Variation and Change in Our Living Language

Synchronic Variation Variation is the engine of linguistic change, for communities do not switch from one feature to another overnight but go through a period in which new and old variants compete until one wins out. But synchronic variation—variation viewed at one point in time—is not always symptomatic of ongoing change, although it may encapsulate the effects of previous change or resistance to change. Most of the Our Living Language Notes in this dictionary attest to the vibrancy of synchronic variation and variety in current American English without any indications of or implications for ongoing change. Many of our examples come from "vernacular" dialects of American English—everyday informal regional and social varieties with features like ax (for ask), hisself (for himself), and zero copula (as in He working) that are frequently stigmatized as nonmainstream, nonstandard, or worse (considered as evidence of ignorance, lack of education, or laziness). But usages of this type also survive, even thrive, by symbolizing opposition to mainstream culture. That is, they may vividly express the identities of their users as members of a particular region, social class, ethnicity, or age group. Some of these usages are widely emulated as acts of admiration or solidarity by people outside the groups in which they originated. For instance, expressions originating among urban African-American youth are often adopted by white suburban teenagers, who consider these expressions "cool." 18 Regional Variation This Dictionary, like its previous edition, includes a separate set of Regional Notes and an accompanying introductory essay, but certain Our Living Language Notes bear witness to regional variation as well. Hornswoggle, "to deceive," is one of a small but intriguing set of words that first appeared in the 19th century in the American West, perhaps in deliberate, jesting opposition to East Coast words and mores. (A similar situation may apply to present-day be all, more commonly used by young people on the West Coast to introduce quotations than be like, its East Coast equivalent.) As the notes at foot and mine reveal, vernacular forms like three foot and That book is hern, each having its own systematic restrictions, are characteristic of parts of New England and the South. And the South—by far the most salient dialect area in the United States—is the province of several other distinctive Our Living Language Notes, including like to, "nearly" (He like to died), double modals (He might could go), and right in the sense of "very" (He’s right nice). Regions that are or were especially isolated, like the Appalachian and Ozark mountains, Smith Island on the Maryland-Virginia border, and Ocracoke Island, North Carolina, exemplify even more exotic usages, such as We’d go hunting of an evening, and hit for it. 19 Variation by Ethnicity and Social Class Several Our Living Language entries testify to the influence of some (but by no means all) of the ethnic groups that compose the tapestry of American peoples: sleigh (from Dutch, and other words like boss, snoop, and Santa Claus), schlock (from Yiddish, along with other Yiddish words like schlep and schmooze), dumb in the sense of "stupid" (from German, along with other words like kindergarten and rifle), and perfective I’m, as in I’m forgot to do it (common among the Lumbee Indians of southeastern North Carolina). 20 The most common ethnic words in the Our Living Language Notes, however, are those from African American Vernacular English (AAVE), the ethnic variety that has attracted the most attention from sociolinguists and the general public over the past four decades. (Recall the national controversy created in 1996 when the Oakland School Board voted to recognize Ebonics as the primary language of their African American majority students and to use it to help teach Standard English.) Many of the words from this source, including bad ("excellent"), chill ("to calm down or relax"), cool ("first-rate"), dig ("to enjoy"), igg ("to ignore"), and rap (the musical form), have crossed over into general usage among Americans, partly through the immense influence of Black music on American popular culture. 21 The more grammatical features of AAVE, however, including invariant habitual be (We be steady studying) and zero copula (She workin’ now), are not found as readily among Americans of other ethnicities, with two exceptions. They are found quite frequently in the South (where they seem to have originated and where they are used by white Americans, but usually at lower frequencies than among Blacks) and among Latino, Asian, and Pacific Islander youth who are in close contact with African Americans in urban centers like New York and San Francisco. The zero copula, in particular, may represent the influence of creole-speaking Blacks who were brought into America from the Caribbean in relatively large numbers in the 17th and 18th centuries. Salient grammatical features like habitual be and zero copula, which are socially stigmatized by the mainstream but vigorously endorsed by some of their users as markers of oppositional identity, also represent the intersection of ethnicity and social class. For, as quantitative studies in cities like New York, Detroit, and San Francisco have shown, they are most commonly employed by working-class African Americans and much more rarely used by middle-class African Americans. It is certainly not the case that all African Americans use them, and even those who do are most likely to use them in excited or informal interaction with their peers. 22 Other features covered by the Our Living Language Notes that are most frequent among working-class speakers include ax for ask, double comparatives (more higher), and regularized subject-verb agreement (use of -s for all present tense persons and numbers, e.g., you walks, he walks; or non-use of –s for all present tense persons and numbers, e.g., you walk, he walk). Although socioeconomic class distinctions are often regarded as relatively benign and indistinct in America (compared, for example, with England), language differences like these reveal that such distinctions are nevertheless quite real. 23

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