhoods to remote Indonesian villages.
And that is where sociolinguistics usually stops. Once we have understood,
for example, the social correlates of caught/cot variation in Buffalo – the
way changes in transportation and communication have effected diffusion
of this change over generations – the job is done. We rarely ask why these
facts are the way they are; traditionally, anthropological linguists pick up at
this point.
We know who stigmatizes and avoids r-lessness in Manhattan and the
South; we know who clings to it despite stigmatization, but we do not
understand what the process itself is. Fairclough points this out as an
unfortunate omission, and outlines questions he thinks should follow:
How – in terms of the development of social relationships to power –
was the existing sociolinguistic order brought into being? How is it
sustained? And how might it be changed to the advantage of those who
are dominated by it?
(Fairclough 1989 [2001]: 7–8)Sociolinguists have demonstrated beyond a doubt that variation is an
intrinsic and functional feature of the spoken language. So then, what do
people really mean when they talk about nonstandard or substandard or