Variation can occur on all linguistic levels, including lexical, phonetic, or morphosyntactic features. Lexical variation is exemplified by different words for the same thing – for instance, while Canadians go to the washroom, their US neighbors often say they are headed for the bathroom or the restroom, while elsewhere in the English‐speaking world, people use the toilet or the loo. Phonetic variation has to do with different pronunciations, for example, the pronunciation of words such as playing with a final ‐in’ (alveolar nasal) or ‐ing (velar nasal). The car needs washed/washing example above shows morphosyntactic variation; a further example of morphological variation is the use or non‐use of verbal ‐s marking on third person singular verbs, e.g., he plays versus he play. These examples illustrate variation associated with different social meanings (a topic which will be taken up in the next chapter) – washroom/bathroom/toilet/loo and needs washed/washing are examples of regional variation, ‐in’/‐ing variation has to do with the level of formality, and the use or non‐use of verbal ‐s is part of standardized and non‐standardized varieties of English. But of course, a single speaker might also use all of these variants, especially the phonetic and morphological variants. Certainly every English speaker has said both playin’ and playing in different contexts!
Further, while there is considerable variation in the speech of any one individual, there are also definite bounds to that variation: no individual is free to do just exactly as they please so far as language is concerned. You cannot pronounce words with random sounds, inflect or not inflect words such as nouns and verbs arbitrarily, or make drastic alterations in word order in sentences as the mood suits you. If you do any or all of these things, the results will be unacceptable, even gibberish. The variation you are permitted has limits (at least if you want to be understood!), and these limits can be described with considerable accuracy. For instance, although most of us would say ‘the cow jumped over the fence,’ we can say, ‘It is the fence that the cow jumped over,’ which is comprehensible if somewhat stilted; but most people would agree that ‘the fence jumped the cow over’ does not follow English word order rules and is largely incomprehensible. Most language users know what utterances are part of the language – or at least their variety of the language – although they do not usually know the linguistic rules; such explanations are the job of linguists!
Our task will be one of trying to specify the norms of linguistic behavior that exist in particular groups and then trying to account for individual behavior in terms of these norms. This task is particularly interesting because most people have no conscious awareness of how their linguistic behavior is conditioned by social norms. We will also see how the variation we find in language allows changes to occur over time and often points to the direction of change. A living language not only varies, it changes.
Exploration 1.2 Variation in Greetings
How do you greet your friends, your family, your colleagues, your professors and your acquaintances? Are there different verbal exchanges as well as different embodied practices (e.g., kissing, hugging, shaking hands, doing a fist bump)? Does the situation matter – that is, do you greet your family differently if you have not seen them for a long time, or friends in different ways depending on whether you run into each other by accident on campus or if you are meeting for dinner? Are there ways of greeting, either that you use or that you do not use, that index membership in particular groups? Are there ways of greeting that you find inappropriate – in general, or for particular addressees or in particular situations? Compare your own repertoires and practices with those of the other students in your class.
Variants and the linguistic variable
We discussed variants above, saying that variants are different forms which largely mean the same thing; we could also say that they are different forms which can be used in the same environment. A linguistic variable is a linguistic item which has identifiable variants. For instance, the variation between washroom, bathroom, toilet and loo gives us four lexical variants. Another example which has been studied extensively is the vowel system of US English (e.g., Gordon 2002), including, for example, the production of words such as cot and caught – some people pronounce these two words the same, while others use distinct vowels.
These examples show that there are at least two basically different kinds of variation. One is of the kind with distinct variants, such as different lexical items. The other kind of variation is a matter of degree; pronunciation of vowels is not binary but includes production on a continuum within the vowel space.
An important principle in the analysis of variants is the principle of accountability, which holds that if it is possible to define a variable as a closed set of variants, all of the variants (including non‐occurrence if relevant) must be counted. That is, the analysis is done by identifying all of the environments where the variable could occur, and then seeing which variants are used. Take, for example, the study of third person singular ‐s marking. Some speakers of English have variation between this marker and a null variant (e.g., she goes and she go may both be used). To study this, you would look at all contexts with a third person singular subject. While this principle applies to grammatical variables in general, for pragmatically motivated variables such as discourse markers (e.g., you know, well) the principle of accountability cannot be applied, as there are no mandatory environments for such particles. As we will see in Part II, the features of language studied is an important consideration when choosing a research methodology.
Language Users and Their Groups: Identities
In order to talk about how people use language, we must talk about both individuals and groups, together with the relationships between people within and across groups. One of the current ways of thinking about this focuses on language user identities. The term identity has been used in a variety of ways in both the social sciences and lay speech. In current social theory, identities are not seen as fixed attributes of people or groups but are dynamically constructed aspects which emerge through social behavior, including but not limited to language use. Although we do look at identities of individuals, what we are primarily concerned with is social identity: ‘Identity is defined as the linguistic construction of membership in one or more social groups or categories’ (Kroskrity 2000, 111).
In such a view, identities are not preconceived categorical affiliations such as ‘male’ or ‘female’ but nuanced ways of being that we construct; while we may indeed reference such categories, our identities are not simply a matter of listing demographic identifiers (e.g., ‘single white female, 45, architect, nature lover’). So while a speaker may introduce a comment by saying As a mother …, thus explicitly referencing this aspect of her identity, what will emerge is a more nuanced picture of what type of mother she is – for example, protective, feminist, one who encourages independence, one who is concerned with the upward mobility of her children. Named social categories such as ‘single mother’ or ‘helicopter parent’ are not our identities but concepts we use to construct our identities.
Further, our identities are fluid and we do not have a single identity but multiple levels of identity, and shifting and sometimes even conflicting identities which emerge in different contexts. To continue the example above, the speaker may reference her identity as a mother but then also focus on how she identifies strongly with her profession and struggles to balance this with the demands of parenthood; this may be intertwined with her gender identity and her social class identity. In another conversation, this same person might use particular lexical items to focus on her regional affiliation to construct a different aspect of her identity, and to align herself with an interlocutor who shares this background. Thus, the identities we construct are constantly shifting, and also at different levels, from