Challenging the Canons of Language Study

Observing language studies for more than a half century has allowed me to view the establishment of topical domains of research, the selection of data, methods of analysis, and ideological and practical concerns of linguistics in the field. I use the term “canon” to refer to principles or doctrines by which a topic is judged as appropriate and acceptable for study, or to a body of written works considered to be authoritarian and representative within a subject area. Linguists need to recognize and, at times, challenge these canons as they develop within the field. In this analysis, I consider several research studies that warrant further scrutiny in terms of their implications on the canons of research within the framework of sociolinguistics.

The first case examines dialect recession in sociolinguistics. The focus of most variationist studies of linguistic change to date has been the emerging and increase in new forms. The opposing process, or the decline and loss of older variants, is less well understood. We framed the question of language obsolescence on the islands of Ocracoke, NC, and Smith Island, MD, (Wolfram & Schilling-Estes (1995); Schilling-Estes & Wolfram (1999)) in terms of recession models in the “endangerment canon” in general linguistics, and found differential models of obsolescence that included both dissipation and concentration trends in our studies of these receding dialects. Ironically, our conclusions were largely ignored or rejected by the “endangerment canon” within general linguists while considered as informative and insightful by sociolinguists.

A second case involves the development and adoption of a holistic measure for the examination of African American Language (AAL) that we applied during a longitudinal study of African American speakers for the first two decades of their lives (Kohn, Wolfram, Farrington, Van Hofwegen, Renn 2021). A “Dialect Density Measure” based on an index of types and tokens of diagnostic structures used in AAL served as the basis for a holistic score of dialect use that showed correlations with social and educational attributes. We thought we demonstrated the quantitative validity of the measure through a series of manipulations that were largely accepted in research in allied fields. But variationist sociolinguists maintained skepticism and largely rejected the basis of our study, influenced by predetermined, normative models for quantitative analysis and a socialized aversion to holistic measurements for measuring language varieties, leaving a gap in sociolinguistic insight.

The final case is the role of social and educational engagement in linguistics. Whereas analysis and application of sociolinguistic knowledge coincided with the advent of the field of sociolinguistics (Labov 1984), some developments within sociolinguistics actually marginalize the role of engagement operationally. By illustrating our sociolinguistic engagement model for the Island of Ocracoke over three decades, we demonstrate how different strands of formal and informal programs can, in fact, radically transform how a community changes its perception of a culturally significant language variety. We demonstrate how the significance of long-term engagement in formal and informal engagement programs locally and nationally can change attitudes about language variation. I conclude with a plea for linguistics never to abandon the moral and ethical commitment to serve the communities we research, and to recognize explicitly the goal of community enlightenment as a central theme in in the field.

Walt Wolfram is William C. Friday Distinguished University Professor at North Carolina State University, where he also directs the Language and Life Project. He has pioneered research on social and ethnic dialects since the 1960s and published 24 books, edited 8 books, and published over 300 articles. Over the last several decades he, his colleagues, and his students have conducted more than 4,000 sociolinguistic interviews with residents of North Carolina and beyond, primarily under funding from the National Science Foundation. In addition to his research interests, Professor Wolfram is particularly interested in the engagement of sociolinguistic information with the public, including the production of television documentaries, the construction of museum exhibits, and the development of an innovative formal and informal materials related to language diversity for different institutions. He has received numerous awards, including the North Carolina Award (the highest award given to a citizen of North Carolina), Caldwell Humanities Laureate from the NC Humanities Council, the Holladay Medal at NC State, the Board of Governor’s Award Holshouser Award for Excellence in Public Service, and the Linguistics, Language and the Public Award from the Linguistic Society of America. He has been inducted into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and served as President of the Linguistic Society of America, the American Dialect Society, and the Southeastern Conference on Linguistics.