Language and Literature Blog #13 Labov's Department Store Study

Labov's Department Store Study

Labov's research in the Lower East Side of New York City showed that individual speech patterns were part of a highly systematic structure of social and stylistic stratification. He studied how often the final or preconsonantal (r) was sounded in words like guard, bare and beer. Use of this variable has considerable prestige in New York City. It can be measured very precisely, and its high frequency in speech makes it possible to collect data quickly.

One self-contained part of the research has become particularly well known. The speech of sales assistants in three Manhattan stores, drawn from the top (Saks), middle (Macy's) and bottom (Klein's) of the price and fashion scale. Each unwitting informant was approached with a factual enquiry designed to elicit the answer - "Fourth floor" - which may or may not contain the variable final or preconsonantal (r). A pretence not to have heard it obtained a repeat performance in careful, emphatic style.

The findings were that the sales assistants from Saks used it most, those from Klein's used it least and those from Macy's showed the greatest upward shift when they were asked to repeat.









The results from the department store study highlight the main themes of the research. Frequency of use of the prestige variable final or preconsonantal (r) varied with level of formality and social class.

Language and Literature Blogpost #12

Linguistic Imperialism refers to the transfer of a dominant language to other people. Linguistic imperialism can have major impacts on people's lives, identities, and their respective communities. English is Earth's most dominant language and there's no doubt that English linguistic imperialism brings bad effects to the indigenous language and original culture of countries whose first language is not English (Every country except the U.S and the U.K.)

Firstly English linguistic imperialism can lead to language loss or in other words, the indigenous language of a country is/will no longer be used by their own people, for example the Middle East and China are two great examples. Language loss is just the first part of the huge chain-reaction that will eventually lead to the loss of people's culture since language is the key to culture and is also considered to be the main aspect which runs a culture, after that we may even lose our identities, without language and culture a human is just an ordinary person without proper cultural backgrounds speaking a foreign language, and to add insult to injury, in the modern era there is no patriotism which drives someone to be supportive and loyal to one's country; therefore this will just speed up the process of language and cultural loss.

Language and Literature Blog-post #11

This paper one text labelled "Food Crisis in Sahel" falls under the advertisements section due to it's persuasive content, but comes in the shape of an educational article written and published by the widely-recognized charitable confederation known as Oxfam. It's structure follows the ones of an article, it includes 3 parts, an introduction which contains numbers and statistics which would signify to the readers that this is an informative piece right from the start, the situation in the Sahel region, and what the organization is doing to solve this issue. The key advertising claims used in the ad include the problem/solution and the scientific/statistical claims while the advertising technique used is the conflict technique in which the audience and intended viewers of the ad want to see the conflict resolved.


A sad tone and mood runs throughout the entirety of the article with all the gloomy and dreary statistics that people in the Sahel region will be going to face if the problem is not resolved in the upcoming future, the structure of this text helps in emphasizing this sad tone because it begins off with introducing negative statistical information at the beginning then introduces the problem that will and might happen in the future if nothing is done to prevent this; but shines some light on a solution by giving the people hope that if they do certain things this conflict can be completely avoided.


This text takes the perspective of an employee at the Oxfam confederation because of the pronoun "we" that the writer constantly uses throughout the piece. Also, this text was retrieved from the Oxfam website suggesting that the intended audience would be the people who are interested in recent deficits and want to help out in any way possible, while the main purpose of this text is to inform the people about this likely issue and to persuade them to help out and support the confederation by any plausible means possible.


All in all, this text suggests that nations in the Sahel region are under risk of an epidemic while the issue consists of different causes which includes shortages in both food and water supplies, and that approximately twelve million people will be made victims of this dreadful catastrophe if nothing is done to prevent this situation from recurring once again, as it did in 2005 and 2008, and to add insult to injury almost 300,000 people die from mal-nutrition (lack of nutrients) in a "non-crisis year"