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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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