Relative salience of gender and class in a situation of multiple competing norms

Abstract

ABSTRACTOne of the most consistent findings to emerge from sociolinguistic research is that “men use more nonstandard forms, less influenced by the social stigma directed against them; or, conversely, women use more standard forms, responding to the overt prestige associated with them” (Labov, 1990:210). With regard to change, these findings indicate that “women lead in both the acquisition of prestige patterns and the elimination of stigmatized forms” (p. 213), apparently without exception in change from above the level of conscious awareness and in all but a few of the cases studied in change from below. An examination of the social parameters of acceptance and spread of intervocalic spirantization of /p/, /t/, /k/ in Tuscany offers the possibility for testing and refining these precepts in a situation of rule competition that is more complex than most of those studied previously, in that here there are three forms in competition. Building on established principles (e.g., Trudgill, 1972), this sociolinguistic analysis of the interaction of three options provides a more precise understanding of the significance of both gender and class as (co-)conditioners of variation and change.