Many studies have shown that women lead sound change (cf. Eckert, 1989, Labov 1990,
Wolfram & Schilling-Estes 1998), though occasionally men play this role (e.g. Conn
2005). In many of these studies, however, gender has been examined as a binary variable,
which conflicts directly with current theories of socially constructed gender, leaving a
need for studies that investigate the interaction between sex and gender. An additional
problem arises while trying to quantitatively examine differences within sex groupings to
account for situations in which some women are innovators, leading linguistic changes,
while others adhere to conservative norms (Labov 2001). One reason why gender has
been difficult to quantify, as Eckert (2000) points out, is because gender identity is
intertwined with other aspects of social identity and “no variable correlates simply with
gender or social category.”
My current research consists of two studies. The first aims at a quantitative means of
explaining gender-based patterns of language variation by looking at personality traits
that are more desirable for one sex group to possess than the other. The Northern Cities
Shift (NCS) is used as a background to show that how people self-identify on an
inventory of personality traits can be correlated with progression (or lack thereof) in
ongoing sound change. More specifically, the study shows that individuals who identify
strongly with traits that are traditionally viewed as more desirable for women to posses
are those who are more progressed with the fronting of /ae/, part of the first step in the
NCS.
The second study focuses on female respondents exclusively to find which traits female
leaders possess that non-leaders do not have. These results show that women who self identify
as cheerful and dominant and do not identify strongly as feminine nor masculine
are those who are the most advanced. These results support Labov’s (2001) portrait of a
leader of linguistic change and Eckert’s (2000) suggested method of looking both across
and within gender groups in order to see the importance that gender plays as a
sociolinguistic variable.
|
