Suzanne Evans Wagner

This paper demonstrates the value of panel studies to our understanding not only of change in progress, but of age-grading. A panel of 19 adolescents from Philadelphia was tracked in real time, to test the effect of post-high school transitions on stable variables. Tokens of (ing) and (dh) were extracted from sociolinguistic interviews conducted in 2005 (when most of the panel were still in high school) and in 2006 (when most were in college). For both variables across three social class categories, only the highest social class significantly decreased their use of non-standard variants over time. This provides real time support for the age-grading interpretation of comparable apparent time studies, and for the assumption that middle to upper class youth are especially aware of the social value of standard variants to their future careers. Interestingly, speakers in the next highest social class did not always reduce their use of non-standard variants, even if they went on to attend elite colleges. Finally, the acoustic properties and social values of (dh) variants in this community will be briefly discussed, as they deserve further investigation. They encompass a range of phonetic variation that could show more fine-grained correlations with age, social class and linguistic environment. Comparisons with other English dialects could prove to be illuminating in this next research step.