We dedicated the session of the 2nd of November to learn about some of the most important linguists from structuralism to the latest ones. William Labov was the linguist chosen and exposed by "Eeni meeny miny".
This linguist based his research on the study of regional and class differences on english pronunciation, demonstrating that there are different linguistic variations that reveal regular patterns between language forms like pronunciation of a particular vowel, and social categories, such as socioeconomic classes.
His two main studies were: the first of them the study of pronunciation of diphthongs [ay] and [aw] on Martha's vineyard islands on which he found that 30 to 60 years old people and up islanders tend to centralize more. And the second one was based on social stratification in the city of New York.
Principles of linguistic change (1994) book is one of his main contributions to linguistics and he is considered the founder of the variationist sociolinguistics.
It has been really interesting to deepen in the work of this sociolinguist and he has also had a quite surprising story on how he got interested into linguistics, being that he originally started his profesional career as an industrial chemist.
If you want to know a bit more about his story you can click here.
If you would like to visit our prezi presentation with the main ideas about labov's life, studies and career you can click here.
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