160130 SE Linguistic Variation (2023S)

Linguistic variation is the central subject of sociolinguistics. Based on the observation that speakers of a language have "a set of alternative ways of 'saying the same thing'" (William Labov), the discipline has set out to investigate both the occurrence and the function of linguistic variance.
This task, however, has been approached very differently over the now fifty-year history of the discipline, and the question of what variance is and does has led to fundamental controversies. The form of sociolinguistics co-founded by Labov, the 'variationist approach' (known in German-speaking countries as 'Variationslinguistik'), attempts to tie variation to social parameters (and to conceptions of 'standard' and 'deviation') and thus to relate variant types to social circumstances. Anthropologically inspired interactional sociolinguistics rejects this approach. Instead of identifying patterned correlations of variation, it examines the extent to which variation creates social reality in the concrete interactional situation. It thus sees linguistic variation rather as a means of constructing social realities. In contrast to this, newer approaches that have emerged from this field primarily investigate the 'social value' attributed to linguistic variants and how this affects social hierarchies, inclusion and exclusion, i.e. how variation is predisposed by ideological frameworks.
In this course we discuss all these perspectives on linguistic variation. We will recapitulate the basics of the different approaches, discuss the questions, methods, and data decisions that arise from them, and examine linguistic variation in the domains of voice, language technology, and writing, and with reference to space, social position, gender, and media.