Language Change in Apparent and Real Time: The Community and the Individual

Abstract

Since William Labov's ( 1963) pioneering work on language variation and change in Martha's Vineyard and New York City in the 1960s, most variationist investigations of language change in progress have investigated change in apparent time---that is, in the speech of individuals of different generations at a given moment in time---rather than real time. This approach is based on the APPARENT TIME CONSTRUCT, which holds that, for the most part, the core features of an individual's vernacular language variety are solidified for life by the time they reach their late teens. The robustness of the apparent time construct has been borne out in a number of studies over the past four decades (e.g. Bailey 2002, Labov 1994). However, questions regarding its generalizability remain (e.g. Bailey 2002), and despite the difficulties of obtaining real time data, such data are a crucial supplement to apparent time data and in addition form the basis of continued research into how strongly we can rely on the apparent time construct in future studies. In the present study, I compare changes observed in apparent time data from the mid-1980s in Smith Island, MD, with real time data obtained in 1999-200 1. Both trend and panel methodologies were usedthat is, both new speakers and previous study participants were includedthus enabling us to examine both community-wide and individual language changes.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 11 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.