Abstract
Within both the sociolinguistic and dialectological traditions of studying language variation and change, New York City (NYC) has played a fundamental role in defining the shape and scope of the research agenda. As first studied by Eugene Babbitt in 1896, the regional variety known as New York City English (NYCE) has been the subject of a number of intensive investigations in the nearly 120 years since. Most notable among these is William Labov’s 1966 Social Stratification of English in New York City (SSENYC), which set the blueprint for variationist work. Since its publication, a number of innovative studies have maintained focus on NYC as a strong research center for exploring complex interactions among language variation, race, ethnicity, age, gender, and social identity.
Given the emphasis placed on NYC in past studies, it is perhaps surprising that, until now, there has not been an attempt to provide a summary meta-analysis of the important findings of this body of work, nor the implications of these findings when considered in toto. Michael Newman’s New York City English changes this story by providing such a cumulative literature review. The book also adds new data to the growing body of recent work focusing on other urban areas located throughout the United States, in cities such as Chicago, New Orleans, Raleigh, Pittsburgh, Columbus, and San Francisco. These new results come via Newman’s analysis of his own sample of New Yorkers, referred to as “BQ-16.”
Divided into eight chapters, Newman’s discussion of NYCE is broad in scope, expansive in detail, and ambitious in aim. Not only does the book attempt to cover the most important trends identified in previous studies and expand on them with new data, it also attempts to summarize findings across linguistic domains (phonetics and phonology, morphology and syntax, discourse, lexicon, and general linguistic history).
In chapter 1, Newman explains how he will compare and contrast previous studies and his own new NYCE survey. The book owes a large debt to Labov’s SSENYC, which frames a good deal of the book’s linguistic analysis. In discussing social factors, however, Newman draws on a much more racially and geographically diverse sample of speakers, focusing on speakers not just from the Lower East Side, as Labov did, but also from the boroughs of Queens and Brooklyn. Further, he includes a number of Black, Latino, and Asian speakers, along with Whites, whereas SSENYC primarily focused on White speakers. Following the discussion of these preliminaries, the remainder of the chapter provides basic definitions of key terms used throughout the book. Although directed at the “lay reader,” linguists with less training in sociolinguistic methods will also find this material beneficial.
In chapter 2, Newman introduces the geographic, demographic, and cultural factors that impact any NYCE study. Here, he motivates the inclusion of his BQ-16 sample: a collection of sociolinguistic interviews with sixteen speakers (eight women and eight men) who are life-long residents of either Brooklyn or Queens, representing various ethnoracial backgrounds. This group saliently illustrates a number of the distinctive ethnically- and racially-patterned features in present-day NYCE.
Chapters 3-6 document extensively the linguistic patterns identified since Babbitt’s (1896) study. These chapters offer not only a detailed meta-analysis of previous studies, but also new perspectives on variation in NYCE in the form of phonetic, lexical, and morphosyntactic analyses from Newman’s data sets, including his BQ-16 interviews.
Chapter 3 focuses on phonetics and phonology, the most well researched and thoroughly explored material in the book. Within this discussion, Labov’s SSENYC is drawn on heavily as a useful baseline for documenting sound changes in NYCE throughout the twentieth century; earlier studies of NYCE also receive some attention. Although vowels play a central part in the discussion (in particular, variation related to /æ/ and the low back vowels /ɑ/ and /ɔ/), consonantal features of NYCE, such as r-lessness, l-vocalization, and variation in the realization of /ð/ and /θ/ are also included. Among recent studies of NYCE speech, Newman draws on works by Becker (2010) and Wong (2012), among others, which demonstrate vowel variation patterns occurring in present-day speech, and his BQ-16 sample. Taken together, these data show an overall change of the phonological character of NYCE, with classic distinctive features of the dialect receding. For example, the split short-a system (where /ae/ is raised before some types of consonants but not others) and the raising of /ɔ/ are being replaced by a more “general American” trend of /ɔ/ lowering and even merger with /ɑ/ among some speakers. Newman’s BQ-16 data add an interesting twist by showing that the general loss of these features may be happening more slowly in areas outside of the Lower East Side.
Within each of the subsequent three chapters covering linguistic subfields, the depth of the findings varies greatly. Less work has been done in these areas, especially morphology and syntax (chapter 4); Newman attempts to address these gaps by including some new data sources. For morphology, Newman is able to draw upon only one previous study for thorough discussion—Atwood’s (1953) survey of verb forms across the Eastern United States. To expand the material, Newman provides additional analysis of his own from an Internet survey that collected data on lexical items. This work extracts some morphological information by looking at varying forms of you (youse, youse guys, etc.) and discusses how these forms are used in NYCE. Syntax fares somewhat better, mostly because of work done on African American English (AAE) by previous researchers who have identified a number of “classic features” in NYC AAE (including copula deletion, invariant be, and remote past BIN). Additional material on syntax comes from Newman’s study of the use of Spanish calques among speakers in his BQ-16 corpus, as well as work on Yiddish by Feinstein (1980) and others.
Turning to discourse factors (chapter 5), the well is again rather dry in regards to the number of studies done on NYCE, though Newman provides an in-depth accounting of the studies which do exist. He discusses three discourse contexts that speak to ethnoracial diversity in NYCE: New York Jewish Conversational Style, African American communicative genres, and bilingual repertoires among Hispanics and Latinos. As his discussion reveals, each style has its own rich character, and each illustrates how researchers have only begun to skim the surface of what’s available to learn about NYCE from this perspective.
In regard to lexicon, Newman’s literature review throughout chapter 6 reveals a more robust set of studies available. Via this discussion Newman is able to tie his own work on the use of the N-word into the richer tapestry of studies done since original fieldwork for The Linguistic Atlas of the United States and Canada during the 1930s.
In chapter 7, Newman turns to detailing historical studies of NYC. Here again, he contributes new material, demonstrating that more might be learned about the early stages of NYCE if the right sorts of sources are investigated. Newman explores the work of writers such as Horatio Alger and Stephen Crane, who Newman argues are fairly authentic in their depiction of nineteenth-century NYCE speech. This authenticity is partially explored and verified via Newman’s inclusion of examples from American Dialect Society (ADS) listserv member posts drawn from actual nineteenth century texts the listserv members have come across over time. Finally, chapter 8 provides additional suggestions for areas of future research on NYCE and gives one final, brief diachronic overview of the changing character of NYCE, this time through the lens of the three waves of variation study, as defined by Eckert (2012).
Given the topography of the material Newman attempts to cover, one might expect the book to fall flat, as there are many domains to summarize and interrelate, with some much less well explored than others. Yet overall, Newman navigates the material nicely, and the book is a wonderful addition to the published studies on language variation and change in NYC. More generally, it is an important resource for the growing body of work on language variation and change in urban areas.
The book meets its goal of providing the layperson with a useful guidebook, while, at the same time, it provides the seasoned linguistic researcher with detailed analysis. Newman’s writing style is both entertaining and informative. Overall, the book’s strongest attribute is that it ties together the findings of studies conducted in a variety of areas over the years, comprehensively summarizing those findings and also reanalyzing them to tell an updated story. Another strength is Newman’s willingness to open new avenues of research through the use of his previously unanalyzed data.
In sum, the book is an excellent read for anyone interested in NYCE or the study of variation and change in US English. It is also one that the field should look to as a model for future studies of urban communities, particularly in how it treats findings from across the domains of linguistic structure. The general population is often interested in learning about the lexicon and more overtly noticeable syntactic, morphological, and discourse contextual patterns—not just the phonetic/phonological items most often the focus of linguistic studies. As well, as Newman’s work shows in several cases, sometimes the key to understanding variation in one area (say, phonetic) can come from understanding variation in another (say, lexical). This is demonstrated by his discussion of the use of the N-word among AAE speakers in chapter 6. Understanding the patterns across domains, such as in AAE syntax and discourse genres, give us a better understanding of the nuances that can separate different speech groups within larger speech communities in urban settings.
The emphasis that Newman places on ethnic variation in the urban setting is also one that sociolinguistics should heed more robustly as a field. Though recent studies have been more comprehensive in this regard, Newman’s work reminds us that we still tend to be too simplistic in our approach when we only focus on a limited set of ethnic and racial groups in our studies. As “big data” approaches become more the norm in sociolinguistic studies of urban areas, it becomes easier to incorporate and manage complexity in our analyses. Thus, racial and ethnic variation need to be more heavily incorporated as we seek to build more realistic models of variation and change.