Questions: Introduction to Sociolinguistics

Question 1

Labov's department store study found that the pronunciation of post-vocalic /r/ varied across store employees. What best explains this pattern?

• A. Employees in different stores had different regional origins.
• B. Pronunciation varied randomly with no systematic pattern.
• C. Pronunciation correlated with the social prestige of each store, reflecting social stratification.
• D. Employees were consciously imitating the speech of customers.

Answer: (C)

Labov found that use of post-vocalic /r/ increased with the prestige level of the store (Saks > Macy's > S. Klein), demonstrating that phonological variation is socially structured rather than random. This is the foundational insight of variationist sociolinguistics.

Question 2

A dialect spoken primarily by working-class speakers in one city is linguistically inferior to the national standard dialect because it has fewer grammatical rules.

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: False

All natural dialects are rule-governed and equally complex as linguistic systems. The perception that non-standard dialects are 'less correct' reflects social hierarchies — the prestige of speakers — not any linguistic deficiency. This is one of the most important corrections sociolinguistics makes to popular understanding.

Question 3

What is style-shifting, and why does it demonstrate that speakers have linguistic competence beyond a single fixed dialect?

Model answer: Style-shifting is the practice of adjusting one's language — vocabulary, phonology, grammar, formality — depending on audience, setting, or social context. It shows that speakers command a range of linguistic registers and deploy them strategically, demonstrating that sociolinguistic behavior is dynamic and audience-sensitive, not a fixed property of a speaker.

If language use were simply a marker of social group membership, speakers would use the same variety in all contexts. Instead, the same speaker talks differently in a job interview than with close friends. This code-switching and style-shifting reveals active, socially aware linguistic agency.