Language and Class: A Glossary of Sociolinguistics by Trudgill

In order to study the oldest version of language of a country, scientists typically use a NORM to determine what exactly this variant is for a specific location. The NORM is a non-mobile, older, male from the countryside, or a rural area, to fit the acronym. However, the language variants of the NORMs all over a country are definitely not the standard. Great differences in speech can seen in opposing social classes, age groups, living areas and sexes, whereas the Joe Average is just a middle class, city dwelling male and not the answer to all linguistic questions.

Firstly, the older inhabitants of a country are the ones who use the most traditional forms of language. This is what Labov dealt with mostly, as he believed the present could be used to explain the past. “Older people’s use of the language feature represents the typical useof that feature in the community when they themselves were young” (Wagner, 2012, p. 372), in contrast to how it is used by the average adult in the present. This is a phenomenon called the “apparent time construct”, which handles the fact that the elderly stop keeping up with modern language after a certain age. Labov concluded this by determining the spread of the vocalised /r/ in New York City in the 1960s, when he realised the young people were starting to use this phoneme whereas the elderly did not pick up on this change. To a great extent, this is reflective, since the elderly do not seem to do this consciously.

Even though the elderly are the voices of the past, the youngsters of a country are the ones shaping a new language by standing up against the traditional ways, therefore also those of speech. In the example mentioned before, the younger people of New York City were the ones who basicall...

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.../ William Labov. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Retrieved April 27, 2014.

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Wagner, S. E. (2012). Age Grading in Sociolinguistic Theory. Language and Linguistics Compass, 6(6), 371-382. Retrieved April 27, 2014, from the Academia.edu database.

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