Talk that Counts Age, Gender, and Social Class Differences in Discourse [Paperback]

Talk That Countsis a sociolinguistic study of variation in discourse employing quantitative methods to explore age, gender, and social class differences in the use of features such asyou know, I mean,adverbs, and pronouns.

Unlike many studies of discourse variation that focus on a single social factor,Talk That Countsexamines age, gender, and social class differences in a gender-balanced sample of middle-class and working-class adolescents and adults, recorded under the same conditions. Differences between adults and adolescents provided the greatest number of statistically significant results, followed by differences between males and females. The smallest number of statistically significant differences were related to social class. The range of variation underlines the need to look at more than a single extra-linguistic variable when examining discourse. It also shows the dangers of generalizing about social class, for example, on the basis of a limited sample (e.g., adolescent boys).

InTalk That Counts, distinguished sociolinguist Ronald Macaulay presents an important new approach to the sociolinguistic investigation of discourse variation.

Overall, this is a book to which I will return again and again. It provides us with a wealth of data, a model for future research, and a basis for future theory building. --Linguist List 16.1592

Ronald K. S. Macaulayis Emeritus Professor of Linguistics at Pitzer College. He is the author ofLanguage, Social Class and Education(1977),Locating Dialect in Discourse(1991),The Social Art(1995), andStandards and Variation in Urban Speech(1997).