Social network and social class: Toward an integrated sociolinguistic model

In sociolinguistics, approaches that use the variables of socioeconomic class and social network have often been thought to be irreconcilable. In this article, we explore the connection between these variables and suggest the outlines of a model that can integrate them in a coherent way. This depends on linking a consensus-based microlevel of network with a conflict-based macrolevel of social class. We suggest interpretations of certain sociolinguistic findings, citing detailed evidence from research in Northern Ireland and Philadelphia, which emphasize the need for acknowledging the importance of looseknit network ties in facilitating linguistic innovations. We then propose that the link between network and class can be made via the notion of weak network ties using the process-based model of the macrolevel suggested by Thomas Hejrup's theory of life-modes. (Sociolinguistics, sociology, quantitative social dialectology, anthropological linguistics) One of the most important contributions of Labov's quantitative paradigm has been to allow us to examine systematically and accountably the relationship between language variation and speaker variables such as sex, ethnicity, social network, and most importantly perhaps social class. Language variation in large and linguistically heterogeneous cities as well as in smaller communities has been revealed not as chaotic but as socially regular, and Labov and others have shown how investigating this socially patterned variation can illuminate mechanisms of linguistic change. In this article, we focus on the variables of social class and social network, both of which have appeared in some form in a large number sociolinguistic studies of variation and change. Our principal interest lies not in the complex sociological issues associated with class and network, some of which we discuss here, but in understanding the role of class and network in patterns of linguistic variation and mechanisms of linguistic change. © 1992 Cambridge University Press 0047-4045/92 $5.00 + .00