Soviet sociolinguistics

[J F Levin]

At 08:11 AM 9/19/2010, you wrote:

>To my chagrin I don't know of any socio-linguistic studies of
>phonetics in Russian. I would love to see the description of various
>social groups in one city, let's say Moscow, "valley girls" vs.
>working class vs. market salesmen/women.
The results of the questionnaire I referred to 
that was reported in one of the two
books mentioned in my review article (see below) 
included much phonological data,
all in the speech of "filologi", defined as 
people in Moscow who made a living from words--college
students, intelligentzia, etc.  The parameters 
were defined in detail in the book.  [I am writing this from
memory, since I do not have a copy of my own 
article in front of me--so I may be inaccurate in details]
Some of the phonic details [NB  I am being 
noncommital re phonemic status] were things like hardening
of /r'/ and /n'/ before palatalized consonants.
One of my criticisms was that the pre-selected 
sample, while okay in quantity, deliberately excluded the possibility
of class distinctions that you point to above.  I 
attributed this to a reluctance to discuss such possible class issues back
then.   There were some interesting parameters 
(age, profession, male vs female speakers?), but 
some were ignored (as I recall, and I confess 
that as I write this more memories are coming 
back), e.g., speakers whose parents were not 
native speakers of Russian (what % of Moscovites 
in the '80's?) were included in the survey, but 
were not separated out in the statistics.
Jules Levin

>ep 19, 2010, â 3:00 AM, J F Levin íàïèñàë):
>
>>I published a review article of two Soviet sociolinguistic books.
>>One had many statistical data based on questionnaires of native
>>speakers.  Here is the reference:
>>L. P. Krysin & D. N. Shmelev (eds.):  Social'no-lingvisticheskie
>>issledovanija and J. D. Desheriev:  Social'naja lingvistika.
>>Language in Society, X: 1 (April 1981), 85-96.
>
>Alina Israeli
>Associate Professor of Russian
>LFS, American University
>4400 Massachusetts Ave.
>Washington DC 20016
>(202) 885-2387  fax (202) 885-1076
>aisrael at american.edu
>
>
>
>
>
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