John Rickford demonstrates the circularity of assigning class position an independent identity in his studies of Guyanese creole as used in the village of Canewalk. Labov's etic standards of class position would place nearly the whole creole-speaking community in one of the lowest categories with acrolect speakers occupying the rest of the positions. This would have limited local meaning to the creole speakers, who also define their social attitudes in terms of differences between fieldworkers on the one hand and artisans and shopworkers on the other. The tensions were in part defined by attitudes toward the standard language, with the former group rejecting the acrolect and the latter embracing it in a normative way. Labov's assumption of upward ascription would miss this locally--and linguistically--important distinction, lumping both groups into a single position which showed predictable but empirically inexplicable variation.

Get cites from bailey article in Camb. vol IV: 37-63, esp 48-49.

glossary: acrolect, etic