Labov on red-state/blue state

[ronbutters at AOL.COM]

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.

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
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
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>
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