³ ~soclab01.00 º UP: <[LINK] -ab01.00> ³
³`Labov's theoretical grounding` º NEXT: open ³
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Labov approaches his object of study with the goal of
critiquing the neogrammarian/structuralist dichotomy between an
idealized psychological language and language as spoken and used.
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The goals of intuitive approaches necessitate their
inability to explain why language changes, an important
theoretical question known as the "actuation problem.
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To solve the actuation problem, Labov proposes to study the
"mechanism of change" by correlating linguistic variation to
social variation.
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While both his correlations and causal explanations are
often convincing, he, like anyone else building a model, has to
make assumptions or idealizations.
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