Editing William Labov

{{Short description|American linguist; father of sociolinguistics (1927–2024)}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=April 2019}}
{{Use American English|date=April 2019}}
{{Infobox academic
| name = William Labov
| birth_date = {{birth date|1927|12|04}}
| birth_place = [[Passaic, New Jersey]], U.S.
| death_date = {{death date and age|2024|12|17|1927|12|04}}
| death_place = [[Philadelphia]], Pennsylvania, U.S.
| education = [[Harvard University]] ([[Bachelor of Arts|BA]])<br/>{{nobr|[[Columbia University]] ([[Master of Arts|MA]], [[Doctor of Philosophy|PhD]])}}
| doctoral_advisor = [[Uriel Weinreich]]
| occupation = {{ubl|[[Chemical industry|Industrial chemist]] (1949–60)|[[professor|Professor of]] [[linguistics]] (1964{{nbnd}}2014)}}
| discipline = [[Linguistics|Linguist]]
| workplaces = [[Columbia University]]<br>[[University of Pennsylvania]]
| known_for = [[Variationist sociolinguistics]]
| notable_works = <!-- produces label "Notable work"; may be overridden by |credits=, which produces label "Notable credit(s)"; or by |works=, which produces label "Works" -->
| spouse = {{Plainlist|
* Teresa Gnasso
* {{marriage|[[Gillian Sankoff]]|1993}}
}}
| footnotes = Labov's [http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~wlabov/WLVITA.pdf curriculum vitae]
| children = 7, including [[Alice Goffman]]
}}

'''William David Labov''' ({{IPAc-en|l|ə|ˈ|b|oʊ|v}} {{respell|lə|BOHV|'}};<ref>{{cite journal| first=Matthew J.| last=Gordon| doi=10.1177/0075424206294308| title=Interview with William Labov| journal=Journal of English Linguistics| volume=34|year=2006|pages=332–51|issue=4| s2cid=144459634}}</ref><ref name="Avril_2012">{{cite news|title=Penn linguist Labov wins Franklin Institute award| author=Tom Avril|url=http://www.philly.com/philly/health/20121022_Penn_linguist_Labov_wins_Franklin_Institute_award.html|newspaper=The Philadelphia Inquirer|date=October 22, 2012|access-date=October 23, 2012}}</ref> December{{nbsp}}4, 1927{{snd}}December{{nbsp}}17, 2024) was an American linguist widely regarded as the founder of the discipline of variationist [[sociolinguistics]].<ref name="AAAS"/><ref>E.g., in the opening chapter of ''The Handbook of Language Variation and Change'' (ed. Chambers et al., Blackwell 2002), J.K. Chambers writes that "variationist sociolinguistics had its effective beginnings only in 1963, the year in which William Labov presented the first sociolinguistic research report"; the dedication page of the ''Handbook'' says that Labov's "ideas imbue every page".</ref> He has been described as "an enormously original and influential figure who has created much of the methodology" of sociolinguistics,<ref>{{cite book| last=Trask|first=R.L.|title=A Student's Dictionary of Language and Linguistics|publisher=Arnold|isbn=0-340-65266-7|location=London|page=124|year=1997}}</ref> and "one of the most influential linguists of the 20th and 21st centuries".<ref name="ll">{{Cite web |last1=McLemore |first1=Cynthia |last2=Liberman |first2=Mark |date=2024-12-17 |title=Bill Labov |url=https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=67399 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20241218065043/https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=67399 |archive-date=2024-12-18 |access-date=2024-12-18 |website=[[Language Log]]}}</ref>

Labov was a professor in the [[linguistics]] department of the [[University of Pennsylvania]] in [[Philadelphia]] and pursued research in sociolinguistics, language change, and [[dialectology]]. He retired in 2015 but continued to publish research until his death in 2024.<ref name="Chambers">{{cite journal |last1=Chambers |first1=Jack |title=William Labov: An Appreciation |journal=Annual Review of Linguistics |date=14 January 2017 |volume=3 |issue=1 |pages=1–23 |doi=10.1146/annurev-linguistics-051216-040225 |s2cid=151373995 |language=en |issn=2333-9683 |doi-access=free}}</ref>

==Early life and education==
Labov was born in [[Passaic, New Jersey]], and raised in [[Rutherford, New Jersey|Rutherford]], moving to [[Fort Lee, New Jersey|Fort Lee]] at age 12. According to Labov, the physician who delivered him was [[William Carlos Williams]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Labov |first1=William |title=Conversations With Strangers |last2=Sankoff |first2=Gillian |date=July 2023 |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |isbn=9781009340922 |page=7 |language=en |quote="My birth certificate shows that I was delivered in Passaic by the poet Dr. William Carlos Williams."}}</ref> He attended [[Harvard University]], where he majored in English and philosophy and studied chemistry.<ref name="HIgiL">{{cite web |last1=Labov |first1=William |title=How I got into Linguistics |url=https://www.ling.upenn.edu/~wlabov/HowIgot.html |website=www.ling.upenn.edu |access-date=27 March 2023}}</ref> He graduated from Harvard in 1948.{{cn|date=December 2024}}

==Career==
After graduating from Harvard, Labov worked as an industrial chemist in his family's business (1949–61) before turning to linguistics.<ref name="HIgiL"/> For his MA thesis (1963) he completed a study of change in the dialect of [[Martha's Vineyard]], which he presented before the [[Linguistic Society of America]].<ref name="Chambers"/> Labov took his PhD (1964) at [[Columbia University]], studying under [[Uriel Weinreich]]. He was an [[assistant professor]] of linguistics at Columbia (1964–70) before becoming an [[associate professor]] at the [[University of Pennsylvania]] in 1971, then a [[full professor]],<ref name="AAAS"/> and in 1976 becoming director of the university's Linguistics Laboratory.<ref>{{cite web |title=Department of English |url=https://www.english.upenn.edu/people/william-labov |website=University of Pennsylvania |access-date=27 March 2023}}</ref>

==Linguistic research==
The methods Labov used to collect data for his study of the varieties of [[English language|English]] spoken in [[New York City]], published as ''The Social Stratification of English in New York City'' (1966), have been influential in social dialectology. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, his studies of the linguistic features of [[African American Vernacular English]] (AAVE) were also influential:<ref name="Chambers"/> he argued that AAVE should not be stigmatized as substandard, but rather respected as a variety of English with its own grammatical rules.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Wheeler |first1=R. |title="So Much Research, So Little Change": Teaching Standard English in African American Classrooms |journal=Annual Review of Linguistics |date=14 January 2016 |volume=2 |pages=367–390 |doi=10.1146/ANNUREV-LINGUISTICS-011415-040434 |doi-access=free}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/95sep/ets/labo.htm |title=Academic Ignorance and Black Intelligence |date=June 1972 |access-date=March 28, 2015 |publisher=The Atlantic |last=Labov |first=William}}</ref>

He also pursued research in [[referential indeterminacy]]<ref>{{cite book |last1=Andersen |first1=Øivin |title=Indeterminacy in Terminology and LSP: Studies in honour of Heribert Picht|chapter=Indeterminacy, context, economy and well-formedness in specialist communication |date=9 May 2007 |publisher=John Benjamins Publishing Company |isbn=978-90-272-2332-6 |url=https://www.oivinandersen.com/publications/OCR-read/Indeterminacy0001.pdf |language=en}}</ref> and is noted for his studies of the way ordinary people structure narrative stories of their own lives.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Lamb |first1=Gavin |title=The Linguistics Of Narrating Personal Experience |url=https://medium.com/thewildones/narrating-personal-experience-the-6-key-linguistic-elements-of-conversational-storytelling-ea45b09a90c2 |website=Wild Ones |access-date=27 March 2023 |language=en |date=26 February 2021}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Johnstone |first1=Barbara |title='Oral versions of personal experience': Labovian narrative analysis and its uptake |journal=Journal of Sociolinguistics |date=September 2016 |volume=20 |issue=4 |pages=542–560 |doi=10.1111/josl.12192 |s2cid=151597119 |url=https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12192 |access-date=27 March 2023 |language=en |issn=1360-6441|url-access=subscription }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Wang |first1=Yue |title=Narrative Structure Analysis: A Story from "Hannah Gadsby: Nanette" |journal=Journal of Language Teaching and Research |date=1 September 2020 |volume=11 |issue=5 |pages=682 |doi=10.17507/jltr.1105.03 |s2cid=225274833 |issn=1798-4769 |doi-access=free}}</ref> Several of his classes were service-based, with students going to West Philadelphia to help tutor young children while simultaneously learning linguistics from different dialects such as AAVE.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Benson |first1=Lee |last2=Harkavy |first2=Ira |last3=Puckett |first3=John |title=An Implementation Revolution as a Strategy for Fulfilling the Democratic Promise of University-Community Partnerships: Penn-West Philadelphia as an Experiment in Progress |journal=Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly |date=March 2000 |volume=29 |issue=1 |pages=24–45 |doi=10.1177/0899764000291003 |s2cid=145641409 |url=https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0899764000291003 |access-date=27 March 2023 |language=en |issn=0899-7640|url-access=subscription }}</ref>

Later, Labov studied ongoing changes in the phonology of English as spoken in the U.S., as well as the origins and patterns of [[chain shift]]s of vowels (one sound replacing a second, replacing a third, in a complete chain). In the ''Atlas of North American English'' (2006), he and his co-authors find three major divergent chain shifts taking place today: a [[Southern American English#Shared features|Southern Shift]] (in [[Appalachia]] and southern coastal regions); a [[Northern Cities Vowel Shift]] affecting a region from [[Madison, Wisconsin]], east to [[Utica, New York]]; and a [[Canadian Shift]] affecting most of Canada, in addition to several minor chain shifts in smaller regions.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Armstrong |first1=Eric |title=Book Review The Atlas of North American English: Phonetics, Phonology and Sound Change by William Labov, Sharon Ash, & Charles Boberg |journal=Voice and Speech Review |date=January 2007 |volume=5 |issue=1 |pages=394–395 |doi=10.1080/23268263.2007.10769800 |s2cid=161671407 |language=en |issn=2326-8263}}</ref>

Among Labov's well-known students are [[Charles Boberg]], [[Anne H. Charity Hudley]], [[Penelope Eckert]], [[Gregory Guy]], [[Robert A. Leonard]], [[Geoffrey Nunberg]], [[Shana Poplack]], and [[John R. Rickford]]. His methods were adopted in England around 1972 by [[Peter Trudgill]] for Norwich speech and [[K. M. Petyt]] for West Yorkshire speech. On a sabbatical in England shortly after, [[Jack Chambers (linguist)|J. K. Chambers]], reading Trudgill's tattered copy of ''Sociolinguistic Patterns'', left formal linguistics to become a sociolinguist.<ref>''Canadian Journal of Linguistics'', 2005, festschrift for J. K. Chambers.</ref>

Labov's works include ''The Study of Nonstandard English'' (1969), ''Language in the Inner City: Studies in Black English Vernacular'' (1972), ''Sociolinguistic Patterns'' (1972),<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Attinasi |first1=John J. |title=The sociolinguistics of William Labov |journal=Bilingual Review / La Revista Bilingüe |date=1974 |volume=1 |issue=3 |pages=279–304 |jstor=25743604 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/25743604 |issn=0094-5366}}</ref> ''Principles of Linguistic Change'' (vol.I Internal Factors, 1994; vol.II Social Factors, 2001, vol.III Cognitive and Cultural factors, 2010),<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Milroy |first1=James |title=William Labov, Principles of linguistic change. Volume I: Internal factors (Language in Society 20). Oxford: Blackwell, 1994. Pp. xix + 641. |journal=Journal of Linguistics |date=September 1995 |volume=31 |issue=2 |pages=435–439 |doi=10.1017/S0022226700015693 |s2cid=145806007 |url=https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022226700015693 |access-date=27 March 2023 |language=en |issn=1469-7742|url-access=subscription }}</ref> and, with Sharon Ash and [[Charles Boberg]], ''[[The Atlas of North American English]]'' (2006).<ref name=LBBA2019/>

The [[Franklin Institute]] awarded Labov the 2013 [[Benjamin Franklin Medal (Franklin Institute)|Benjamin Franklin Medal]] in Computer and Cognitive Science, citing him for "establishing the cognitive basis of language variation and change through rigorous analysis of linguistic data, and for the study of non-standard dialects with significant social and cultural implications".<ref name="Avril_2012"/><ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.fi.edu/laureates/william-labov |title=Benjamin Franklin Medal in Computer and Cognitive Science |date=September 5, 2014 |publisher=[[Franklin Institute]] |access-date=September 9, 2014}}</ref>

==Language in use==
In "Narrative Analysis: Oral Versions of Personal Experience", Labov and Joshua Waletzky take a sociolinguistic approach to examine how language works between people. This is significant because it contextualizes the study of structure and form, connecting purpose to method. His stated purpose is to "isolate the elements of narrative".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Nair |first1=Rukmini Bhaya |title=Narrative Gravity: Conversation, Cognition, Culture |date=June 2004 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-134-39792-1 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Vud_AgAAQBAJ&pg=PA33 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Labov |first1=William |last2=Waletzky |first2=Joshua |title=Narrative Analysis: Oral Versions of Personal Experience1 |journal=Journal of Narrative and Life History |date=1 January 1997 |volume=7 |issue=1–4 |pages=3–38 |doi=10.1075/jnlh.7.02nar |s2cid=143152507 |url=https://doi.org/10.1075/jnlh.7.02nar |language=en |issn=1053-6981|url-access=subscription }}</ref>{{rp|12}} This work focuses exclusively on oral narratives.

Labov describes narrative as having two functions: referential and evaluative, with its ''referential'' functions orienting and grounding a story in its contextual world by referencing events in sequential order as they originally occurred,<ref name="Labov, W. 1997 p. 32">Labov, W., & Waletzky, J. (1997). "Narrative analysis: Oral versions of personal experience". p. 32.</ref> and its ''evaluative'' functions describing the storyteller's purpose in telling the story.<ref name="Labov, W. 1997 p. 41">Labov, W., & Waletzky, J. (1997). "Narrative analysis: Oral versions of personal experience". p. 41.</ref> Formally analyzing data from orally generated texts obtained via observed group interaction and interview (600 interviews were taken from several studies whose participants included ethnically diverse groups of children and adults from various backgrounds<ref>Labov, W., & Waletzky, J. (1997). "Narrative analysis: Oral versions of personal experience". p. 13.</ref>), Labov divides narrative into five or six sections:<ref name="Ouyang">{{cite book |last1=Ouyang |first1=Jessica |last2=McKeown |first2=Kathy |title=Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC'14) |chapter=Towards Automatic Detection of Narrative Structure |date=2014 |publisher=European Language Resources Association (ELRA) |location=Reykjavik, Iceland |pages=4624–4631 |chapter-url=http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~ouyangj/OuyangMcKeown2014.pdf |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230327195041/http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~ouyangj/OuyangMcKeown2014.pdf |archive-date=March 27, 2023}}</ref>

* ''Abstract'' – gives an overview of the story.<ref name="Ouyang"/>
* ''Orientation'' – Labov describes this as "referential [free clauses that] serve to orient the listener in respect to person, place, time, and behavioral situation".<ref name="Labov, W. 1997 p. 32"/> He specifies that these are contextual clues that precede the main story.<ref name="Ouyang"/>
* ''Complicating action'' – the main story, during which the narrative unfolds. A story may consist of multiple complication sections.<ref name="Ouyang"/>
* ''Evaluation'' – author evinces self-awareness, giving explicit or implicit purpose to the retelling of the story. Thus evaluation gives some indication of the significance the author attributes to their story.<ref name="Ouyang"/> But evaluation can be done subtly: for instance, "lexical intensifiers [are a type of] semantically defined evaluation".<ref>Labov, W., & Waletzky, J. (1997). "Narrative analysis: Oral versions of personal experience". p. 37.</ref>
* ''Resolution'' – occurs sequentially following the evaluation. The resolution may give the story a sense of completion.<ref name="Ouyang"/>
* ''Coda'' – returns listener to the present, drawing them back out of the world of the story into the world of the storytelling event. A coda is not essential to a narrative, and some narratives do not have one.<ref name="Ouyang"/>

While not every narrative includes all these elements, the purpose of this subdivision is to show that narratives have inherent structural order. Labov argues that narrative units must retell events in the order they were experienced because narrative is ''temporally sequenced''. In other words, events do not occur at random but are connected to one another; thus "the original semantic interpretation" depends on their original order.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Pratt |first1=Mary Louise |title=Toward a speech act theory of literary discourse |date=1977 |publisher=Indiana University Press |location=Bloomington, Indiana |chapter-url=https://english101fall2013.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/pratt-1977-narrative.pdf |chapter=Natural Narrative |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230327200352/https://english101fall2013.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/pratt-1977-narrative.pdf |archive-date=March 27, 2023}}</ref><ref>Labov, W., & Waletzky, J. (1997). "Narrative analysis: Oral versions of personal experience". p. 21.</ref> To demonstrate this sequence, he breaks a story down into its basic parts. He defines ''narrative clause'' as the "basic unit of narrative"<ref>Labov, W., & Waletzky, J. (1997). "Narrative analysis: Oral versions of personal experience". p. 22.</ref> around which everything else is built. Clauses can be distinguished from one another by ''temporal junctures'',<ref>Labov, W., & Waletzky, J. (1997). "Narrative analysis: Oral versions of personal experience". p. 25.</ref> which indicate a shift in time and separate narrative clauses. Temporal junctures mark temporal sequencing because clauses cannot be rearranged without disrupting their meaning.

Labov and Waletzky's findings are important because they derived them from actual data rather than abstract theorization. Labov, Waletzky, &c., set up interviews and documented speech patterns in storytelling, keeping with the ethnographic tradition of tape-recording oral text so it can be referenced exactly. This inductive method creates a new system through which to understand story text.{{cn|date=December 2024}}

==Linguistic principles==
One of Labov's contributions to theories of [[language change]] is his ''Golden Age Principle'' (or ''Golden Age Theory''). It claims that any changes in the sounds or the grammar that have come to conscious awareness in a [[speech community]] trigger a uniformly negative reaction.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Anderwald |first1=Lieselotte |title=Language Between Description and Prescription: Verbs and Verb Categories in Nineteenth-Century Grammars of English |date=2 June 2016 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-027068-1 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=DBE9DAAAQBAJ&pg=PA18 |language=en}}</ref>

{{blockquote
|text=Communities differ in the extent to which they stigmatize the newer forms of language, but I have never yet met anyone who greeted them with applause. Some older citizens welcome the new music and dances, the new electronic devices and computers. But no one has ever been heard to say, "It's wonderful the way young people talk today. It's so much better than the way we talked when I was a kid." ... The most general and most deeply held belief about language is the ''Golden Age Principle'': At some time in the past, language was in a state of perfection. It is understood that in such a state, every sound was correct and beautiful, and every word and expression was proper, accurate, and appropriate. Furthermore, the decline from that state has been regular and persistent, so that every change represents a falling away from the golden age, rather than a return to it. Every new sound will be heard as ugly, and every new expression will be heard as improper, inaccurate, and inappropriate. Given this principle it is obvious that language change must be interpreted as nonconformity to established norms, and that people will reject changes in the structure of language when they become aware of them.
|author=William Labov |source=Principles of Linguistic Change, Vol. 2: Social Factors (2001), p. 514
}}

==Scholarly influence and criticism==
Labov's seminal work has been referenced and critically examined by a number of scholars, mainly for its structural rigidity. [[Kristin Langellier]] explains that "the purpose of Labovian analysis is to relate the formal properties of the narrative to their functions":<ref>Langellier, Kristin M. "Personal narratives: Perspectives on theory and research". Text and Performance Quarterly 9.4 (1989): 243–276. p. 245.</ref> clause-level analysis of how text affects transmission of message. This model has several flaws, which Langellier points out: it examines textual structure to the exclusion of context and audience, which often act to shape the text; it is relevant to a specific demographic (may be difficult to extrapolate); and, by categorizing the text at a clausal level, it burdens analysis with theoretical distinctions that may not be illuminating in practice.<ref>Langellier, Kristin M. "Personal narratives: Perspectives on theory and research". Text and Performance Quarterly 9.4 (1989): 243–276. p. 246-8.</ref> [[Anna De Fina]] remarks that [within Labov's model] "the defining property of narrative is temporal sequence, since the order in which the events are presented in the narrative is expected to match the original events as they occurred",<ref>De Fina, Anna, and Alexandra Georgakopoulou. Analyzing narrative: Discourse and sociolinguistic perspectives. Cambridge University Press, 2011. p. 27.</ref> which differs from more contemporary notions of storytelling, in which a naturally time-conscious flow includes jumping forward and back in time as mandated by, for example, anxieties felt about futures and their interplay with subsequent decisions. De Fina and Langellier both note that, though wonderfully descriptive, Labov's model is nevertheless difficult to code, thus potentially limited in application/practice.<ref>De Fina, Anna, and Alexandra Georgakopoulou. Analyzing narrative: Discourse and sociolinguistic perspectives. Cambridge University Press, 2011. p. 32.</ref> De Fina also agrees with Langellier that Labov's model ignores the complex and often quite relevant subject of intertextuality in narrative.<ref>De Fina, Anna, and Alexandra Georgakopoulou. Analyzing narrative: Discourse and sociolinguistic perspectives. Cambridge University Press, 2011. p. 35.</ref> To an extent, Labov evinces awareness of these concerns, saying "it is clear that these conclusions are restricted to the speech communities that we have examined",<ref name="Labov, W. 1997 p. 41"/> and "the overall structure of the narratives we've examined is not uniform".<ref>Labov, W., & Waletzky, J. (1997). "Narrative, analysis: Oral versions of personal experience". p. 40.</ref> In "Rethinking Ventriloquism", [[Diane Goldstein]] uses Labovian notions of [[tellability]]—internal coherence in narrative—to inform her concept of ''untellability''.<ref>Goldstein, Diane E. "Rethinking Ventriloquism: Untellability, Chaotic Narratives, Social Justice, and the Choice to Speak For, About, and Without". Journal of Folklore Research 49.2 (2012): 179–198.</ref>

==Personal life and death==
Labov had five children from his first marriage to Teresa Gnasso Labov: Susannah Page, Sarah Labov, Simon Labov, Joanna Labov, and Jessie Labov. In 1993, he married fellow sociolinguist [[Gillian Sankoff]], and they had two children: Rebecca Labov and sociologist [[Alice Goffman]],<ref>{{cite book| editor1-last=Meyerhoff |editor1-first=Miriam |editor2-last=Nagy |editor2-first=Naomi |title=Social Lives in Language |publisher=John Benjamins |isbn=978-90-272-1863-6 |year=2008 |page=21}}</ref> the latter of whom Labov adopted after the death of Sankoff's previous husband, [[Erving Goffman]].<ref>{{cite news|title=The Trials of Alice Goffman|last=Lewis-Kraus|first=Gideon|date=January 12, 2016|newspaper=The New York Times Magazine}}</ref> 

William Labov died at his home in Philadelphia on December 17, 2024, at the age of 97<ref name="ll" /><ref> {{Cite web |title=William "Bill" Labov Obituary 2024 |url=https://obits.goldsteinsfuneral.com/william-labov |access-date=2024-12-21 |website=Goldsteins' Rosenberg's Funeral Directors |language=en}}</ref> from complications due to [[Parkinson's]].<ref>{{cite news | last=Conde | first=Ximena | title=William Labov, 'father of sociolinguistics' who studied the Philadelphia accent, dies at 97 | magazine=[[Philadelphia Inquirer]] | date=2024-12-24 | url=https://www.inquirer.com/obituaries/william-labov-father-sociolinguistics-dead-20241223.html | access-date=2024-12-24}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|title=William Labov, Who Studied How Society Shapes Language, Dies at 97|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/24/us/william-labov-dead.html|last=Risen|first=Clay|date=December 24, 2024|work=The New York Times|access-date=December 24, 2024}}</ref>

==Honors==
In 1968, Labov received the David H. Russell Award for Distinguished Research in Teaching English.<ref>{{cite web |title=David H. Russell Award for Distinguished Research in the Teaching of English Winners |url=http://www2.ncte.org/app/uploads/2017/06/Russell_Award_Winners.pdf |publisher=NCTE |access-date=21 July 2019 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190721040940/http://www2.ncte.org/app/uploads/2017/06/Russell_Award_Winners.pdf |archive-date=21 July 2019}}</ref>

He was a [[Guggenheim Fellowship|Guggenheim Fellow]] in 1970–71 and 1987–88.<ref>{{cite web |title=All Fellows |url=https://www.gf.org/fellows/all-fellows/#gf-search-submit-btn |publisher=John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation |access-date=21 July 2019 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190705224855/https://www.gf.org/fellows/all-fellows/#gf-search-submit-btn |archive-date=July 5, 2019}}</ref>

Labov received [[Honorary degree|honorary doctorates]] from, among others, the Faculty of Humanities at [[Uppsala University]] (1985) and [[University of Edinburgh]] (2005).<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.uu.se/en/about-uu/academic-traditions/traditions/honorary-doctorates/honorary-doctors-of-the-faculty-of-humanities|title=Honorary Doctors of the Faculty of Humanities |website=Uppsala University |date=2023-06-08 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231216041212/https://www.uu.se/en/about-uu/academic-traditions/traditions/honorary-doctorates/honorary-doctors-of-the-faculty-of-humanities |archive-date=December 16, 2023}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |date=25 May 2015 |title=Honorary graduates 2004/05 |url=https://www.ed.ac.uk/about/people/honorary-degrees/2004-05 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230604045619/https://www.ed.ac.uk/about/people/honorary-degrees/2004-05 |archive-date=Jun 4, 2023 |website=The University of Edinburgh}}</ref>

In 1996, he won the [https://www.linguisticsociety.org/about/who-we-are/lsa-awards#bloomfield Leonard Bloomfield Book Award] from the [[Linguistic Society of America]] (LSA) for ''Principles of Linguistic Change, Vol. 1'';<ref name=LBBA2019>{{cite web |title=Leonard Bloomfield Book Award Previous Holders |url=https://www.linguisticsociety.org/content/leonard-bloomfield-book-award-previous-holders |website=linguisticsociety.org |publisher=Linguistic Society of America |access-date=21 July 2019}}</ref> he won the Award again in 2008 as a coauthor of the ''Atlas of North American English''.<ref name=LBBA2019/>

In 2013, Labov received a [[Franklin Institute Awards|Franklin Institute Award]] in Computer and Cognitive Science for "establishing the cognitive basis of language variation and change through rigorous analysis of linguistic data, and for the study of non-standard dialects with significant social and cultural implications."<ref>{{cite web|title=Franklin Institute Awards: William Labov|url=https://www.fi.edu/laureates/william-labov|website=Franklin Institute|date=September 5, 2014}}</ref>

In 2013, [[Universitat Pompeu Fabra]] awarded Labov an honorary doctorate for "his brilliant teaching and research track record and for being one of the leading figures in the field of linguistics, founder of variationist and quantitative sociolinguistics".<ref>{{cite web|title=UPF honorary doctors: William Labov|url=https://www.upf.edu/web/universitat/doctors-honoris-causa-de-la-upf|website=Universitat Pompey Fabra|date=December 18, 2024}}</ref>

In 2015, he was awarded the [[Neil and Saras Smith Medal for Linguistics]] by the [[British Academy]] "for lifetime achievement in the scholarly study of linguistics" and "his significant contribution to linguistics and the language sciences".<ref>{{cite web|title=William Labov receives the Neil and Saras Smith Medal for Linguistics from the British Academy|url=http://www.ling.upenn.edu/news/2015/dec/william-labov-receives-neil-and-saras-smith-medal-linguistics-british-academy|website=Department of Linguistics|publisher=University of Pennsylvania|access-date=July 30, 2017|archive-date=July 31, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170731033936/http://www.ling.upenn.edu/news/2015/dec/william-labov-receives-neil-and-saras-smith-medal-linguistics-british-academy|url-status=dead}}</ref>

In 2020, Labov was awarded the [[American Academy of Arts and Sciences]]' Talcott Parsons Prize, recognizing "distinguished and original contributions to the social sciences".<ref name="AAAS">{{cite web|title=Pioneering Sociolinguist William Labov Receiving Social Science Prize|url=https://www.amacad.org/news/william-labov-prize|publisher=American Academy of Arts and Sciences|date=January 29, 2020|access-date=January 30, 2020}}</ref>

==References==
{{reflist}}

==External links==
{{Spoken Wikipedia|William_Labov.ogg|date=2006-02-04}}
* [http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~wlabov/ William Labov's home page]
* [http://eng.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/34/4/332 ''Journal of English Linguistics'' interview] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081011153124/http://eng.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/34/4/332 |date=October 11, 2008}}
* [https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5220090 NPR story "American Accent Undergoing Great Vowel Shift"]
* [http://www.revel.inf.br/site2007/_pdf/9/entrevistas/revel_9_interview_labov.pdf Sociolinguistics: an interview with William Labov] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101011073136/http://www.revel.inf.br/site2007/_pdf/9/entrevistas/revel_9_interview_labov.pdf |date=October 11, 2010}} ReVEL, vol. 5, n. 9, 2007.

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[[Category:20th-century American linguists]]
[[Category:21st-century American Jews]]
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[[Category:Dialectologists]]
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[[Category:Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science]]
[[Category:Fellows of the Linguistic Society of America]]
[[Category:Fellows of the Cognitive Science Society]]
[[Category:Harvard College alumni]]
[[Category:Jewish American scientists]]
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[[Category:Linguists of English]]
[[Category:Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences]]
[[Category:People from Rutherford, New Jersey]]
[[Category:Recipients of the Neil and Saras Smith Medal for Linguistics]]
[[Category:American sociolinguists]]
[[Category:University of Pennsylvania faculty]]
[[Category:The Benjamin Franklin Medal in Computer and Cognitive Science laureates]]