Book contents
- Social Meaning and Linguistic Variation
- Social Meaning and Linguistic Variation
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- 1 Social Meaning and Linguistic Variation: Theoretical Foundations
- Part I Where Is (Social) Meaning?
- 2 Social Meaning and Sound Change
- 3 The Social Meaning of Syntax
- 4 The Social Meaning of Semantic Properties
- 5 Pragmatics and the Third Wave: The Social Meaning of Definites
- 6 The Cognitive Structure behind Indexicality: Correlations in Tasks Linking /s/ Variation and Masculinity
- Part II The Structure of Social Meaning
- Part III Meaning and Linguistic Change
- Index
- References
3 - The Social Meaning of Syntax
from Part I - Where Is (Social) Meaning?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 July 2021
By
Book contents
- Social Meaning and Linguistic Variation
- Social Meaning and Linguistic Variation
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- 1 Social Meaning and Linguistic Variation: Theoretical Foundations
- Part I Where Is (Social) Meaning?
- 2 Social Meaning and Sound Change
- 3 The Social Meaning of Syntax
- 4 The Social Meaning of Semantic Properties
- 5 Pragmatics and the Third Wave: The Social Meaning of Definites
- 6 The Cognitive Structure behind Indexicality: Correlations in Tasks Linking /s/ Variation and Masculinity
- Part II The Structure of Social Meaning
- Part III Meaning and Linguistic Change
- Index
- References
Summary
The study of syntactic variation has lagged behind the study of phonological variation in sociolinguistics, despite early claims that ‘[t]he extension of probabilistic considerations from phonology to syntax is not a conceptually difficult jump’ (Sankoff 1973: 58).1 Documented challenges to the study of syntactic variation include the increased difficulty in circumscribing a linguistic variable when dealing with levels of the grammar above phonology (Tagliamonte 2012: 206–7), and problems of convincingly quantifying syntactic variables which occur less frequently than phonological variables (Rickford et al. 1995: 106). Added to this, it has been argued that syntactic variables are less subject to social evaluation than phonological variables (Labov 1993, 2001: 28; Levon & Buchstaller 2015) and, even when they are, they tend to have ‘quite fixed social meanings associated with external facts like class and particularly education’ (Eckert 2018: 190).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Social Meaning and Linguistic VariationTheorizing the Third Wave, pp. 54 - 79Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021
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