Labov 1963
Labov 1963
Labov 1963
;~ &.'
272
Word
RBVIBWS
WILLIAM L A B O V . - - - - - - - - - - - -
wi!h
Department of Linguistics
Columbia University
New York 27, New York
The work which is reported in the following pages concerns the direct
observation of a sound change in the context of the community life from
which it stems.t The change is a shift in the phonetic position of the first
elements of the diphthongs fail and /au/, and the community is the island of
Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. By studying the frequency and distribution of phonetic variants of /ail and /auf in the several regions, age
levels, occupational and ethnic groups within the island, it will be possible
to reconstruct the recent history of this sound change; by correlating the
complex linguistic pattern with parallel differences in social structure, it
will be possible to isolate the social factors which bear directly upon the
linguistic process. It is hoped that the results of this procedure will contribute to our general understanding of the mechanism of linguistic change.
The problem of explaining language change seems to resolve itself into
three separate problems: the origin oflinguistic variations; the spread and
propagation of linguistic changes; and the regularity of linguistic change.
The model which underlieS this three-way division requires as a starting
point a variation in one or several words in the speech of one or two
individuals. 2 These variations may be induced by the processes of assimilation or differentiation, _by analogy, borrowing, fusion, contamination,
random variation, or any . number .. of processes in which the language
system interactS with the physiological or psychological characteristics of
the individual. Most such.:yariations occur only once, and are extinguished
as quickly as they arise. Ho\Ve\rer, a rew recur, and, in a second stage,
they may be imitated more"j)r)ess. :~dely, and may spread to the point
1 An abbreviated version of the present paper was given at the 37th Annual Meeting
of the Linguistic Society of America in New York City on December 29, 1962.
2 See E. Sturtevant, An Introduction to Linguistic Science. New Haven: 1947. Ch. VIII:
"Why are Phonetic Laws Regular?'' The discussion by Martinet in his .-eport, "'Structural Variation in Language," Proceedings of the Ninth International Congress of
Llngubts, implies a similar model.
1-w
273
274
W1LL1AM LABOV
where the new forms are in contrast with the older forms along a wide
front. Finally, at some later stage, one or the other of the two forms
usually triumphs, and regularity is achieyed.
Whereas for the first stage, we are often overwhelmed with an excess of
possible explanations, we have quite the reverse situation in attempting to
account for the propagation and regularity of linguistic changes. A number
of earlier theories which proposed general psycholoSicai, physiological or
even climatic determinants, have been discarded for some time. 3 The contribution of internal, structural forces to the effective spread of linguistic
changes, as outlined by Martinet,4 must naturally be of primary concern
to any linguist who is investigating these processes of propagation and
regularization. However, an account of .structural pressures can hardly tell
the whole story. Not all changes are highly structured, and no change takes
place in a social vacuum. Even the most systematic ch~ shift occurs with
a specificity of time and place that demands an explanation.
Widely divergent ideas appear to exist as to what comprises an explanation of the mechanism of change. The usual diachronic procedure, as
followed in palaeontology or geology, is to explore the mechanism of
change between states by searching for data. on intermediate states. It
follows that we come closer and closer to an accurate depiction of the
mechanism of change as the interval between the two states we are studying
becomes smaller and smaller. This is certainly the method followed by such
historical linguists as Jespersen, Kokeritz and Wyld, and it is the motivation behind their extensive searches for historical detail. On the other hand,
viewpoint which favors the abstract manipulation of data from .v?dely
5
separated states has been propounded recently by M. Halle; expliC1t defense of a sixnilar attitude may be found in H. Pilch's study of the vowel
systems of Shakespeare, Noah Webster, and present-day Am~rica. 6 Neither
Halle nor Pilch distinguish the three aspects of change outlined above.
It would seem that the historical approach is more appropriate to an
empirical science concerned with chan~, even. over a.narrow ~me span, as
this approach leads to statements which are .1~creasmgly subJect t? confirmation or disconfirmation. At the same time, such a close VIeW of
3 A number of these theories are reviewed by Aif Sommerfelt, ..Sur Ia propagation de
275
~~or a parallel.criticism . or.~:()n.the data imposed by Bloomfieldian lingwstics, see W. D1ver's review _of:;~. P .:Lehmann's Historical Linguistics, Word XIX
(1963), 100-lOS.
. :. . . ' .
8 Op. cit., pp. 74-84. See'abo lfii~'s remarks in "Are There Universals of
Linguistic Cbange?" J. S. Green~~t.UniDersa/s of Language. Cambridge Mass.
1963. Footnote8: ..Sotuid cbaugC:SC8il:~il)rnot be entirely predicted from httemal:
systemic stresses and strains, nor. am they::t;eexplained as the effect of scatter around a
target or norm; they have directiOn and.Jue in that sense specific much like other
happenings in history."
. .. . ~ :. ~: :
'
9 For further details on the soci81
background of Martha's Vineyard
see my 1962 Columbia University Master's Essay, The Social History of a Sound Chang;
on the Island of Martha's VineyartJ. MIWIIChusetts, written under the direction of
Professor Uriel Weinreich.
and eC6JlOmic
WILLIAM LABOY
276
Linguistic Atlas of New England (henceforth abbreviated LANE) a.s a background for the present investigation. 1o It is just thirty years smce Guy
Lowman visited Martha's Vineyard; his interviews with four members of
the old families of the island give us a firm base from which to proceed,_ ~d
a time depth of one full generation which adds considerably to the solidity
of the conclusions which can be drawn.
Figure 1 shows the general outlines of Martha's Vineyard, and Table 1
gives the population figures from the 1960 Census.
1.
"..,.;,
~\
Down-island
FIGURE
The island is divided into two parts by an informal, but u~versall~ used
distinction between up-island and down-island. Down-island IS the region of
the three small towns where almost three-fourths of .the permanent ~pula
tion live. Up-island is strictly rural, with a few villages, farms, 1solated
summer homes, salt ponds and marshes, and a large central area of uninhabited pine barrens.
As we travel up-island from Vineyard Haven, we come fi~st to the town
of West Tisbury, which contains some of the most beautiful.farms and
fields of the island, now largely untilled and ungrazed. At Chi~ark, the
ground rises to a series of rolling hills which look out to the Atlantic on one
H. Kurath et al. Providence: 1941. Background information on the informants is
10
to be found in H. Kurath, Handbook of the Linguistic Geography of New England.
Providence: 1939.
Down-island (towns]
Edgartown
Oak Bluffs
vmeyard
Up-island [rural]
3,846
1,118
1,027
1,101
Haven
J, 717
Edgwrtown
256
Oak Bluffs
Tisbury
West Tisbury
Chilmark
GayHead
292
468
360
238
103
Total
277
...
5,563
side, and to Vineyard sound on the other. Chilmark's salt pond is permanently open to the Sound through a narrow channel, and so serves as a
permanent harbor for the dozen fishermen who still operate from the docks
of the village of Menemsha in Chilmark. Finally, at the southwest corner
of the island, there is the promontory of Gay Head, and the houses of the
hundred and three Indians who represent the original inhabitants of
Martha's Vineyard.
The six thousand native Vineyarders fall into four ethnic groups which
are essentially endogamous. First, there are the descendants of the old
families of English stock, who first settled the island in the 17th and 18th
centuries: the Mayhews, Nortons, Hancocks, Aliens, Til tons, Vincents,
Wests, Pooles-all closely related after ten generations of intermarriage.
Secondly, there is a large group of Portuguese descent, immigrants from
the Azores, Madeira and the Cape Verde Islands. There are Portuguese all
along the southeastern New England coast, but the Vineyard has the
largest percentage of any Massachusetts county. In 1960, 11% of the population was of first or second generation Portuguese origin; with the third
and fourth generation Portuguese, the total would probably come close to
20%. 12
The third ethnic group is the Indian remnant at Gay Head. The fourth is
the miscellaneous group of various origins: English, French Canadian,
Irish, Ge~n, Polish. Though .the sum total of this residual group is
11 From U.S. Bureau of the Census. U.S. Census of Population: 1960. Number of
Inhabitants. Massachusetts. Final Report PC(l}-23A. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1962. Table 7, page 23-11.
12 From U.S. Bureau of the Census, U.S. Census ofPopulation: 1960. General Social
and Economic Characteristics. Massachusetts. Final Report PC(l}-23c. Washington,
D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1962. Table 89, page 23-260.
i l .
l
t
't
1~
u
,j
I'
.i :
279
278
WILLIAM LABOY
at ~
d we will not consider it
altnost 15%, it is not a coherent sOCI lorce, an
f rther in this paper-13
1ar
u
hi h will not be considered directly
IS the very
ge
. Ano~~~ ~=!e~ r~idents, some 42,000, who flood the islan~ in J~e
numbe
Thi tide of summer people has had relatively little
and July of every year.
s
f th v
d although the constant
direct inftuence ~n t_he s~ec!n~ thee
dependence of the island
pressure from. this directionhas had powerful indirect effects upon the
upon a vacation economy, .
.
language c~ges which we Will conSider.
d . be t known to linguists as an important relic area of
Th~ Vineyaglir. ~~ sisland of r-pronouncers in a sea of r-lessness. With
hi
of continuous settlement, and a
Amencan En s . an
a three-hundred-and-twenty-year story d
the island has pre-
gr=
be
:t ... :d by three successive layers- e'i rv-Jp,
vening area, tt has en over.uu
lS
belly-flop and currently' no word at all.
'
retired mainlanders living on the Vmeyard as year-
dwm:
.:U
consonants.
A W. d G graph; of the Eastern United States. Ann Arbor: 1949.
0"
1s See H. Kurath,
eo
lexical item in other regions) has generallY
Fig. 162. Belly-flop (and the ~rres:=! a fiat dive into the water. Coasting is now a
shifted for the younger gde~~tion. ology is appropriately impoverished.
less important sport, an Its emun
here
. : ~.~~~~_:::~1~~::;}.~--. ~~;;:-)
this
i'
..
'
~.1
WILLIAM LABOY
280
used throughout this study to refer to the various forms of the diphthonp /8.1/ and /au/
with first elements higher than [a). It is not intended that the~ ~e_msetves should
imply any process or direction of change, except when used With explictt statements to
that effect.
281
The problem becomes all the more significant when it becomes apparent
that the present trend on Martha's Vineyard runs counter to the long-range
movement of these diphthongs over the past two hundred years. And
while this sound change is not likely to become a phonemic change in the
foreseeable future, it operates in an area where far-reaching phonemic
shifts have taken place in th~ past. It is, in effect, the unstable residue of
the Great Vowel Shift.
3. The history of centralized diphthongs
It_ seems generally ~greed that the first element of the diphthong /ai/ was
amtd-central vowel In 16th- and 17th-century English.t9 We may assume
that when Thomas Mayhew first took possession of his newly purchased
pro~rtr of M~~a's Vineyard in 1642, he brought with him the pro~unaati~n [~1] ~n nght, pride, wine and wife. The later history of this vowel
m Amenca IndicateS that (~U) COntinued to be the favored form well into
the 19th century.2o
When we exami~e th~ records of the LANE, we find that centralized faij
was a healthy sumvor m the speech of the Atlas informants.21 We find it
scattered throughout the rural areas of New England, and strongly entrenched in the Genese? Valley of western New York. It had disappeared
completely from the Midland, but was quite regular-before voiceless consonants-in both the Upper and Lower South. This differential effect of
voiceless and voiced following consonants was only a directing influenc~ in
the North, but stood as a regular phonetic rule in the South. On Martha's
Vineyard, as on neighboring Nantucket and Cape Cod, centralized /ai/ was
frequently recorded.
The. history of /au/ differs from that of fai/ more than our general expectations of symmetry would lead us to predict. There is reason to believe
that in England the lowering of /auf was considerably in advance of /ai/
and it is not likely that the same Thomas Mayhew used jauf in house and
19 See 0. Jespersen, A Modem.English Grammar on Historical Principles, 1, London:
1927, page 234, and ~ K~~tz, Shakespeare's Pronunciation, New Haven: 1953,
p. 216. Among recent hJstoncallinguists, H. C. Wyld is a notable exception in positing
a ~nt ~element in the transition of M.E. i: to Mo<i.E./ai/, relying on occasional
~gs wtth ey and ei, but without considering the many other indications of central
po:tion. See A H~tory o~ M~dem Colloquial English, Oxford: 1920, pages 223-225.
Abundant eVIdence IS gmm by George Phillip Krapp, The English Langu e in
America, D, New York: 1925, pages 186-191.
ag,
21 The best ~ew of the distribution of /ai/ may be had from Maps 2fr27 in H. Kurath
and R. !dcDa~d, The Pronunciation of English In the Atlantic States, Ann Arbor: 1962.
Centralized dt~hthongs ~ well known as feature of Canadian English, where the
effect of the votceless-vo1ced consonant environment is quite regular.
WJLUAM LABOY
282
out.22 The American evidence of the late 18th and 19th centuries, as
summed up by Krapp, points to [ou] as the conservative, cultured form,
giving way to [au] or [au], with the rural New England form as [am] or
[su].2l The Linguistic Atlas records show only a hint of parallelism of"/ai/
and JauJ.24 We find [~u] mainly in eastern Virginia, before voiceless consonants, with some small representation in upstate New York, but the
principal New England form of [au] stood out against a background of
rural and recessive [~u]. Martha's Vineyard shows very little centralization
of fau/ in the LANE maps.
Thls brief review indicates that the isolated position of /au/ has facilitated
phonetic variation on a truly impressive scale. The first element has ranged
from [1) to [a], from [s] to [o] all within the same general structural
system. Perhaps one reason why /ai/ has not shown a similar range of
25
variation is the existence of another up-gliding diphthong, foi/. In any
case, as the stage is set for our present view of Martha's Vineyard
diphthongs, /ai/ is well centralized, but /au/ is not. It may be too strong a
statement to say that this represents the phonetic heritage of the seventeenth century Yankee settlers of the island, but we may venture to say that
we have no evidence of any intervening events which disturbed the original
pattern.
op. cit., pages 235-236. Kokeritz, op. cit., pages 144-149. Wyld, op. cit.,
pages 230-231.
23 Op. cit., pages 192-196.
24 Kurath and McDavid, op. cit., Maps 28-29. .
. .
s The possibility of phonemic confusion with ~~1/ apparently ~e a reality m the
2
l?th and 18th century, in both England and Amenca, when both diphthongs bad central
first elements.
283
feature, parti~ularly in words such as right, white, twice, l~(e, wife, like, but
not so muc~ m while, time, line, I, my, try. Similarly, one JP8.Y hear in the
streets.or Vmeya~d Haven centralized forms in out, house, doUbt, but not so
much Jn now, how, or around.
.
~ or~r to study this feature systematically, it was necessary to devise
~ tntemew schedule which would provide many examples of Jail af'd /au/
m casual speech, emotionally colored speech, careful speech, and reh 'ling
style. The first of these diphthongs is more than twice as frequent as t.tle
secon~ but even so, several devices were required to increase the con-t
centration of occurrences of both.
rareripe
white bread
white of egg
nightcrawler
lightning bug
Italian
nigh
pie
sty
firefly
shiretown
swipe
dying out
flattening out
dowdy
outhouse
backhouse
crouch
mow
rowen
iodine
quinine
scrimy
frying pan
fry pan
. 2. Questions concerning value judgments, exploring the social orientation of the respondent, were so phrased as to elicit answers containing fai/
a?d fauf forms. 26 Answers to such questions often gave a rich harvest of
diphthongal f?rms, with contrasting uses of emotionally stressed and
unstressed vanants.
.
3. ~ special reading, used mainly in the high school was offered
oste~1bly as a .test .of the ability to read a story naturally.~7 Since these
r~~gs gave the most exac:t comparisons between speakers, they were
utilized for the spectrographic measurements discussed below.
. to life, liberty
.
. 26 "When we speak
. . of the nght
and the pursuit of happiness, what does
nght ~ean? Is 1t m writing? If a~ is successful at a job he doesn't like, would
y~u. ~till say. be was a successful man T These questions were generally successful in
eliciting the mfonnant's versions or the italicized words
~~1S two-hundred word reading is constructed as a story told by a teen-age Vineyard boy! of ~e day he found out his father wasn't always right. An excerpt will show
~e technique mvolved: "After the high winds last Thursday, we went down to the moormg to see how the boat was making out. My father started to pump out the bottom
and he told me to find out if th~ outboard would start. I found out all right. 1 gave he;
a cou~le of real h~d pulls but 1t was no dice. 'Let me try her,' my father said. 'Not
your life,' I told b1m. 'I've got my pride.m
on
284
WJLUAM LABOY
5 Scales of measurement
An important step was to construct a. r7liable, inte~-s~bjective index to
the degree of centralization. In the ongm~ transcnptions .of the taperecorded interviews28 a six-point scale of height of the first element was
used, ranging from the standard New ~ngland form [al] to. ~e ~ully
centralized [~n]. Such a transcripti?n ~a~ m~ended t~ push the distinctions
noted to the limits of auditory disCrlJillnatton. This correspond~ to the
practice of the LANE, in which the same number of degrees of height can
Th terviews were recorded at 31 inches per second on a Butoba MT-S, using a
28
Butoba ~-21 dynamic microphone. A tape recording of the standard reading, "After
the high winds ..." read by five of the speakers whose formant meas?I'ements appear ~n
Figure 3, and other examples of centralized diphthon~ used by Vmeyard ~~ m
natural conversation, may be obtained from the wnter, Department of Lingwstlcs,
Columbia University, New York 27, N.Y.
285
[r
-.
d
r
~
1
d)
FIGURE 2. Measurement of typical/ail diphthongs at first formant maximum.
1
286
WJLUAM LABOY
Scale I
[a]
287
\
\
\
\
\
Scale II
0
[a4]~
''
r~TJ
3
4
5
[u]~ 2
[e.a.]
r~1
2+
Figure 3 shows the values for Scale II mapped on the hi-logarithmic scale.
This is a satisfactory result, with good separation of the four grades of
centralization. We have also obtained some justification for the use of the
first formant maximum in measuring spectrograms, rather than the second
formant minimum. Since the lines separating the four grades parallel the
second-formant axis more than the first-formant axis, we have a graphic
demonstration that our phonetic impressions are more sensitive to shifts in
the first formant than the second.
When this display was originally planned, there was some question as to
whether it would be possible to map many different speakers on the same
graph. We know that there are significant differences in individual frames
of formant reference. Small children, for instance, appear to have vowel
triangles organized at considerably higher frequencies than adults. The
seven speakers whose readings are displayed in Figure 3 are all male; four
are high school students, aged 14 to 15. But the other three are adults,
from 30 to 60 years old, with widely different voice qualities.
Ideally, if we were studying the acoustic nature of the /ai/ and jau/
diphthongs, we would want a more uniform group of speakers. Secondly,
we would ask for better and more uniform recording conditions: one recording was outdoors, two were in living rooms, four in an empty conference room. However, since the object of the testing was to lend objective
confirmation to an impressionistic scale of discrimination, it is only realistic
to use a range of recordings as varied as the body of material on which the
entire study is based. Absence of separation of the four grades in Figure 3
31 A parallel problem of condensing a finely graded impressionistic scale is discussed
in L. Gauchat. J. Jeanjaquet and E. Tappolet, Tableaux phonetiques des patois suisses
romands (Neuchatel: 1925), p. ix. A seven-level transcription of the mid vowels was re-
duced to five levels, but without the instrumental justification presented here.
2'"
1 1 ~
''
23
'2~~
'' \
'12+
~
'
1 '
'
\ 2
\ 2
1\
20
20
'I~
l22o
20
20
20
z 1300
0
20
10
20
LLI
(/)
oo
0 0
1100
900
800
700
FIRST FORMANT
600
500
FREQUENCY
288
WILLIAM LABOV
289
Gratk
right
night
white
like
sight
quite
striped
swiped
wife
life
knife
spider
side
tide
applied
characterized
Ivory
live
five
I've
by
fly in
high
fryin
why
my
try
I'll
piles
while
mile
violence
shiners
kind
iodine
quinine
tune
line
fired
tire
CI /ai/: 0.75
CI /au/: 0.39
out
about
trout
house
south
mouth
couch
now
how
sound
down
round
hound
ground
WILLIAM LABOV
290
Not favoring
centralization
(a)
(b)
(c)
(d)
(e)
zero final
sonorants
nasals
voiced
velars
fricatives
labials
LEXICAL CONSIDBRAnoNs. A; few special words are given greater centralization than 'their phonetic form or prosodic position would usually
account for. An. example. is slidi,zg, meaning coasting with a small sled. It
may be that confusion with an altemant form sledding is responsible, or
that words which originate in childhood, and are seldom spelled. are more
prone to centralization.
obstruents
orals
voiceless
apicals
stops
If
pply these oppositions in the order given, from (a) to (e), we ar?ve
we a
t enes firom most favoring to least favorable to centralizaat a consonan s
.
on, which seems to conform quite. well to the facts:
ti
The
2.
~TYLISTIC ~LUEN~=~ of s h and that interviews under varying convanety o~ shifu;g sty ying :nt~ of phonological features, this is not the
ditions Will pro uce_ var d
The maiority are essentially single-style
th most Vmeyar ers.
:.~
case WI S
t"
the conversation will take a livelier tone, or a more
speakers. ome Im.es
. . .
fb
~ Jf ftf includes [?). The non-distinctive [?)
33/ai/ and fau/ are rare before ~~tion' heavily, as in the 1 forms of Figure 3.
variant of zero onset also favors cen
291
over 75
61 to 75
46 to 60
31 to 45
14 to 30
CI /ai/
0.25
0.35
0.62
0.81
0.37
CI fau/
0.22
0.37
0.44
0.88
0.46
Centralization of./ai/ and /au/ appear to show a regular increase in successive age levels, reaching a peak in the 31 to 45 group. We must now consider the reasons for assessing tbis pattern as evidence for an historical
change in the linguistic development of Martha's Vineyard. Is this an
example of sound change, or is it merely evidence for a regular change in
speaking patterns which is correlated with age?
At this point it is necessary to consider the general question as to
whether sound change can. be directly observed. The well-known statement
of Bloomfield seems to contradict this possibility:
The process of linguistic change has never been directly observed; we shall see that
such observation, with our present facilities, is inco~ceivable.3S
34 One small stylistic influence which appeared was in. the standard reading. Those
with centralized norms, whose charts were of type b and c, had slightly higher indexes of
centralization for reading than for conversation. The opposite effect was noted for those
with uncentralized norms.
3S Languoge (New York: 1933), p. 347.
WILLIAM LABOY
292
195-214.
293
294
WILLIAM LABOV
THE SOCIAL MOTIVATION OF A SOUND CHANGE
the
TABLB
Down-island
Edgartown
hiatus.
. . (
There remains the prior question, that of expburung or gtvmg a 1arger
context for) the general rise of centralization on the island. Why should
Martha's Vineyard tum its back on the histo~ o~ the Engli~h langua~e?
1 believe that we can find a specific explanation if we study the detailed
configuration of this sound change against the social forces which affect
the life of the island most deeply.
If we choose a purely psychological explanation, or one based only on
h 0 naloaical paradigms, we have as much as said that social variables such
p
0"
as occupation,
income, education, SOCIat aspirations,
attitudes, .are besid
. e
the point. We could only prove sue? a c~ by cross-tabulating .the. mdependent social variables, one at a time, With the d~gree of cen~tion,
and showing that any greater-than-chance correlations are spunous.
w might wish to construct a rule here which would, in essence, convert [+compact]
[_ empact] simpler by one feature than a rule which would merely convert [m:] to .a
to ~-~...,. ti ' While such a statement is satisfying in its simplicity and neatness, lt
cenuCL&UNU
orm.
.
uld explain onlYa small part of
should be clear from the following discussion that 1t wo
43
CI /au
o.ss
0.48
Oak Bluffs
295
Vineyard Haven
0.33
0.10
0.33
0.71
0.35
O.Sl
0.99
0.13
0.51
0.81
0.81
0.24
CI /ail
0.35
CI /au/
0.33
0.61
0.66
Up-islaDd
oak muffs
No.
Tis~
West Tisbuly
Chilmark
1.00
Gay Head
O.Sl
fishermen
farmers
others
TABLB
5.
CI /ai/
1.00
0.32
0.41
CENmAuzA.noN BY ETHNic
English
Age Level
over 60
46 to 60
31 to 45
under 30
all ages
CI
CI CI
fail /au/
0.36-0.34
0.85--0.63
1.08-1.09
0.35-0.31
0.67-o.60
Portuguese
CI CI
/ai/ /auf
0.26-0.26
0.37-0.59
0.73-0.83
0.34-0.52
0.42-0.54
/au/
0.79
0.22
0.57
GRoUPS
Indian
Cl CI
/ai/ /au/
0.32-0.40
0.71-1.00
0.80-1.33
0.47-0.88
0.56-0.90
too many explanations. Are these social variables connected in any demonstrable way with the linguistic change? Are they truly independent
from one another, or are some of the correlations spurious, the result of
some dependency on a larger factor which is logically prior to these? If
such a larger pattern exists, we must ask how did it originate, and in what
way is it connected with the linguistic events. A simple-minded bookkeeping approach will not answer such questions. We will have to gain
some insight into the social structure of the island, and the pressures which
motivate the social changes of present-day Martha's Vineyard.
296
WILLIAM LABOY
2.5% in fishing, and 17% in construction; these percentages are five ten
and three times as high as those for the state as a whole. 46
'
These economic pressures must be clearly delineated in order to assess
the heavy psychological pressures operating on the Vineyarders of old
family stock. Increasing dependence on the summer trade acts as a threat
to their personal independence. The more far-seeing Vineyarders can envisage the day when they and their kind will be expropriated as surely as
the Indians before them. They understand that the vacation business cannot help but unbalance the economy, which produces far too little for the
summer trade, but far too much for the winter. Yet it is very hard for the
Vineyarder not to reach for the dollar that is lying on the table, as much as
he may disapprove of it. We have already noted that many Vineyard.ers
move out of their own homes to make room for summer people.
Those who feel that they truly own this island, the descendants of the old
families, have a hard time holding on. Summer people, who have earned
big money in big cities, ax:e buyiqg up the island. As one Chilmarker said,
"You can cross the island from one end to the other without stepping on
anything but No Trespassing signs." The entire northwest shore has fallen
to the outsiders. In Edgartown, the entire row of spacious white houses on
the waterfront has capitulated to high prices, with only one exception, and
the rlescendants of the whaling captains who built them have retreated to
the hills and hollows of the interior.
This gradual transition to dependency on, and outright ownership by the
summer people has produced reactions varying from a fi~rcely defensive
contempt for outsiders to enthusiastic plans for furthering the tourist
economy. A study of the data shows that high centralization of /ai/ and
/auf is closely correlated with expressions of strong resistance to the incursions of the summer people.
The greatest resistance to these outsiders is felt in the rural up-island
areas, and especially in Chilmark, the only place where fishing is still a
major part of the economy.47 Cbilmarkers are the most different, independent, the most stubborn defenders of their own way of living. In
order to assess the changing orientation of island groups towards the old
297
sreat
299
WILLIAM LABOV
298
You people who come down here to Martha's Vineyard don't understand the
background of the old families of the island . strictly a maritime backgrolDld and
tradition . and what we're interested in, the rest of America, this part over here
across the water that belongs to you and we don't have anything to do with, has
forgotteh all about....
CI {ai/
CI /au/
1.70
1.65
1.50
1.43
1.33
1.31
l.ll
2.11
1.24
1.07
0.79
1.31
It h uld be noted here that the two Edgartown fishermen listed are
br:th~rs, the last descendants of the old families ~o maintain their position
on the Edgartown waterfront in the face of the mcroachment of summer
people noted above.
I think actually it~s a very hard thing to make that decision.... It comes to you
later, that you should have made it before. I have another son-Richard-is an
aeronautical engineer. He really loves the island. And when he decided to be an aeronautical engineer we discussed it-at length-and I told him at that time: you just
can't live on Martha's Vineyard... He works at Grumman, but he comes home every
chance he gets and stays just as long as he can.
.. we had an idea that he'd go away to school, but he really didn't want to go
away When he was at Chauncey Hall, they tried to get him to go to M.I.T.; but
he said no, he didn't want to go anywhere where he had to learn to do something that
he couldn't come back to this island.
We can learn a great deal about centralization by studying such histories of
particular families. The two speakers who head the list of centralized
speakers on page 298 are father and son. The father, a Chilmark lobsterman,
0.00-0.00
Up-island, staying
0.90-1.00
1.13-1.19
One of the down-islanders, from. Edgartown, has fallen very much under
the intluence of the upper class Bostonian summer visitors. He has lost all
constriction in tautosyllabic fr/, and has a fronted low center vowel as wen
in such words as [ka:], 'car'.
301
WILLIAM LABOY
300
48 On the question of leaving ~he island, on~ of these boys said: ..... ~can't see, my~f
off island somewhere .. I like 1t a lot here, like my father goes lobstenng. That s q~te
a bit of fun ... as long as I get enough money to live and e~joy myS:lf. I was figunn~
to oceanography because you'd be outdoors: 1t wouldn t be offic:e work.
0 n ... gomgm
It to~k some tim~, however, f?r the Portuguese descent group to make its
way mto the Dl8.1n stream of Island life. Intermarriage of Portuguese and
Y~nkee stock occurs, but it is rare. Second-generation Portuguese certainly do not feel at home in every situation: as some Vineyarders put it
these Po.rtuguese have ua ~ef~ive attitude." A member of the Engllsh
group will as a rule speak his mmd freely, condemning the summer people
and his neighbors with equal frankness. But the second-generation
Portuguese never criticizes the summer people in the interview situation
~nd he is extremely wary of criticizing anyone. When the word Yankee i~
Introduced, he shifts uneasily in his chair, and refuses to make any comment
at all.
While the speech of the Portuguese second generation is free of any
detectable Portuguese influence,so it is also lacking the special Vineyard
fiavor. If we examine the Portuguese age groups over 45 in Table S which
contain a large proportion of second-generation speakers we find llttle or
no centralization.
'
This is not the case with third.. and fourth;.generation Portuguese speakers.
In this group, we find centralization very much on the increase particularly
with /auf. In Table 5, we see that the age group from 31 to
has a very
4s
49 In many ways, the Vineyard seems to be more democratic than the mainland. I
have heard on the mainland strong expressions of hostility between Portuguese groups
from the Azores and those from the Cape Verde Islands, but never on Martha's Vineyard
50 On the other hand, I have heard a strong Portuguese accent from a second genera:
uon Portuguese man, about 40 years old, who was raised on a fann near Taunton, Mass.
302
WILUAM LABOY
high degree of centralization. This age level contains a great many thirdgeneration Portuguese. It is the first Portuguese group which has entered
the main stream of island life, occupying positions as merchants, municipal
officers, and many other places of secondary leadership. These speakers
eonsider themselves natives of the island, and in response to the term
yankee, they either include themselves in, or make fun of the whole idea.
In the youngest age level, the Portuguese descent group shows a very
regular use of centralization, whether second or third or fourth generation,
and their average centralization index in the table is, at this point, higher
than the English group.
One might think that centralization might be on the way to becoming a
marker of the ethnic Portuguese on the island, if such a trend continues.
But this possibility runs counter to the strongly democratic nature of
present-day Vineyard society. ~ong high school stu~ents, for ~xample,
there appear to be no social barners between the ethnic groups, m clubs,
at dances and between friends. This situation is especially shocking to
some fo~er mainlanders, who would like to draw a color line against
some of the children with Cape Verde backgrounds. But despite a few
such counter-currents, the unifying, protective nature of Vineyard society
shields the island native from the kind of reality which is practised on the
outside.5 1
The reason that the youngest Portuguese group shows higher centralization is that a larger percentage identify themselves with the island and the
island way of life, thaD: is the case among the English descent group.
Whereas almost all of the English group leave the island to go to college,
and few return, almost all of the Portuguese group re~. ~ 'res~t, they
are gradually supplanting the English group in the eco~01mc Iife.ofthetsland.
It is fair enough to say that the main problem of the Portuguese group
has not been to resist the incursions of the summer people but rather to
assert their status as native Vineyarders. Their chief obstacle has not been
the outsiders, but rather the resistance to full recognitio~ from the English
descent group. With full participation in ?ativ~ status, has ~me ~ull us~ of
the special characteristics of Martha s Vmeyard English, tncludmg
centralized diphthongs.
were:
303
to
The Indian people are aware of this situation, as shown in this quotation
from one of the Indian informants, a woman of 69:
These island folks, they don't want to mix at all, up this end .... They don't like to
give the Indian his name, here on the island. I'll tell you that. They like to be dirty with
some of their talk.
Despite the great shift in Vineyard ideology over the past three generations,
th'! Indians still feel blocked, geographically and socially, by the Chitmarkers, "up this end." Their attitude toward the Chilmarkers is ambiguous: on the one hand, they resent the Chilmarkers' possessive attitude
toward the island, and the traditional hard-fisted, stiff-necked Yankee line.
Their reaction to the word Yankee is sarcastic and hostile.sl But their
main complaint is that they deserve equal status, and whether they will
admit it or not, they would like to be just like the Chilmarkers in many
ways.
As far as centralization is concerned, Table 5 indicates that the Indians
follow close behind the Chilmarkers. At the same time, they show a greater
relative incr~ase of centralization of fauf, similar to the Portuguese development, especially among the yo.ung people. Here there are signs of an
sz A very rich vein of information on this score may be tapped from Richard L.
WILLIAM LABOV
been here a few years ago and talked to N. He could have told you so
many things!"
The sudden increase in centralization began among the Chilmark
fishermen, the most close-knit group on the island, the most independent,
the group which is most stubbornly opposed to the incursions of the
summer people. There is an inherently dramatic character to the fisherman's
situation, and a great capacity for self-dramatization in the fisherman
himself, which makes him an ideal candidate to initiate new styles in
speech. In the early morning, the curtain rises: a solitary figure appears
upon the scene. For the course of an entire day, this single actor holds the
stage. Then at last, the boat docks; the curtain descends. The play is over,
yet the reviews will be read and re-read for generations to come.
304
305
I can remember as a boy, when I first started going to sea with my father, he said to
me: remember two things. Always treat the ocean with respect, and remember you
only have to make one mistake, never to come back.
Centralized speech forms are then a part of the dramatized island character
which the Chilmarker assumes, in which he imitates a similar but weaker
tendency in the older generation.
For younger members of the English descent group, we can view the
mechanism in greater detail. For them, the old timers and the up-islanders
in particular serve as a reference group. They recognize that the Chilmark
fishennen are independent, skillful with many kinds of tools and equipment, quick-spoken, courageous and physically strong. Most importantly,
they carry with them the ever-present conviction that the island belongs to
them. If someone intends to stay on the island, this model will be ever
present to his mind. If he intends to leave, he will adopt a mainland reference group, and the influence of the old-timers will be considerably less.
The differential effect in the degree of centralization used is a direct result
of this opposition of values.
The Portuguese group is not f~ced with a dilemma of going or staying.
The main challenge to which this group has responded is from the English
group, which has certainly served as a reference group for the Portuguese
until very recent times. As the number of Portuguese in prominent positions grows, it is no longer urgent to minimize the effects of being Portuguese, but rather to assert one's identity as an islander.
The Gay Head developments are dictated by the antinomy of values
which reigns there. On the one hand, the Indian group resents any bar to
full participation in the island life, and the Indians have plainly adopted
many of the same values as the Chilmarkers. But on the other hand, they
would like to insist as well on their Indian identity. Unfortunately, they no
2-w.
WIWAMLABOV
306
longer have linguistic resources for this purpose, and whether they like it
or not, they will follow the Chilmark lead.
The role of the Cbilmarker, or "old-time typical Yankee" has declined
as the reference group which governs the meaning of "islander" has
shifted away from that which governs "Yankee." Even among the Chilmarkers the more far-sighted members of the community recognize that
the te~ yankee no longer fits the island. Whereas this word may still be
a rallying cry in some parts of New England, it has outlived its usefulness
on Martha's Vineyard. In emphasizing descent status rather than native
status, yankee summons up invidious distinctions which are no longer
good currency on the island.
People don't make so much about it as they used to when I was young. People
would make that statement: ..I'm a Yankee! I'm a Yankee!" But now you very
seldom-mostly, read it in print."
Persons
40
19
Positive
Neutral
Negative
CI /ai/
0.63
0.32
0.09
Cl fau/
0.62
0.42
0.08
The fact that this table shows us the sharpest example of stratificati~n we
have yet seen, indicates that we have come r~asona~ly close to a valid explanation of the social distribution of centralized diphthongs.
12. The intersection of social and linguistic structures .
The following abstract scheme may serve to summanze the argument
which has been advanced so far to explain the spread and propagation of
this particular linguistic change.
ss The speaker is one of the Mayhews, a retired Chilmark fish~~, who has as
t be a "typical old Yankee" as any person on Martha s Vmeyard.
l
much catm
o
307
308
WILLIAM LABOY
fai/.
309
New York City. Here multiple-style speakers are the rule, not the exception; instead of three ethnic groups we have a great many; mobility and
change are far more rapid; and the population is huge. Here the sampling
requirements must be far more rigid; and the techniques used to assess the
social meaning of linguistic cues must be more subtle and complex. Yet the
basic app!'oach, of isolating the socially significant variables, and correlating them with the patterns of general social forces, is the same as that which
has been used on Martha's Vineyard. It is hoped that such methods will
give us further insight into the ~chanism of linguistic change.
Department ofLinguistics
Columbia University
New York 27, New York