The impact of Labov's contribution to general linguistic theory

Abstract

The paper first discusses the influence of Labov on certain recent Chomskyan developments, starting from an identification of two radically different readings of the relationship between Labovian variationist sociolinguistics and the dominant theoretical paradigm of the latter half of the 20th century which is Chomskyan theoretical linguistics, i.e. as either a supplement or an alternative. Variation at the level of closely related languages, at the level of the language community, and at the level of the individual, have all been treated by Chomskyans under various headings, thus giving evidence that empirical results stemming from variationist sociolinguistics cannot be ignored. However, the treatment has not led to an integration of variation into Chomskyan theory, nor could it. In the final section we outline what a Labovian materialist alternative to Chomskyan idealism could be. We argue that this calls for a broader definition of sociolinguistics than just variationism and poses demands for both internal integration, viz. of linguistic disciplines, and external integration of the language sciences with evolutionary psychology, anthropology and social history.

Place-Making by Cows in an Intensive Dairy Farm: A Sociolinguistic Approach to Nonhuman Animal Agency

“…Neither generative nor sociolinguistic theory has questioned the legitimacy of each other's discipline, yet attempts to integrate both have not been successful(Cornips and Gregersen 2016).…”

RenaTorres Cacoullos, NathalieDion and AndréLapierre (eds.). Linguistic Variation: Confronting Fact and Theory. London: Routledge. 2015. 368 pp. Hb (9781138024540) £95.00 / Pb (9781138024557) £39.99.

“…In a recent paper, published in the Journal of Sociolinguistics , Leonie Cornips and Frans Gregersen (: 509) argue that ‘to get to grips with variation that does indeed involve semantics’ is one of the key challenges for work in variationist sociolinguistics. And it is this aspect of the volume under review, starting ‘to get to grips’ with not only syntactic structure but also meaning, which makes this collection an important contribution to the variationist literature.…”

“…Before concluding, I would like to return to Cornips and Gregerson's () earlier mentioned paper, and especially their reflections on the fundamental incompatability of Chomskyan (idealist) and sociolinguistic (materialist) theories of language. They discuss in detail how the ‘empirification’ of generative linguistics with Labovian methods impacted on Chomskyan practice (giving rise to the study of what is called ‘micro‐variation’).…”