Philadelphia study

The Philadelphia study was a study designed to test the Curvilinear principle as referred to by William Labov, through careful gathering and analysis of research on language variants in five Philadelphia neighborhoods. His research goal was to "discover the social location of the innovators of linguistic change and therefore focuses on the embedding of individuals in their neighborhood".

Methods

To test his hypothesis, Labov identified socially and ethnically central groups by gathering information on five Philadelphia neighborhoods through census data and initial surveys. He selected particular blocks in each neighborhood as an initial research point using a specific set of criteria including full occupancy of dwellings, high levels of interaction between people, and public spaces where interaction can occur. The field workers presented their research goals to the residents broadly and "without singling out language for specific attention" in the sociolinguistic interviews. The goals of these interviews were to gather social data on the residents, their block, and the neighborhood and analyze linguistic variants without facing the problem of the observer's paradox. That is, the field workers attempted to create an environment where the speaker would speak informally.

To gauge each speaker's social position within the community, Labov created a socioeconomic status index based on education and occupation, each ranked on levels from 0 to 6, where 6 was the highest level of education or occupation. He studied a series of "new and vigorous" vowel changes, including the fronting and raising of (aw) and (ey) and the centralization of (ey). He also studied the nearly completed changes involving (ow) and (aeh) and incipient changes such as the lowering of (e) and (ae).