Inherent variation in language reflects social, generational, regional and stylistic aspects of the speech situation. Variation occurs at all levels of linguistic structure: phonology, morphosyntax, lexicon, semantics and pragmatics. In this subject students are introduced to the systematic study of variation through observation of speech behaviour, and in particular to the methods developed by William Labov for documentation and quantification. Examples will be drawn from English and a range of other languages. Practical methodological and ethical issues will be extensively discussed, and students will collect new original data.

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