Introduction

The concern of the present contribution is to look at a phenomenon which is generally recognised by linguists but which is notoriously difficult to quantify. This is the notion of salience. There are two points which need to be distinguished here. The first is defining what one means by salience and the second is to examine the extent to which it may play a role in language change. The first task appears relatively simple. Salience is a reference to the degree to which speakers are aware of some linguistic feature. It is immediately clear that one is dealing with conscious aspects of language. For instance, if speakers of a non-rhotic variety of English notice that other speakers use an /r/ sound in syllable codas, then this sound is salient for the speakers of the first variety. Note here that salience may apply to one's own speech or that of others. The concern in the present study is with salience in one's own speech, or at least in that of speakers whose speech is closely related.

If one wishes later to consider the role of salience in language change then one must determine if a feature can be said to be salient for more or less the entire community using a variety. This implies a notion of homogeneity, i.e. that all speakers are aware to more or less the same degree of a given feature or features and that, conversely, for certain other features they do not show this awareness. Short of interviewing an entire community, how can one determine this?