by Tanisha Pandey
You might have a friend whose way of speaking subtly shifts the moment they are back home. They speak a certain way when among university friends, but once they are surrounded by childhood friends or family, familiar expressions resurface, vowels sound slightly different, and certain words suddenly sound new. These moments of language change remind us that our language is tied to places we have been and moves alongside us just as we navigate the world.
For those of us who didn’t go very far from where we were born, we need only think of that true crime podcast episode where investigators narrowed down a suspect not through DNA or fingerprints, but through language. A note left at the crime scene, a pattern in spelling, particular phrasings were enough to suggest a regional background, a level of education, or the culprit’s professional training. What these anecdotes have in common is a simple but powerful idea - that language varies. Even when we speak ‘the same language’ minor differences can point to geography, social networks, or in some cases even institutional affiliation. German spoken in Zurich does not sound the same as German spoken in Vienna; similarly the German of a courtroom is markedly different than that of a classroom. This idea sits at the heart of variationist sociolinguistics.
At its core, a variationist study asks how and why people use different linguistic forms in different contexts. Rather than treating variation as noise or error, variationist sociolinguistics treats it as structured, patterned, and meaningful. Researchers look at minute phonetic, lexical, or syntactic differences and deliberate how these differences relate to variation across social factors such as class, age, profession, or place. One of the most influential examples of this approach comes from William Labov’s 1966 study of New York City department stores. Labov examined how employees pronounced the sound /r/ in words like car or fourth floor. By visiting high-status, middle-status, and lower-status stores, he showed that employees in more prestigious environments pronounced /r/ more often, while those in less prestigious settings were more likely to drop it. Crucially, speakers across all stores increased their use of /r/ when speaking carefully, suggesting that they recognized it as a more prestigious pronunciation. What this study demonstrated was not only that pronunciation varies, but that such variation reflects shared ideas about status, correctness, and social aspiration, even in brief, everyday interactions.
Building on this insight, later work showed that linguistic variation does not simply mirror broad categories like class or gender. Penny Eckert’s research on adolescents in a U.S. high school illustrated how changes in language trail local social practices. Rather than treating students as a homogeneous group, Eckert focused on peer-based communities of practice, such as the so-called “jocks” and “burnouts.” These groups differed not only in how they spoke, but also in how they dressed, where they spent their time, what music they listened to, and how they positioned themselves toward authority at school. Linguistic features came together to form distinct styles, which in turn indexed broader stances, such as aligning with a trend, resistance towards certain practices, coolness, or authority. Importantly, Eckert’s research established that adolescents were not passive imitators of social norms. They actively used linguistic variation to construct identities that mattered in their immediate social world. Language change, in this view, spreads not because speakers copy others mechanically, but because linguistic forms carry social value.
As research at the Centre for the Study of Language and Society demonstrates, these insights have concrete real-world applications. Research at the CSLS engages directly with the social consequences of linguistic variation. One project, Sound Effects, led by Prof. Adrian Leemann and Prof. Erez Levon, investigates the processes behind how regional accents in German-speaking areas come to be associated with aesthetic features (like ‘beautiful’ or ‘ugly’). A second project, Language Analysis in the Swiss Asylum System, run by Dr. Hannah Hedegard, applies sociolinguistic principles in a very different institutional setting. Here, linguistic analysis is used to assess claims about regional origin in asylum procedures within Switzerland. This work highlights both the power and the responsibility that come with analyzing language variation, showing how deeply linguistic knowledge is entangled in presuppositions, legal decisions, and speaker biographies. Taken together, these studies then remind us of the academic and practical value behind studying linguistic variation in its social context.
References
Labov, W. (2006). The social stratification of (r) in New York City department stores. In The Social Stratification of English in New York City (pp. 40–57). chapter, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Eckert, P. (2000). Linguistic variation as social practice : the linguistic construction of identity in Belten High. Blackwell.
