STYLISTIC STRATIFICATION

The idea of organised difference, structured heterogeneity, in language is fundamental to variationist sociolinguistics (Weinreich, Labov and Herzog 1968: 99–100; Bayley 2004: 117). Understanding linguistic diversity in one sense or another is a key concern of all sociolinguistic approaches, but being able to demonstrate general principles at work in the structuring of linguistic differences linked to language change has been the great achievement of variationism. Finding order where randomness was thought to prevail is a classical quest in empirical science. In Chapter 1 I noted the empiricist leanings of the language variation and change paradigm. It has developed tight specifications for how language use should be observed in what have been called ‘speech communities’. The approach has demonstrated statistical regularities of ‘sociolinguistic structure’. In this chapter the point I want to return to is that these priorities, which are admirable for understanding linguistic systems, have supported only a very narrow conception of stylistic variation. The sociolinguistic study of style was born in these circumstances and has delivered several important general findings. But I will emphasise what is left unaddressed in a structural model of style.

We have already touched on some of the political issues behind variationism. Demonstrating orderliness across the social class spectrum of language variation certainly has political implications. Social elites and elite institutions – or somewhat wider forces that we might call ‘the establishment’ – have always held strong views about social propriety and linguistic properness (Mugglestone 2003).