Labov on red-state/blue state

Wed Oct 22 14:48:58 UTC 2008

At 2:15 PM +0000 10/22/08, ronbutters at aol.com wrote:
>I've heard Labov on this as well, though my sense of what he is
>saying could be wrong since it comes only from conversation with
>him, not with reading anything he has written on the subject.
>
>I don't think that there is anything surprising in the observation
>that communities that communicate enough to share features of
>linguistic change would also share values that would influence
>voting patterns.
>
>Also, I was surprised that Labov seemed a bit puzzled about why the
>upper midwest should  be on the whole so much more liberal than the
>lower midwest today. Couldn't this have something to do with large
>19th-century Scandinavian settlements in the upper midwest?
>
>He also seemed puzzled about why the lower midwest should be more
>liberal than the South but less liberal than the Northeast. However,
>the lower midwest was settled primarily by people from RURAL New
>England and the mid-Atlantic states. The liberal character of the
>Northeast depends greatly on the big cities. Also, southern Ohio,
>Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, and Kansas are historically almost as
>much southern as northern. The big cities of the lower midwest are
>blue, not red.

I don't think any of your points are in conflict with what Labov was
telling us yesterday.  He definitely had the urban/rural distinction
as a factor, and the settlement patterns.  I don't know what he's
written up yet either, but apparently a lot of this is going to be in
Volume III of his _Principles of Linguistic Change_.

LH

>
>Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
>
>Date:         Tue, 21 Oct 2008 20:57:50
>To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>Subject:      Re: [ADS-L] Chomsky's endorsement
>
>
>At 7:40 PM -0500 10/21/08, Scot LaFaive wrote:
>>   >So it depends on where you're voting.
>>
>>Do you think he could make a transformational rule to take this into
>>account? Perhaps some kind of parameter for a general overarching
>>voting principle?
>>
>>Scot
>
>I don't know; the whole situation seems to call for an
>optimality-theoretic solution, with the different constraints ranked
>differently in different dialect areas.  Maybe I'm writing under the
>influence of a talk I just heard Bill Labov give in which the
>isogloss for the Northern Cities Vowel Shift is superimposed on
>voting patterns from the 19th century to the current blue state/red
>state (or actually blue counties/red counties) splits...
>
>LH
>
>>
>>
>>On Tue, Oct 21, 2008 at 12:08 PM, Laurence Horn
>><laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
>>>   ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>>-----------------------
>>>   Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>>   Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
>>>   Subject:      Re: Chomsky's endorsement
>>>
>>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>>   At 2:07 PM -0400 10/20/08, RonButters at AOL.COM wrote:
>>>>I suspect Ralph Nader will get Chomsky's vote. Nader might well claim to be
>>>>post-transformational. He is certainly running a minimalist campaign.
>>>
>>>   ;-)
>>>   Actually, though, to my surprise, there's some data on this (tip o'
>>>   the hat to Gregory Ward, who brought this to my attention):
>>>
>>>>>Chomsky says pick the lesser of two evils
>>>>>
>>>>>Noam Chomsky: People should vote against McCain and for Obama - but
>>>>>without illusions
>>>>>
>>>>>See interview at -
>>>>>
>>>>><http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view>http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=2593&updaterx=2008-10-20+10%3A50%3A58
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>Chomsky says while it's true that the two parties are essentially
>>>>>like factions of one party - the party of business - the
>>>>>differences do matter to ordinary people. If you are living in a
>>>>>swing state, there is nothing wrong with picking the lesser of two
>>>>>evils.
>>>
>>>   So it depends on where you're voting.
>  >>
>>>   LH
>>>
>>>>In a message dated 10/20/08 1:53:22 PM, hwgray at GMAIL.COM writes:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>    From the NYT:
>>>>>
>>>>>    "The description of Mr. Obama, the Democratic nominee for president,
>>>>>    as a '_transformational_ figure' by Mr. Powell ..."
>>>>>
>>>>>    Well, we know who's getting Chomsky's vote!
>>>>>
>>>>>    -Wilson
>>>>>    --
>>>>>    All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
>>>>>    come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
>>>>>    -----
>>>>>    -Mark Twain
>>>>>
>>>>>    ------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>>    The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>**************
>>>>New MapQuest Local shows what's happening at your destination.
>>>>Dining, Movies, Events, News & more. Try it out
>>>>(http://local.mapquest.com/?ncid=emlcntnew00000002)
>>>>
>>>>------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>>
>>>   ------------------------------------------------------------
>>>   The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>>
>>
>>------------------------------------------------------------
>>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org