Studies about dialect

Peter Trudgill, Norwich 1970s

What did he investigate?: People that dropped the 'ng' at the end of 'ing' words, e.g. goin' instead of going.

Who did he investigate?: Differences between men and women in different classes of society.

How did he do it?: Talked to people from different areas of society.

What did he find?: The higher up the classes you go, the more results there were of the people using the proper 'ng' instead of missing it out, however higher up the classes the men tended to miss it less than the women, whereas lower down the women missed it out more than men.

Labov, 1960s

What did he investigate?: How people pronounced the 'r' at the end of words like 'floor', saying it how it looks or like 'flo-ah'

Who did he investigate?: Staff in three different New York department stores, Saks (upper class), Macy's (middle class) and Klein's (lower class than the other two).

How did he do it?: He went into the stores and asked a question to get a response of 'fourth floor'. He would ask a second time, and compare their spontaneous speech with the way they repeated it.

What did he find?: Staff in Saks used it more the first time, and Klein's the least, and in Macy's there was a bigger shift in how they pronounced their 'r' when asked the second time.

Tidholm, Yorkshire

What did he investigate?: 'Definite article reduction' which means a thing that Yorkshire folk do where they miss out words like 'the' and say 't' instead.

Who did he investigate?: People in Yorkshire of all ages, class and gender.

How did he do this?: He interviewed them

What did he find?: That it occurred more with older speakers, and that in a couple of generation's time it will have disappeared! He also found that upper working class women tended to use it the least, who spoke more in an RP way.