William Labov 威廉·拉波特

William Labov (/ləˈboʊv/ lə-BOHV;^[1][2] born December 4, 1927) is an American linguist widely regarded as the founder of the discipline of variationist sociolinguistics.^[3][4] He has been described as "an enormously original and influential figure who has created much of the methodology" of sociolinguistics.^[5]
威廉·劳勃（ /ləˈboʊv/ lə-BOHV； ^{[1] [2]} 出生于 1927 年 12 月 4 日）是一位美国语言学家，普遍认为他是变体社会语言学学科的创始人。 ^{[3] [4]} 他被描述为“一个极其原创和有影响力的标志性人物，他创建了社会语言学的大部分方法论”。 ^[5]

Labov is a professor emeritus in the linguistics department of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and pursues research in sociolinguistics, language change, and dialectology. He retired in 2015 but continues to publish research.^[6]
拉博夫是费城宾夕法尼亚大学语言学系的荣誉教授，专注于社会语言学、语言变化和方言学的研究。他于 2015 年退休，但继续发表研究成果。 ^[6]

Labov was born in Passaic, New Jersey and raised in Rutherford, moving to Fort Lee at age 12. According to Labov, at his birth the physician who delivered him was William Carlos Williams.^[7] He attended Harvard University, where he majored in English and philosophy and studied chemistry.^[8] He graduated from Harvard in 1948.
拉博夫出生于新泽西州的帕塞伊克，成长于拉瑟福德，在 12 岁时搬到了福尔特利。根据拉博夫的说法，他出生时接生他的医生是威廉·卡洛斯·威廉姆斯。他在哈佛大学就读，主修英语和哲学，并学习了化学。他于 1948 年从哈佛大学毕业。

After graduating from Harvard, Labov worked as an industrial chemist in his family's business (1949–61) before turning to linguistics.^[8] For his MA thesis (1963) he completed a study of change in the dialect of Martha's Vineyard, which he presented before the Linguistic Society of America.^[6] Labov took his PhD (1964) at Columbia University, studying under Uriel Weinreich. He was an assistant professor of linguistics at Columbia (1964–70) before becoming an associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania in 1971, then a full professor,^[3] and in 1976 becoming director of the university's Linguistics Laboratory.^[9]
哈佛毕业后，Labov 在家族企业担任工业化学家（1949-61）之前转向了语言学。 ^[8] 为了他的 MA 论文（1963 年），他完成了对马萨诸塞州 Vineyard 方言变化的研究，并在语言学会前进行了展示。 ^[6] Labov 在哥伦比亚大学获得了博士学位（1964 年），在 Uriel Weinreich 的指导下。他于 1964 年至 1970 年在哥伦比亚大学担任语言学助理教授，然后在 1971 年成为宾夕法尼亚大学的副教授，之后成为全职教授， ^[3] 1976 年成为大学语言学实验室的主任。 ^[9]

The methods Labov used to collect data for his study of the varieties of English spoken in New York City, published as The Social Stratification of English in New York City (1966), have been influential in social dialectology. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, his studies of the linguistic features of African American Vernacular English (AAVE) were also influential:^[6] he argued that AAVE should not be stigmatized as substandard, but rather respected as a variety of English with its own grammatical rules.^[10][11]
劳夫在《纽约市英语的社会分层》（1966 年出版）中用于研究纽约市所使用的收集数据的方法，在社会方言学领域产生了深远影响。在 20 世纪 60 年代末至 70 年代初，他对美国黑人方言英语（AAVE）的语言特征的研究也同样产生了影响： ^[6] 他主张 AAVE 不应被污名化为低标准，而应被尊重为具有自己语法规则的英语变体。 ^{[10] [11]}

He has also pursued research in referential indeterminacy^[12] and is noted for his studies of the way ordinary people structure narrative stories of their own lives.^[13][14][15] Several of his classes are service-based, with students going to West Philadelphia to help tutor young children while simultaneously learning linguistics from different dialects such as AAVE.^[16]
他还在参考不确定性方面进行了研究，并因其对普通人如何构建自己生活叙事故事的研究而著称。他的几门课程是服务导向的，学生前往西费城帮助辅导年轻儿童，同时从不同的方言，如 AAVE，学习语言学知识。

More recently, Labov has studied ongoing changes in the phonology of English as spoken in the United States, as well as the origins and patterns of chain shifts of vowels (one sound replacing a second, replacing a third, in a complete chain). In the Atlas of North American English (2006), he and his co-authors find three major divergent chain shifts taking place today: a Southern Shift (in Appalachia and southern coastal regions); a Northern Cities Vowel Shift affecting a region from Madison, Wisconsin, east to Utica, New York; and a Canadian Shift affecting most of Canada, in addition to several minor chain shifts in smaller regions.^[17]
近年来，Labov 研究了美国英语口语中持续变化的音韵学，以及元音链转移的起源和模式（一个音取代第二个，然后取代第三个，在完整链中）。在《北美英语地图集》（2006 年）中，他和他的合著者发现当今正在进行三项主要的分歧链转移：南方转移（在阿巴拉契亚和南部沿海地区）；北方城市元音转移影响从威斯康星州麦迪逊到纽约奥塔卡的地区；以及加拿大转移影响加拿大大部分地区，以及加拿大和其他几个较小区域的几个次要链转移。

Among Labov's well-known students are Charles Boberg, Anne H. Charity Hudley, Penelope Eckert, Gregory Guy, Robert A. Leonard, Geoffrey Nunberg, Shana Poplack, and John R. Rickford. His methods were adopted in England by Peter Trudgill for Norwich speech and K. M. Petyt for West Yorkshire speech.
Labov 的著名学生包括 Charles Boberg、Anne H. Charity Hudley、Penelope Eckert、Gregory Guy、Robert A. Leonard、Geoffrey Nunberg、Shana Poplack 和 John R. Rickford。他的方法被英国的 Peter Trudgill 在诺维奇方言中采用，也被 K. M. Petyt 在西约克郡方言中采用。

Labov's works include The Study of Nonstandard English (1969), Language in the Inner City: Studies in Black English Vernacular (1972), Sociolinguistic Patterns (1972),^[18] Principles of Linguistic Change (vol.I Internal Factors, 1994; vol.II Social Factors, 2001, vol.III Cognitive and Cultural factors, 2010),^[19] and, with Sharon Ash and Charles Boberg, The Atlas of North American English (2006).^[20]
劳夫的著作包括《非标准英语研究》（1969 年），《城市内部的英语：黑人英语土语研究》（1972 年），《社会语言学模式》（1972 年）， ^[18] 《语言变化原理》（第一卷《内部因素》，1994 年；第二卷《社会因素》，2001 年；第三卷《认知和文化因素》，2010 年）， ^[19] 以及与莎伦·阿什和查尔斯·博伯格合著的《北美英语地图集》（2006 年）。 ^[20]

Labov was awarded the 2013 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Computer and Cognitive Science by the Franklin Institute with the citation for "establishing the cognitive basis of language variation and change through rigorous analysis of linguistic data, and for the study of non-standard dialects with significant social and cultural implications."^[2][21]
拉博夫因通过严谨的语言数据分析确立了语言变异和变化的认知基础，以及对具有重要社会和文化影响的非标准方言的研究，被富兰克林研究所授予 2013 年计算机与认知科学本杰明富兰克林奖章。

In "Narrative Analysis: Oral Versions of Personal Experience", Labov and Joshua Waletzky take a sociolinguistic approach to examine how language works between people. This is significant because it contextualizes the study of structure and form, connecting purpose to method. His stated purpose is to "isolate the elements of narrative"^[22].^[23]: 12 This work focuses exclusively on oral narratives.
在《叙述分析：个人经历的口头版本》中，拉博夫和约书亚·瓦莱茨基采用社会语言学的方法来探讨人们之间的语言运作方式。这很重要，因为它将结构和形式的研究置于上下文中，将目的与方法联系起来。他明确的目的在于“隔离叙述的元素” ^[22] 。 ^{[23] : 12} 这项工作仅专注于口头叙述。

Labov describes narrative as having two functions: referential and evaluative, with its referential functions orienting and grounding a story in its contextual world by referencing events in sequential order as they originally occurred,^[24] and its evaluative functions describing the storyteller's purpose in telling the story.^[25] Formally analyzing data from orally generated texts obtained via observed group interaction and interview (600 interviews were taken from several studies whose participants included ethnically diverse groups of children and adults from various backgrounds^[26]), Labov divides narrative into five or six sections:^[27]

• Abstract – gives an overview of the story.^[27]
• Orientation – Labov describes this as "referential [free clauses that] serve to orient the listener in respect to person, place, time, and behavioral situation".^[24] He specifies that these are contextual clues that precede the main story.^[27]
• Complicating action – the main story, during which the narrative unfolds. A story may consist of multiple complication sections.^[27]
• Evaluation – author evinces self-awareness, giving explicit or implicit purpose to the retelling of the story. Thus evaluation gives some indication of the significance the author attributes to their story.^[27] But evaluation can be done subtly: for instance, "lexical intensifiers [are a type of] semantically defined evaluation".^[28]
• Resolution – occurs sequentially following the evaluation. The resolution may give the story a sense of completion.^[27]
• Coda – returns listener to the present, drawing them back out of the world of the story into the world of the storytelling event. A coda is not essential to a narrative, and some narratives do not have one.^[27]

While not every narrative includes all these elements, the purpose of this subdivision is to show that narratives have inherent structural order. Labov argues that narrative units must retell events in the order they were experienced because narrative is temporally sequenced. In other words, events do not occur at random but are connected to one another; thus "the original semantic interpretation" depends on their original order.^[29][30] To demonstrate this sequence, he breaks a story down into its basic parts. He defines narrative clause as the "basic unit of narrative"^[31] around which everything else is built. Clauses can be distinguished from one another by temporal junctures,^[32] which indicate a shift in time and separate narrative clauses. Temporal junctures mark temporal sequencing because clauses cannot be rearranged without disrupting their meaning.

Labov and Waletzky's findings are important because they derived them from actual data rather than abstract theorization. Labov, Waletzky, &c., set up interviews and documented speech patterns in storytelling, keeping with the ethnographic tradition of tape-recording oral text so it can be referenced exactly. This inductive method creates a new system through which to understand story text.

One of Labov's most quoted contributions to theories of language change is his Golden Age Principle (or Golden Age Theory). It claims that any changes in the sounds or the grammar that have come to conscious awareness in a speech community trigger a uniformly negative reaction.^[33]

Communities differ in the extent to which they stigmatize the newer forms of language, but I have never yet met anyone who greeted them with applause. Some older citizens welcome the new music and dances, the new electronic devices and computers. But no one has ever been heard to say, "It's wonderful the way young people talk today. It's so much better than the way we talked when I was a kid." ... The most general and most deeply held belief about language is the Golden Age Principle: At some time in the past, language was in a state of perfection. It is understood that in such a state, every sound was correct and beautiful, and every word and expression was proper, accurate, and appropriate. Furthermore, the decline from that state has been regular and persistent, so that every change represents a falling away from the golden age, rather than a return to it. Every new sound will be heard as ugly, and every new expression will be heard as improper, inaccurate, and inappropriate. Given this principle it is obvious that language change must be interpreted as nonconformity to established norms, and that people will reject changes in the structure of language when they become aware of them.

— William Labov, Principles of Linguistic Change, Vol. 2: Social Factors (2001), p. 514

Labov's seminal work has been referenced and critically examined by a number of scholars, mainly for its structural rigidity. Kristin Langellier explains that "the purpose of Labovian analysis is to relate the formal properties of the narrative to their functions":^[34] clause-level analysis of how text affects transmission of message. This model has several flaws, which Langellier points out: it examines textual structure to the exclusion of context and audience, which often act to shape the text; it is relevant to a specific demographic (may be difficult to extrapolate); and, by categorizing the text at a clausal level, it burdens analysis with theoretical distinctions that may not be illuminating in practice.^[35] Anna De Fina remarks that [within Labov's model] "the defining property of narrative is temporal sequence, since the order in which the events are presented in the narrative is expected to match the original events as they occurred",^[36] which differs from more contemporary notions of storytelling, in which a naturally time-conscious flow includes jumping forward and back in time as mandated by, for example, anxieties felt about futures and their interplay with subsequent decisions. De Fina and Langellier both note that, though wonderfully descriptive, Labov's model is nevertheless difficult to code, thus potentially limited in application/practice.^[37] De Fina also agrees with Langellier that Labov's model ignores the complex and often quite relevant subject of intertextuality in narrative.^[38] To an extent, Labov evinces awareness of these concerns, saying "it is clear that these conclusions are restricted to the speech communities that we have examined",^[25] and "the overall structure of the narratives we've examined is not uniform".^[39] In "Rethinking Ventriloquism", Diane Goldstein uses Labovian notions of tellability—internal coherence in narrative—to inform her concept of untellability.^[40]

In 1968, Labov received the David H. Russell Award for Distinguished Research in Teaching English.^[41]

He was a Guggenheim Fellow in 1970–71 and 1987–88.^[42]

Labov has received honorary doctorates from, among others, the Faculty of Humanities at Uppsala University (1985) and University of Edinburgh (2005).^[43][44]

In 1996, he won the Leonard Bloomfield Book Award from the Linguistic Society of America (LSA) for Principles of Linguistic Change, Vol. 1.;^[20] he won the Award again in 2008 as a coauthor of the Atlas of North American English.^[20]

In 2013, Labov received a Franklin Institute Award in Computer and Cognitive Science for "establishing the cognitive basis of language variation and change through rigorous analysis of linguistic data, and for the study of non-standard dialects with significant social and cultural implications."^[45]

In 2015, he was awarded the Neil and Saras Smith Medal for Linguistics by the British Academy "for lifetime achievement in the scholarly study of linguistics" and "his significant contribution to linguistics and the language sciences".^[46]

In 2020, Labov was awarded the American Academy of Arts and Sciences' Talcott Parsons Prize, recognizing "distinguished and original contributions to the social sciences".^[3]

Labov has five children from his first marriage to Teresa Gnasso Labov: Susannah Page, Sarah Labov, Simon Labov, Joanna Labov, and Jessie Labov. In 1993, he married fellow sociolinguist Gillian Sankoff, and they have two children: Rebecca Labov and sociologist Alice Goffman,^[47] the latter of whom Labov adopted after the death of Sankoff's previous husband, Erving Goffman.^[48]

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• William Labov's home page
• Journal of English Linguistics interview Archived October 11, 2008, at the Wayback Machine
• NPR story "American Accent Undergoing Great Vowel Shift"
• Sociolinguistics: an interview with William Labov Archived October 11, 2010, at the Wayback Machine ReVEL, vol. 5, n. 9, 2007.