This article shows that individuals in groups with tight-knit and dense social networks display considerable variation, despite the fact that they share a set of common social characteristics. Drawing on case studies from Tristan da Cunha English, spoken on a South Atlantic island, interindividual variation is traced in two members of the same family, who have identical social backgrounds and are in frequent face-to-face contact with each other. Results from a quantitative analysis of four selected variables and the evaluation of a perceptual dialectology study are interpreted in terms of their relevance for accommodation theory, social network theory, and mobility-related effects on language change. The study thus examines the role of individual variation and seeks to provide explanations for individuation (i.e., unexpected patterns of language usage on a micro level in single speakers), outlining its general relevance for sociolinguistic theory.
Adamson, Sylvia. 1998. Literary Language. In The Cambridge History of the English Language: Vol. 4. 1776-1997, edited by Suzanne Romaine, 589-690. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
2.
Akers, Glenn A.1981. Phonological Variation in the Jamaican Continuum. Ann Arbor, MI: Karoma.
3.
Andersen, Henning. 1988. Center and Periphery: Adoption, Diffusion and Spread. In Historical Dialectology, edited by Jacek Fisiak, 39-83. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
4.
Bailey, Guy, Natalie Maynor, and Patricia Cukor-Avila. 1989. Variation in Subject-Verb Concord in Early Modern English. Language Variation and Change1:285-300.
5.
Bailey, Guy, Tom Wikle, Jan Tillery, and Lori Sand. 1993. Some Patterns of Linguistic Diffusion. Language Variation and Change5:359-390.
6.
Bayley, Robert. 1994. Consonant Cluster Reduction in Tejano English. Language Variation and Change6:303-327.
7.
Brander, Jan. 1940. Tristan da Cunha 1506-1940. London: Allen & Unwin.
8.
Britain, David. 1991. Dialect and Space: A Geolinguistic Study of Speech Variables in the Fens. Ph.D. diss., University of Essex.
9.
Britain, David. 2002. Diffusion, Levelling, Simplification and Reallocation in Past Tense BE in the English Fens. Journal of Sociolinguistics6:16-43.
10.
Britain, David, and Andrea Sudbury. 2002. There’s Sheep and There’s Penguins: Convergence, ‘Drift’ and ‘Slant’ in New Zealand and Falkland Island English. In Language Change: The Interplay of Internal, External and Extra-Linguistic Factors, edited by Mari C. Jones and Edith Esch, 211-240. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
11.
Chambers, J. K.1984. Group and Individual Participation in a Sound Change in Progress. In Papers from the Fifth International Conference on Methods in Dialectology, edited by Henry J. Warkentyne, 119-136. Victoria, BC: Department of Linguistics, University of Victoria.
12.
Chambers, J. K.1995. Sociolinguistic Theory. Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell.
13.
Chambers, J. K., and Peter Trudgill. 1998. Dialectology. 2nd ed.Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
14.
Cheshire, Jenny. 1982. Variation in an English Dialect. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
15.
Childs, Becky, Jeffrey Reaser, and Walt Wolfram. 2003. Defining Ethnic Varieties in the Bahamas: Phonological Accommodation in Black and White Enclave Communities. In Contact Englishes of the Eastern Caribbean, edited by Michael Aceto and Jeffrey P. Williams, 1-28. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
16.
Clarke, Sandra. 1997. English Verbal -s Revisited: The Evidence from Newfoundland. American Speech72:227-259.
17.
Crabb, George. 1980. The History and Postal History of Tristan da Cunha. Self-published manuscript.
18.
Crawford, Allan. 1945. I Went to Tristan. London: Allen & Unwin.
19.
Crawford, Allan. 1982. Tristan da Cunha and the Roaring Forties. Edinburgh, UK: Charles Skilton Ltd.
20.
Crawford, Allan. 1999. Of Potatoes, Penguins and Postage Stamps. Oswestry: Anthony Nelson.
21.
Dorian, Nancy. 1994. Varieties of Variation in a Very Small Place: Social Homogeneity, Prestige Norms and Linguistic Variation. Language70:631-696.
22.
Earle, Augustus. [1832] 1966. Narrative of a Residence on the Island of Tristan D’Acunha in the South Atlantic Ocean. Reprint, Oxford, UK: Clarendon.
23.
Eisikovits, Edina. 1991. Variation in Subject-Verb Agreement in Inner Sydney English. In English around the World: Sociolinguistic Perspectives, edited by Jenny Cheshire, 235-255. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
24.
Evans, Dorothy. 1994. Schooling in the South Atlantic Islands 1661-1992. Oswestry: Anthony Nelson.
25.
Fasold, Ralph. 1972. Tense Marking in Black English: A Linguistic and Social Analysis. Arlington, VA: Center for Applied Linguistics.
26.
Feagin, Crawford L.1979. Variation and Change in Alabama English. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press.
27.
Forsstrœm, Gunnar. 1948. The Verb ‘to be’in Middle English: A Survey of the Forms. Lund: C. W. K. Gleerup.
28.
Gane, Douglas. 1928. Tristan da Cunha: An Empire Outpost and Its Keepers with Glimpses of Its Past and Considerations of the Future. London: Allen & Unwin.
29.
Green, Lisa. 2002. African American English. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
30.
Guy, Gregory. 1980. Variation in the Group and in the Individual: The Case of Final Stop Deletion. In Locating Language in Time and Space, edited by William Labov, 1-36. New York: Academic Press.
31.
Hancock, Ian. 1991. St. Helenian English. In Development and Structures of Creole Languages, edited by Francis Byrne and Thom Huebner, 17-28. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
32.
Harrington, Jonathan, Sallyanne Palethorpe, and Catherine I. Watson. 2000. Does the Queen Speak the Queen’s English? Nature408:927-928.
33.
Hay, Jennifer, and Daniel Schreier. 2004. Reversing the Trajectory of Language Change: Past Be Regularization in New Zealand English. Language Variation and Change16:209-235.
34.
Hazen, Kirk. 1994. Subject-Verb Concord in Vernacular Varieties of English. M.A. thesis, North Carolina State University.
35.
Hazen, Kirk. 2000a. Identity and Ethnicity in the Rural South: A Sociolinguistic View through Past and Presentbe (Publication of the American Dialect Society, PADS 83). Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
36.
Hazen, Kirk. 2000b. Subject-Verb Concord in a Post-Insular Dialect: The Gradual Persistence of Dialect Patterning. Journal of English Linguistics28:127-144.
37.
Holm, John. 1988. Pidgins and Creoles. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
38.
Holmes, Janet, and Allan Bell. 1994. Consonant Cluster Reduction in New Zealand English. Wellington Working Papers in Linguistics6:56-82.
39.
Hughes, Arthur, and Peter Trudgill. 1996. English Accents and Dialects: An Introduction to Social and Regional Varieties of British English. 3rd ed.London: Edward Arnold.
40.
Jespersen, Otto. 1961. A Modern English Grammar: Part IV. Syntax. London: Allen & Unwin.
41.
Johnstone, Barbara. 1996. The Linguistic Individual: Self-Expression in Language and Linguistics. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
42.
Khan, Farhat. 1991. Final Consonant Cluster Simplification in a Variety of Indian English. In English around the World: Sociolinguistic Perspectives, edited by Jenny Cheshire, 288-298. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
43.
Labov, William. 1963. The Social Motivation of a Sound Change. Word19:273-307.
44.
Labov, William. 1972. Language in the Inner City: The Black English Vernacular. Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press.
45.
Labov, William, Sharon Ash, and Charles Boberg. 2005. The Atlas of North American English: Phonetics, Phonology and Sound Change. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
46.
Labov, William, Paul Cohen, Clarance Robins, and John Lewis. 1968. A Study of the Non-Standard English of Negro and Puerto Rican Speakers in New York City. Final report, Cooperative Research Project 3288), Educational Research Information Center, Washington, D.C.
47.
Lass, Roger. 1999. Phonology and Morphology. In The Cambridge History of the English Language: Vol. III. 1476-1776, edited by Roger Lass, 56-186. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
48.
Mallinson, Christine, and Walt Wolfram. 2002. Dialect Accommodation in a Bi-Ethnic Mountain Enclave Community: More Evidence on the Development of African American English. Language in Society31:743-775.
49.
Meechan, Margaret, and Michelle Foley. 1994. On Resolving Disagreement: Linguistic Theory and Variation—There’s Bridges. Language Variation and Change6:63-85.
50.
Milroy, James. 1983. On the Sociolinguistic History of/h/-Dropping in English. In Current Topics in English Linguistics, edited by Michael Davenport, Erik Hansen, and Hans Frede Nielsen, 37-66. Odense, Denmark: Odense University Press.
51.
Milroy, James. 1992a. Linguistic Variation and Change: On the Historical Sociolinguistics of English. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
52.
Milroy, James. 1992b. Middle English Dialectology. In The Cambridge History of the English Language: Vol. II. 1066-1476, edited by Norman Blake, 156-206. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
53.
Milroy, James, and Leslie Milroy. 1978. Belfast: Change and Variation in an Urban Vernacular. In Sociolinguistic Patterns in British English, edited by Peter Trudgill, 19-36. London: Edward Arnold.
54.
Milroy, James, and Leslie Milroy. 1985. Linguistic Change, Social Network and Speaker Innovation. Journal of Linguistics21:339-384
55.
Milroy, Lesley. 1987. Language and Social Networks. 2nd ed.Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
56.
Montgomery, Michael. 1989. Exploring the Roots of Appalachian English. English World-Wide10:227-278.
57.
Montgomery, Michael. 1994. The Evolution of Verbal Concord in Scots. In Proceedings of the Third International Conference on the Languages of Scotland, edited by A. Fenton and D. A. MacDonald, 81-95. Edinburgh, UK: Canongate Academic Press.
58.
Munch, Peter. 1945. Sociology of Tristan da Cunha. Oslo, Norway: Det Norske Videnskaps-Akademi.
59.
Munch, Peter. 1971. Crisis in Utopia. London: Longman.
60.
Ojanen, A.-L. 1982. A Syntax of the Cambridgeshire Dialect. Licentiate thesis, University of Helsinki.
61.
Patrick, Peter L.1991. Creoles at the Intersection of Variable Processes: -t, d Deletion and Past Marking in the Jamaican Mesolect. Language Variation and Change3:171-189.
62.
Patrick, Peter L.1999. Urban Jamaican Creole: Variation in the Mesolect (Varieties of English around the World G17). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
63.
Poplack, Shana, and Sali Tagliamonte. 1989. There’s No Tense Like the Present: Verbal -s Inflection in Early Black English. Language Variation and Change1:47-84.
64.
Preston, Dennis, ed. 1999. The Handbook of Perceptual Dialectology. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
65.
Quirk, Randolph, and C. L. Wrenn. 1960. An Old English Grammar. London: Methuen.
66.
Rickford, John R.1999. African American Vernacular English: Features, Evolution and Educational Implications. Cambridge, UK: Blackwell.
67.
Rogers, Rose. 1925. The Lonely Island. London: Allen & Unwin.
68.
Santa Ana, Otto. 1996. Sonority and Syllable Structure in Chicano English. Language Variation and Change8:63-91.
69.
Schilling-Estes, Natalie. 2002. On the Nature of Isolated and Post-Isolated Dialects: Innovation, Variation and Differentiation. Journal of Sociolinguistics6:64-85.
70.
Schilling-Estes, Natalie, and Walt Wolfram. 1994. Convergent Explanation and Alternative Regularization Patterns: Were/Weren’t Leveling in a Vernacular English Variety. Language Variation and Change6:273-302.
71.
Schneider, Edgar. 1983. The Origin of the Verbal -s in Early Black English. American Speech58:99-113.
72.
Schneider, Edgar. 1989. American Earlier Black English: Morphological and Syntactic Variables. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.
73.
Schreier, Daniel. 2002a. Terra Incognita in the Anglophone World: Tristan da Cunha, South Atlantic Ocean. English World-Wide23:1-29.
74.
Schreier, Daniel. 2002b. Past Be in Tristan da Cunha: The Rise and Fall of Categoricality in Language Change. American Speech77:71-99.
75.
Schreier, Daniel. 2003a. Isolation and Language Change: Contemporary and Sociohistorical Evidence from Tristan da Cunha English. Houndmills, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
76.
Schreier, Daniel. 2003b. Convergence and Language Shift in New Zealand: Consonant Cluster Reduction in 19th Century Maori English. Journal of Sociolinguistics7:378-391.
77.
Schreier, Daniel. 2003c. Tracing the History of Dialect Transplantation in Post-Colonial English: The Case of 3rd Person Singular Present Tense Zero in Tristan da Cunha English. Folia Linguistica Historica23 (1-2): 115-131.
78.
Schreier, Daniel. 2003d. Insularity and Linguistic Endemicity. Journal of English Linguistics31:249-272.
79.
Schreier, Daniel. 2005. Consonant Change in English Worldwide: Synchrony Meets Diachrony. Houndmills, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
80.
Schreier, Daniel, and Karen Lavarello-Schreier. 2003. Tristan da Cunha: History People Language. London: Battlebridge.
81.
Schreier, Daniel, and Peter Trudgill. 2006. The Segmental Phonology of 19th Century Tristan da Cunha English: Convergence and Local Innovation. English Language and Linguistics10:119-141.
82.
Siegel, Jeff. 1985. Koines and Koineisation. Language in Society14:357-378.
83.
Siegel, Jeff. 1987. Language Contact in a Plantation Environment. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
84.
Smith, Jennifer, and Sali Tagliamone. 1998. We Was All Thegither, I Think We Were All Thegither: Was Regularization in Buckie English. World Englishes17:105-126.
85.
Tagliamonte, Sali. 1998. Was/Were Variation across the Generations: View from the City of York. Language Variation and Change10:153-191.
86.
Tagliamonte, Sali, and Jennifer Smith. 2000. Old Was, New Ecology: Viewing English through the Sociolinguistic Filter. In The English History of African American English, edited by Shana Poplack, 141-171. Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell.
87.
Tagliamonte, Sali, and Rosalind Temple. 2005. New perspectives on an ’ol variable: (t, d) in British English: New Evidence for Methods and Interpretation. Language Variation and Change17:281-302.
88.
Taylor, Wiliam F.1856. Some Account of the Settlement of Tristan d’Acunha in the South Atlantic Ocean. London: Cassell.
89.
Torbert, Benjamin. 2001. Tracing Native American Language History through Consonant Cluster Reduction: The Case of Lumbee English. American Speech76:361-387.
90.
Trudgill, Peter. 1973. Linguistic Change and Diffusion: Description and Explanation in Sociolinguistic Dialect Geography. Language in Society3:215-246.
91.
Trudgill, Peter. 1974. The Social Differentiation of English in Norwich. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
92.
Trudgill, Peter. 1986. Dialects in Contact. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
93.
Trudgill, Peter. 1998. Third Person Singular Zero: African American English, East Anglian Dialects and Spanish Persecution in the Low Countries. Folia Linguistica Historica18:139-148.
94.
Visser, Fredericus. 1963-1973. An Historical Syntax of the English Language. 3 vols. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
95.
Wakelin, M. F.1977. English Dialects: An Introduction. London: Athlone.
96.
Wakelin, M. F.1986. The Southwest of England (Varieties of English around the World 5). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
97.
Wakelin, M. F.1994. Discovering English Dialects. 4th ed.Princes Risborough: Shire Publications.
98.
Wells, John. 1982. Accents of English. 3 vols. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
99.
Wolfram, Walt. 1969. A Sociolinguistic Description of Detroit Negro Speech. Arlington, VA: Center for Applied Linguistics.
100.
Wolfram, Walt, and Donna Christian. 1976. Appalachian Speech. Arlington, VA: Center for Applied Linguistics.
101.
Wolfram, Walt, Becky Childs, and Benjamin Torbert. 2000. Tracing Language History through Consonant Cluster Reduction: Comparative Evidence from Isolated Dialects. Southern Journal of Linguistics24:17-40.
102.
Wolfram, Walt, Natalie Schilling-Estes, Kirk Hazen, and Chris Craig. 1997. The Sociolinguistic Complexity of Quasi-Isolated Southern Coastal Communities. In Language Variety in the South Revisited, edited by Cynthia Bernstein, Tom Nunnally, and Robin Sabino, 173-187. Birmingham: University of Alabama Press.
103.
Wyld, Henry. 1936. A History of Modern Colloquial English. 3rd ed.Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
104.
Zettersten, Arne. 1969. The English of Tristan da Cunha (Lund Studies in English 37). Lund, Sweden: Gleerup.
