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Concept
Real-time sociolinguistics
Summary
Real-time sociolinguistics is a sociolinguistic research method concerned with observing linguistic variation and change in progress via longitudinal studies. Real-time studies track linguistic variables over time by collecting data from a speech community at multiple points in a given period. As a result, it provides empirical evidence for either stability or linguistic change.
Real-time sociolinguistics contrasts with apparent-time sociolinguistics, which surveys different generations of a population at one point in time. A theoretical model of language change in apparent time is built and based on the distribution of the linguistic variable across age groups in a speech community.
Although apparent-time studies are more numerous than real-time studies, the latter have seen an increase in number since 1995, often in the form of restudies of 1960s and 1970s research.
Real-time methods address and resolve problematic assumptions of the apparent-time hypothesis.
The apparent-time hypothesis assumes that an individual's speech is relatively stable over his or her adult lifetime and so each generation of speakers reflects the state of the language when the individual first acquired language as a child. Generational comparisons can then be made to study linguistic change. However, that assumption is undermined by the observation of the occurrence of lifespan change in many cases. Individual speakers "change over their lifespans in the direction of a change in progress in the rest of the community." Because older speakers may have changes in language, apparent-time studies systematically underestimate the rate of change. Real-time methods do not make assumptions about the stability of older speakers' speech, but data about the speakers' speech over time are gathered directly. Therefore, real-time studies do not have the problem of underestimation.
An entire speech community may exhibit age-graded variation, linguistic differences that emerge among different generations as the result of age, rather than actual language change.
Official source
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