申論題

Part 3.(25%) Widely regarded as a pioneer in the field of variationist sociolinguistics, William Labov is known for his groundbreaking experiment on the pronunciation of postvocalic /t/ in American English. The experiment took place in 1962 in three department stores in New York City. One of his experimental procedures was as follows. First, he chose a department that happened to be on the "fourth floor" of the department store. Then, he asked an employee "Excuse me, where are ________?" (e.g., men's shoes), expecting the answer fourth floor. After the employee replied, he would say "Excuse me?", expecting a repetition of the phrase. Finally, he transcribed the two pronunciations of fourth floor he had just heard. The three stores where Labov carried the experiment were Saks, Macy's, and Klein's, which differed in their social ranking: Saks was the most expensive and prestigious and Klein's was the least so, with Macy's in between. The results are given in the graph below, which shows the percentages of postvocalic /ir/ by store and position in the phrase.
 
Percentages of postvocalic /r/ by store (S = Sak; M = Macy's; K = Klein's) and position in the phrase fourth floor. The "4th floor" on the right is the second pronunciation (Labov 1966: 175).