What Did William Labov's Fourth Floor Study Show?
The 1966 study was conducted by William Labov, a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, who went to New York to study how people say the letter “r.” He found that many people of the working class frequently deleted the letter “r” in words like “car” and “birth.” He wanted to see if speakers from different ...
What did Labov's fourth floor study show?
He was able to illustrate the social stratification of (r) in N.Y.C. department stores. The variants of the phonological variable (r) are either presence or absence of post-vocalic /r/. That is, in expressions such as fourth floor, whose pronunciation was tested by Labov, /r/ was either pronounced or omitted.
William Labov: New York City, USA (1966) - ELLO
What did he find out? Labov found that the pronunciation of certain vowel sounds were subtly changing from the standard American pronunciations and noted that locals had a tendency to pronounce these diphthongs with a more central point, more like [əu, əi].
William Labov – Martha's Vineyard - All About Linguistics
What did he find out? Labov found a higher use of rhoticity in all social classes when reading the word list as opposed to in an interview. Labov concluded from these findings that rhoticity appears to be related to social status.
William Labov – New York City - All About Linguistics
What was the main finding of Labov's department store study on the R variable?
Labov's 1963 study of /r/ in New York City department stores had three principal findings: 1) social stratification: use of consonantal /r/ in coda position (r-1) was correlated with the status of the store, i.e. more (r-1) in Saks than Macys 2) an age distribution suggesting ongoing 'change from above' towards ...
Saks vs. Macys: (r-1) marches on in New York City department stores