Talk:William Labov

Weasel words?
"He is widely regarded as the founder of the discipline of variationist sociolinguistics..." 86.132.138.57 03:56, 13 June 2007 (UTC)


 * A Google search will confirm that he is "widely" regarded as the founder of sociolinguistics; see e.g. (under Nov 08, 2006);  (bottom of page); ;  (under 2.1);  (in sidebar). But I take your point. How would you recommend rewriting it? AJD 13:07, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
 * "Influential reliable source X has described him as the founder of sociolinguistics.&lt;ref>Reference to influential reliable source&lt;/ref>". —Angr 15:21, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Thing is, I'm not sure what counts as an "influential reliable source" on the question of whether Labov is the founder of sociolinguistics. In a case like this, it seems to me more telling that a wide variety of unrelated sources have given him that description that than any one particular "influential" source does. What kind of source would you recommend looking for? AJD 16:50, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, "influential" is debatable, but certainly a reliable source from someone who actually knows something about linguistics (i.e. not a newspaper reporter) and who is neither Labov himself nor one of his students. One example could be A Student's Dictionary of Language and Linguistics by the late R. L. Trask (a well known syntactician of Basque), where it is said that Labov is "an enormously original and influential figure who has created much of the methodology of the discipline [of sociolinguistics]". You could also look in books on the history of linguistics as well as sociolinguistics textbooks, but these tend to follow the principle of show, don't tell in that they show his importance by constantly referring to him and discussing his findings rather than saying in so many words "if it weren't for him, sociolinguistics as we know it probably wouldn't exist" (even though they all know that's true). —Angr 19:13, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
 * That's not a bad quote right there; could you put into the article with citation? I've also found something from The Handbook of Language Variation and Change that I can add. AJD 21:52, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

pronunciation
I've always heard this rhyme with above. kwami 02:11, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
 * According to the interview at, he pronounces it to rhyme with "clove". —Angr 04:24, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Okay. I wonder how the l'above pronunciation got started. kwami 05:48, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I think you are misinterpreting the interview. The interviewer gives Labov two pronunciations to choose from. One of the pronunciations is given as . If the other one (given as ) is supposed to be, then the interviewer is asking Labov, who is usually pronounced , whether he pronounces his last name or . How likely is that? Timeineurope 09:44, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Who says Labov is "usually" pronounced ? Indeed, that particular mispronunciation must be comparatively rare, if Matt Gordon didn't even give it as an option. In any event, is the correct pronunciation. AJD 13:44, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Still, I agree it would have been less leading if the interviewer had simply asked, "How do you pronounce your last name?" For a long time, before I heard anyone pronounce it, I thought it was . —Angr 16:04, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
 * For the record, AJD and Angr are the same person. Timeineurope 16:24, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Excuse me? AJD 18:31, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
 * At 13:41, 23 October (UTC), AJD reverted me here at William Labov with the edit summary "rv to correct pronunciation". 36 minutes later, Angr reverted me at Lafayette, Colorado with the exact same edit summary "rv to correct pronunciation". I'm sure people can draw their own conclusions. Timeineurope 12:19, 24 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes, namely that when you start adding mispronunciations in one place, people look to see where else you've done it. They don't have to be the same people. —Angr 16:30, 24 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Matt Gordon's colleagues pronounce it, at least a couple years ago. Maybe he's tried correcting them. kwami 17:38, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

William Labov himself pronounces his own name but some of his colleagues and students say, so the latter must be considered an alternate pronunciation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Yes390 (talk • contribs) 20:39, 14 December 2019 (UTC)
 * No, that's not how names work. AJD (talk) 21:17, 14 December 2019 (UTC)
 * I don't know what you mean by "that's not how names work." Furthermore, your pronunciation is not a standard Wikipedia pronunciation. Here's a link to Wikipedia's pronunciation standard: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA/English — Preceding unsigned comment added by Yes390 (talk • contribs) 02:49, 15 December 2019 (UTC)
 * The correct pronunciation of a name is invariably the one its bearer uses. An alternative pronunciation may be noteworthy if it's used by a sizeable population (cf. Dick Cheney) or the person has been dead for so long that the language has changed, but this is not such a case. Nardog (talk) 06:39, 16 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Exactly: The name bearer says but many others say . Is your point that the latter, although common, is actually a mispronunciation and should therefore be omitted? What is the point of giving the same pronunciation twice in different notations? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Yes390 (talk • contribs) 04:18, 17 December 2019 (UTC)
 * By a sizeable population I mean millions of people. I don't think that many people know who he is.
 * Oh, is what you meant by "your pronunciation"? That's a respelling, which is allowed to accompany an English IPA as an aid (or compromise, depending on how you look at it) for those not familiar with the IPA (see WP:PRON). See Wikipedia, Lepidoptera, and Indonesia for examples. But, granted, given this is an article about a linguist, we may as well do away with it. Nardog (talk) 05:46, 17 December 2019 (UTC)
 * And yes, /ləˈbʌv/ is a mispronunciation and should therefore be omitted. AJD (talk) 05:58, 17 December 2019 (UTC)

Pronunciation of name
Although no further citation for the pronunciation of his name is necessary than the one given, it is confirmed by the audio interview at, where the reporter consistently pronounced the name. —Angr 16:54, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
 * For what it's worth, I did my dissertation under him, and I and pretty much everyone else who personally knows him pronounces it or  (depending on whether we have monophthongal  or not).DBowie (talk) 01:00, 23 January 2008 (UTC)


 * I am currently enrolled in one of his linguistics classes at the University of Pennsylvania, and on the first day of class he most certainly introduced himself as Bill . -User:Robearsn 20:08, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Does anybody have a photo of Labov?
Certainly somebody out there must have a photo of Labov. It would be nice to share it with the wider world. Pete unseth (talk) 19:40, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

I agree. It would be interesting to see what he looks like. I wonder why it's not here yet. Can he be against his photo being put up here? EkaterinaMir (talk) 03:50, 9 February 2017 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Meliosem (talk • contribs) 02:42, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

Question about ANAE
Note that this may be a little off topic. However, it is about one of Labov's works. I was reading text from the ANAE(2006) that puzzled me. The text is as follows:
 * English short vowels cannot occur word-ﬁnally in stressed position, so there are no words of the phonetic form [bɪ, bɛ, ba, bo or bʊ].

I am a little confused why Labov et al. are referring to the vowel [o] as a short vowel. Typically when they use brackets, they are addressing the vowels in IPA notation. And in the IPA, represents "roughly" the English long o.  Can anybody help me with this? Thank you.LakeKayak (talk) 01:53, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Isn't his [o] IPA ? He's known to use non-IPA notation in some cases, e.g. [ay] instead of . Mr KEBAB (talk) 03:17, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
 * If the "o" were in slashes, then it would mean /ɒ/. However, this is in square brackets.  When he puts symbols in square brackets, he typically is using the standard IPA notation.LakeKayak (talk) 03:53, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Well it must mean anyway, because to say that  (=) doesn't occur word-finally in stressed position is pure ignorance (see go, no, low). I wouldn't accuse Labov of being that stupid (by 'stupid' I mean that it's phonology 101 and he must know this) ;) Plus,  is not considered a short vowel in English phonetics/phonology, unlike . Mr KEBAB (talk) 10:45, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

I wouldn't consider Labov as being "stupid," either. Hence why I was in question. However, I think I now have an understanding of what he meant. And I thank you for your help.LakeKayak (talk) 13:06, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Education
Would it be helpful for the reader to add Labov studied English and Philosophy at Harvard? Kkanders55 (talk) 18:45, 24 September 2017 (UTC)