IDENTITY, DISCOURSE, AND LANGUAGE VARIATION

Recent work in sociolinguistics has not taken advantage of the correla tion between emerging features of a variety and the degree to which th e individual identity of persons within the region where that variety is taking hold determines the rapidity with which such features are ad opted. The authors et amine the spread of the Northern Cities Vowel Sh ift into nonurban, northern Michigan and find that speakers who have l ess local loyalty, as expressed in respondent interviews, are more adv anced in the shift, as revealed in acoustic measurements of the positi on, of vowels involved in the early stages of the shift.