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Some patterns of linguistic diffusion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Guy Bailey ,
Tom Wikle ,
Jan Tillery  and
Lori Sand
Guy Bailey
Affiliation:
Oklahoma State University
Tom Wikle
Affiliation:
Oklahoma State University
Jan Tillery
Affiliation:
Oklahoma State University
Lori Sand
Affiliation:
Oklahoma State University
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Abstract

Although variationists have explored the diffusion of linguistic changes from one social group to another and from one linguistic environment to another in some detail, they have done much less work on the spatial diffusion of changes. In fact, Trudgill's (1974, 1975) use of Hagerstrand's gravity model to explain in hierarchical diffusion of innovations in East Anglia and Norway was the only systematic account of spatial diffusion in the literature. This article uses data from the random sample telephone survey portion of a Survey of Oklahoma Dialects (SOD) to explore the spatial diffusion of linguistic innovations in Oklahoma. It analyzes that data using a variety of techniques of computer cartography and the General Linear Models procedure in SAS. The data clearly show that, whereas some linguistic innovations diffuse hierarchically (as linguists have long contended), others diffuse contrahierarchically, while still others diffuse in complex patterns that show characteristics of both contagious and hierarchical diffusion. An analysis of the barriers to and amplifiers of diffusion suggests that these different types of diffusion are a consequence of the different social meanings that linguistic forms carry.

Type
Research Article
Information
Language Variation and Change , Volume 5 , Issue 3 , October 1993 , pp. 359 - 390
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

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