A Sociolinguistic Study of Long Island, Notre Dame Bay, Newfoundland

Abstract

The study reported on in this paper attempted to apply the standard methods of sociolinguistic investigation to a rural Newfoundland community (Long Island, Notre Dame Bay) in which there were no obvious socio-economic classes. Eleven linguistic variables (seven phonological plus four grammatical) were investigated in five different contextual styles. Purely linguistic conditioning was also investigated. The 24 speakers (informants) were divided into eight cells based on three binary divisions by sex, age, and education. A difference of means test was used to determine the statistical significance of observed differences in frequencies of variants.

Several interesting conclusions emerged which not only revealed Long Island's sociolinguistic structure but also yielded insights into the study of language variability in general.