We have one more minute to go, so then we can then look, you don't want to look.
Yes, it has started the pudding. Well, thank you so so yeah, yeah, I think.
Shall I wait another minute. OK, what do you think it's up to you.
I think maybe a minute. It's just a quarter past now.
Yeah, right. I can usually have a quota past because people who have power plant power plants are rapidly filling up.
So that's good. All right.
Was. So if you don't the to story, we don't want it to show on the screen.
Don't point it to the screen, pointing down, down, down, and maybe like that, you can push it over.
No, it's not good for the light, the light, but not enough light, or do you want a little bit more light?
Julian, shall I begin then? Sure. OK, great.
Everyone, we've managed to get teams going and we've managed to all be here, which is amazing.
And it's my very, very, very great pleasure to welcome Professor William Labov today.
When linguists begin their careers there very rarely think that they are going to become linguists.
I mean, that's almost never happens since we don't get it in school or we are not even told what linguistics is all about.
As an undergraduate, professor, William Labov did his degree from Harvard and then went on to do industrial chemistry.
So he was an industrial chemist for quite a long time.
But fortunately for us, he came back to linguistics and then he since the sixties, it's been an amazing field.
He was responsible for several influential studies and seminal publications in 1970,
and the discipline of language variation then changed just it wasn't just in North America.
It was all over the world. And it rapidly spread. Even in Calcutta, which mistrusted anything, modern sociolinguistics language variation crept in.
They couldn't stop it. Go. I'm just going to another to go on and on because it's it's Bill that we want to listen to and not to not me.
But I would like to end with one of his best quoted maxims.
And that's like the most general and most deeply held beliefs about language is the golden age principle.
At some time in the past, language was in a state of perfection.
So nobody accepts that language changes and it's good that it does change.
So no one ever says goodness. The way young people speak is wonderful.
In the midst of the pandemic, there were so many webinars and I was invited also to take part and say,
goodness me, these words that are coming out of nowadays usage is just dreadful.
Language is changing all because of covid. But it is.
It is. It is. It reminds me always of what Bill said, that every new sound will be heard is ugly.
Every new expression will be heard is improper, inaccurate and inappropriate.
Given this principle, it is obvious that language change must be interpreted as nonconformity to establish norms and
that people will reject changes in the structure of language when they become aware of them.
And that was available. So enough about me. I'm going to pass the microphone on to Gillian and Bill and we have tried this out.
So it's going to work. I'm sure it's going to work. So, Gillian, over to you.
Squaring sharing screen. Yes, over to you.
It hasn't hasn't come in yet. And you said, no, not yet.
OK, then I've done something wrong. Can you hear me still? I'll try to go back to your shrink screen sharing again.
Sharing, sharing. OK, there we are.
I think this is it. Just go now.
You're seeing it. Yeah, you're seeing it. That's perfect. Yes. I want to do the slide show.
Occurrence. OK, now are you seeing the title?
That's excellent. Yes. OK, good, we're good to go, right?
Yes. OK, now you're gone, you're doing now.
Well, I'm very pleased to be back in Oxford and visiting.
This is where it was six years ago that I was working.
And here we are following up some same that.
We'll talk about it here today is a rather intricate combination of speech and recordings with the assistance of my colleague Ann.
Pretty much very close co-workers doing. But we may get mixed up at some point, in which case you just have to forgive us and welcome to Google.
One of the saddest parts of the human experience is we don't remember the images of childhood fade away with a depressing certainty.
One direction of the tape recorder after World War Two was not advertised as a solution to this problem,
when I bought my first machine in the early 1960s, the first of six decades of recording conversations with strangers.
We'll be here with Martha's Vineyard. Well, my friend, documentary filmmaker Murray Lerner.
He had invited me to visit in the summer home on the island of Martha's Vineyard.
I don't interested. In each of the local dialect, words like pride and why we're starting to sound world wide and we.
On the side of the story, the change. While conducting and recording interviews with local residents,
Mori advised me to scrap a little Journal article in favour of the three thousand dollar nag nag with three.
We used to capture the subtleties of Pearlman's violin in his Oscar winning film for Multimodality
and the contract contrasting styles of Joan Baez and Bob Dylan at the Newport Folk Festival.
Like earlier in the year, we were lost in 1992 on the Paris metro about the tapes,
we have been told back in 1962, before we judge the news would be good for no more than 40 years.
Rather than pessimism turned out to be premature. In 2012, the Vineyard recording's was doing good at all.
Now, they have been digitised in the sociolinguistic archive at the University of Pennsylvania or Future Secure.
We can hear what you said in 1962, the startling clarity, nautical miles close to a thousand sociolinguistic engines, what I heard on my cell.
Well, with another 10000 recorded by Paul Fieldworkers, quality research assistants,
many students in my course, of course, on the study of each community.
So here are all these recordings. We'll move with your one here.
The question remains. What is worth remembering from this enormous pile of words?
We're in the science of linguistics may be helpful in finding out which words carry the most meaning.
And the signs of sociolinguistics points towards the speakers we would most like to hear from as time goes on.
In the study of languages and dialects, the subject and investigator are generally not well known to each other.
This is certainly the case with the great majority of conversations in our archive,
which were initiated by linguists who do still talk to people quite often known to them what is.
Screen. More than a year ago, covid-19 was prevented us from having conversation.
There's no one on the street, girls in my living room or kitchen, let alone in the home of someone you just met.
We anticipate the time when we can venture out again to record the experience of others in ways that enrich our understanding of the world,
before we do, we may be able to use some of these older recordings and see what they have to tell.
His presentation will focus on four speakers from our time.
And then. First, we'll hear from two men, both Americans and then from two women, one American and one British.
All were strangers to the interviewer when we were strangers to the.
Well, before we go on to my own exploratory interviews on the fourth of our student, Jerry Francis.
We begin these studies, those rumours working a variation of language forms, the geography, age, social studies on social media.
In every case, conversation with a stranger opens the way to understanding of what the community wants or where he's going.
NEWSROOM will focus on how people use their linguistic resources to convey what they have to tell us.
What we want to do. And we will be looking at the degree of feature known as eloquence.
Our focus on passages involving two particular kinds of eloquence.
In operations, you're both generalisations, strengthening our belief in what we believe to be true.
Indonesian speakers report events that are outside of our own experience, reshaping what we believe to be possible.
Listening to how people evaluate their experience as they talk about,
we come to an appreciation of their community norms as well as their rhetorical tolerance.
There was really no use when my home for listening to them to bring us to a better understanding of what eloquence is.
Bonson Wahlquist is memorable.
I would not surprise me if you find it difficult to forget them in the days that followed.
Most of the publications based on linguistic engines deal with the use of grammar and phonology as target and include.
But some will lose also focus on the speaker as conversational partner on McCallie as a book, extremely common eloquence in two thousand five.
Reduce the gun style, the working class men and women in interviews, he conducted an air show in the 1980s.
The word eloquence in its title turns our attention to how will the speaker succeed in what they're trying to do for the Loosley?
The conversation with the strangers we'll hear from today, you observe the speakers convictions and the valuation of the world as they see it.
You may remember much of what they have to say in the words with which they said it.
You may not agree with them. But you may also find that their view of reality has become a part of yours.
Granted, they were strangers to their command of the English language, they become people that,
you know, remember being carried away with us as a part of a recognition of what can be.
First. We'll hear from Donald Poole.
Zone two was the second person I interviewed and on the island of Martha's Vineyard in 1961,
he was an eighth generation descendant of Yankee Whaley's and a fisherman who was one of the key figures on the island village of Tillmann.
He was also or typical for his generation.
Of the sound change I was then studying, which affected the walls of two ward glasses or an oh,
reversing the direction of Change, which has been operating since the 17th century, referred now to these changes.
Centralisation with the role of right.
Here it is. Right. We are many intermediate forms was in done bulls rotation of Troy, which you hear on the next line.
You may be most familiar with this change as Canadian reason.
Not only right, we also went out in about.
Results of the study of this ongoing world change on Martha's Vineyard were reported in my paper.
The social motivation was change, which was also my masters as a.
One has been argued that this change represented the symbolic claim to local rights and privileges.
In my interviews with Donald Poole and other local people,
I came to realise they were under pressure from the wealthy mainland summer people who were growing up as much desirable property as they could.
Here is Whirlpool's. You're going to say it.
You're going to read it this time to see you people who come down here to Martha's
Vineyard don't understand the background of the old families of the island.
Oranges from that way, our thoughts to an outbreak, I'm speaking now of the descendants of the old families.
Well, we were interested in the rest of America. We'll start over here.
Of course, the water belongs to you and we don't have anything to do with those forgotten all about the maritime tradition
and the fact that it hadn't been for the interests with the early settlers of this country took in the ocean.
As will fishermen on a seaman merchant sailors, this country couldn't have existed before this colony would have been a failure.
As my interview with Don to proceed, it became clear that he was more than a fisherman.
He was a full time advocate of the importance of work as a calling and ideology.
The one that Labour identified with the Protestant ethic we talked about.
I asked him, what reason do people have to work harder than they have to to earn a living?
In these excerpts from Donald Poole, noise in the background that you hear is not a defect in the tape recording,
it's actually the sound of crickets in the summer evening.
But I can answer that for you, because I've already worked it up myself and argued before we as many minutes of satisfaction,
of feeling that you have accomplished something over and above the bare necessities of life.
You take pride in doing the best that you can according to your ability.
I don't have to go fishing. I can quit right now and be comfortable.
Well, just as long as I draw the breath of life,
I'll be done by one in this picture helpless and one when we're doing all that I can as much as I can.
The best of my ability and knowledge, because I take a pride in doing so.
And I know when I feel that I'm doing something important, I'm happy you're doing that.
And I would be sitting around a big man with a little conscience.
Can't sit still. This passage has restored to, you know, an alternate dimension of his rhetoric.
And begins to answer the question, is speech worth saving?
We do observe some instances of the phonetic variable, in other words, like InterOil.
But there is only a small contribution to the rhetorical effect.
But also, here is freedom in terms of changes in pitch for events featuring.
I'll leave it to you, the audience. The judge, just how much recorded speech was held to Paul's rhetorical impact?
Well, I think you agree with simply reading it silently to yourself.
Will fall short, fall short of what he achieves with his voice.
How much is eloquence impaired with the loss of the original recording?
I've used the conventional bull type to represent increased one one three dots to represent a cause which can be interpreted here.
As the thing to put into his choice of the word.
Important. With the passage we just heard who moves to his high style, Richard, comparatives and superlatives are generally Lebaran.
What is the average speaker will say as best I can?
To leverage this to the best of my ability and knowledge.
In the less eloquent response, the will cause,
as long as I draw the breath of life might have been as long as I live here, possibly as long as I read.
The diagram shows the temple close just as long as I draw the breath of life.
In the structural position to the right of the main goals it modifies.
Well organised organisations here to start with this quote, Just as long as I draw the breath of life,
certainly giving a performance and scope over the conflict sentence involves.
Although in this passage, Paul refers to the rest of America in another context,
he seems to regard the Vineyard as being totally separate from America.
When I asked him about his school schooling,
he said he had been in America for a couple of years when returned to the island for his last two years of high school, as he put it.
Oh. OK, sorry, this is OK.
There we are, sorry, everybody. We had a couple of years in America at the Methodist boarding school.
Decided to move backward, well, on my feet, the saltwater.
The nerves in. On the day ampoules go, one would wonder what his house without my tape recorder.
I was incautious enough to pose a big question at the end of the meal was the food was good, what is it?
He was known for a good 15 seconds.
There is a. We're 10 things that make up a Yankee, and the first is the fear of a living God.
I tried desperately to recall the phone so I wasn't able to remember.
Next week, we'll hear from today was Henry very good?
So when I interviewed almost a decade later. Wonderful, 1970,
I was travelling through the Lower South with the idea that I might be able to
interview speakers with strongly developed patterns of the local dialect in the area.
Whiter than urban, Atlanta had been heavily influenced by immigration from northern areas.
So I decided to go to suburban town or east of.
Away from the city centre. There I saw Henry.
Glenda is going some grey haired man in working class,
I introduced myself and someone introduced interested in the changes that were taking place in the New South,
invited me to sit down with the men's room when we talked for several hours.
His wife and other members of the family joined in Josiane.
Morgan was born in 1912, the family of rural workers.
On 13, he was working for a dollar and a half a day as a little boy for his grandfather, who is section foreman,
he graduated high school when he was 16, went to work as a mechanic for the southern mill job before he was born to do.
He was strong in his conviction, mechanics were born not well,
you can find boards you can send to school for mechanic and go to school and work to never be a mechanic.
After going to school instead and do they're not a mechanic, they'll get by, but they're not a mechanic.
We stayed with that company for 43 years. At the time, the interview was informing the rural girl's.
Well, along with Gordon's conviction that the cameras were born, not made.
He also had a strong belief in provisions of the.
Like many others who do. He was aware that many others do not.
In the course of the evening, I asked him what happened when someone that you knew had a feeling that something was going on.
And when you do that answered positively and emphatically thumping on his chest puts me on the warm.
We then gave me two accounts of what we had foreseen coming against.
These were only tests of my ability to believe what he was about to tell me he could do, and I lost my oldest boy.
He was 20 years old now with cancer tumour in the brain.
When he died with the cancer. I got sick.
I thought Obama said we can't win on air for about six or eight months and I went to air doctor, they said he never knowingly.
So I went to bed one night. He can't drink.
Come home. We were talking certainly I just turned around and I said, Neil, when are you going to come get me just like that?
He said that it's going to be a long time to come get you.
And then I got where? I'm not bothered anymore about anything.
Don't worry about anything, go that day when they tell me, go, come get me.
I know I'm ready to go. If you don't believe that, you can have my wife,
they have told me about it and that's the only thing it does when it comes to lying to you for long term de.
And then I go with. And I mean, if you let me know when you get ready to come get me.
Do I get that much faith in every. One indicates the extent to which he expects this ruling.
We now are, you know, with the. Well, the argument give Edward and I actually believe.
But the most remarkable demonstration of his linguistic commitment is the complex structure of the final sentence in this narrative.
We call the tunnel cruise of his philosophy of hard work began with a frontal adverbial called.
Was long ago, the birth of one.
Here we go, invokes screams You remember the time when the sun will come to tell God that is ready to take it to the next world.
Well, to begin with, no important recalls that day when you tell me you don't get subordinate's because shown here on the left,
although I'm ready to go. The rhetorical rhetorical device of holding turn calls,
why waste that time resolving the issue and leaving Garden to accept that his own death will be in the future for a long, long time?
I mean, I'm not bothered anymore about anything, don't worry about anything that you would need to me go come get me.
I am ready to go. Why this confidence in this story is supported by the word Archil,
which reinforces assertions that are hard otherwise to accept here that his beloved son will appear to him as the angel of the.
The news examined so far presented us with the conversation of working class man who was known as conversational partner.
We now turn to the narrative talents of two women, one on each side of the Atlantic,
each with an extraordinary capacity to see through the eyes of others, each with the rhetorical skills to knowledge AM.
But, you know, in the summer of 1971, he was always travelling with my that we recorded to the Tyneside area of Northeastern.
I was hoping to get some interviews with members of the jury down in the coal mining area.
Walking through a residential area of gated, OK, of course, a group of children, nine, 12 years old, playing together on the street.
Although they hey, kids, get over here. Only occasional.
I pointed to the nearest house when I asked who was there, a girl answered by the.
When they walked up the steps and knocked on the door, the woman in her mid 30s answered.
I told you he was. I wanted to interview kids to find out about the rules of the game they play,
she said for awhile that I would stop by afterwards and let her know how I made up or spend a half hour with the kids.
When I finished, I knocked on the door again. Marginal came out.
I told you what a good time I had talking with the daughter of a friend of mine sometime when you are a few minutes.
Really good to see what it was like when you were growing up.
He's a. Well, now it is not about.
On humans level, I was sitting in your living room rather than running with poison to most of the time, but he didn't say what?
Toni Morrison, the reading whilst boarding, whether her neighbourhood was a friendly one.
I expect the U.S. to get an answer right now, yes or not very.
She will know no words from me unless you insert yourself.
She's in support of this general resolution within Sahgal for military conflict, which told me more about one another than I could ever disagree.
The whole version of narrative presented was a chapter in my 2013 Cambridge book, The Language of Life and the.
Margie's account, also established in my mind, was one of the most eloquent speakers of the English language that I have No.
She knew the story was there was and she ran from the first who knew what when the first moved in,
I thought one of the friends and part of that wonderful got on pretty well together, you know.
What this point margin brings up a first is that we set up a whole series of conflicts between her and other women in the neighbourhood.
This was an exchange of insults between her son when the son of Renagel.
On this journey of a more serious violation, Republicans will call the boy's mother.
What could be heard by anyone in the neighbourhood? MODIS neighbour comes out, she comes out of the backyard known as the back garden,
where she came out all when you could have heard it all over the road, you know, so.
Oh, well, I don't know. I'm tempted to tell you.
I mean, I don't think I think I'm straight in. And I remember distinctly I have a bunch of politicians because I had just watched them
over and I went into the back and she was in her backyard and actually at the bench.
She got the lot. I travel a lot, so I couldn't get to each other.
Gordon. Rowhouses and gates are separated by war and you see in the slide.
So the two women couldn't get to each other.
Well, margins over to my stores as a whole thing in the next segment, we'll have to translate this.
Well, the fight intensifies as the women go to the front door.
She says, If I can get my hands on you now, you get your letter translated by get me hands on you,
you know as well as the front door and the front door was stuck inside of it, you think?
The one. In spite of this point was inconclusive.
Why are you concerned that might? Openness for crime figures come thick and fast amongst them.
So we get one, we go through the system.
Made for me to put down, Jones recalled.
I said him I couldn't get to bed without on my mind against me, caught on grounds, fulminated Libertopia say did you say when I was little?
I said, You got to come down and make us all this little Das's. There's only the three of them.
And I said that nearly killed me. Oh, is what I. She's a big Louthan.
Just sit in, Mr. Secondo. Not that she could do much but to come.
So get that sitting on the stage. But what got me, the man never showed the faces when they all had me.
Nobody come out of as soon as the female June coming down the street, the men to the door.
All was did there was now tomorrow, the whole street was up in arms and I spoke to them for three years.
It was all settled. Martin reports that some neighbours made modest efforts to repair the breach the last years with body mounting resistance.
Next. Martin. And then there was one day I was hanging a line in the bathroom.
I just walked around it and I looked through the state when I got a statement of what I couldn't move
beyond the gas price because the gas was pouring and I didn't know where to stop then was for the gas.
I was stuck with one leg on the basketball and on the windowsill or behind the.
But the thing was, if I hadn't gone to. But never mind the water in the garden and one of them happens to look at pictures of alien children,
all the is not really able to turn against me like a miniature screaming and just turn the gas off.
And I came downstairs and she just started just thinking everything was forgotten, wasn't it?
And then, of course, we had the mommy died, a husband died over here. And we've been friendly ever since.
And even now she'll say, I don't know why it all started. When we have finally warned you, not elegant summation.
Sorry to hear this, but the thing was, if I hadn't gone out and defended myself when I did what I mean,
I just wouldn't have been able to go out and defend yourself, because if you don't love, you might as well be in.
As in many other stories in Hawkeye, Marg's narrative unfolds as a series of short.
Rapid fire causes build the tension, along with the phenology insulation on lexical features of the vernacular.
What she arrives at an evaluation of these events in terms of our own laws, we are going to fund it hypothetically.
Then themselves, when I did that, if you don't, you might as well be dead.
The thing was, if I hadn't gone out and defended myself when I did what I mean, I just wouldn't have been one of.
You've got to go out and defend yourself, because if you don't let him, you might as well be.
We return now to one city of Philadelphia where last week is 90 year old St. Paul's fierce loyalty to the place where he.
This is growing in St. Are you?
Whose language is what is going to all the rights and privileges?
Also, dolphins, legal warriors.
I was moved to tell the story of her mother's going to work in a place where she was denied such rights on privileges, facing hostility and violence.
Gloria Steinem is a 66 year old black woman we interviewed in 1981 by Cherie Francis when a graduate student in linguistics 560,
of course, on the story of this beach community.
In 1925, when Gloria was only 10 years old, she went to an event that is preserved in chilling detail in her memory.
When the events of this story, we see how the abilities of a 10 year old over a mile are tested against the United Front,
one of the most powerful forces in our society. The community police when the police administration.
It is a violent struggle against overwhelming odds.
In central Florida, Grindstones model is a person of extraordinary precision, courage and ingenuity.
On the night side, family moved into a white neighbourhood, Gloria was alone with a younger sibling.
The neighbours told the House. Well, no sooner did my mother get.
Out of the house, then, oh, such an awful crash came through the window when I and I looked and there was a big stone.
She told the children I ran to find her mother.
We located a police captain. My mother said to the captain, what are you going to do about?
And he says, well, maybe there is nothing we can do about. So anyhow, she said to him.
Well, I know one thing you can do. And he said, what's that?
She said, You can take me home, so take you home.
She said, yes, and the police patrol. It's in the police patrol and they took us home.
Well, Gloria's mother realised that the clamour of the police patrol, no one one girl would bring out the whole neighbourhood.
Would you do? Well, Gloria remembers Watson when she told the story of this police patrol that they had, it went clang.
And. All the neighbours came running out to see what was happening.
Well, we got out of that police patrol before the patrol ever left,
my mother turned and faced all those people that were standing around and she says, why you're doing this to me?
I don't know. She says, I know that I am different from you.
Colour wise, but in every other respect, I'm just the same as you are, and all I'm trying to do is provide a home for my family.
She says it is winter time and it is cold and I cannot afford to be buying.
We do. Now, she said.
Whoever threw the stones. I don't know, but you can all see what has happened.
And now I'm telling you that we're going to be here for a month, so you might just as well make up your mind to that.
If you don't want me here, then you people get together and give me enough money to move somewhere else because I do not have it.
Gloria, his mother's speech. We have a strong effect on the native.
Well, the organisation. And strengthened by the use of WMD extraction on two crucial qualities.
As we see in this little. W.H. calls why you're doing this.
What do you think? I don't know. Wanted in the first part of the ocean to the over.
With the second phase. The power and strength to in the.
Is known is also the object of I don't know.
By the end of the story, we were told that the Navy did that on glorious Wembley Stadium, the neighbourhood.
Where do we go with everybody who you saw looting during that period of time that we were?
My father became sick and the neighbours were as nice as anybody could ever have been.
The parallels between the stories told by Gloria Steinem and Margie not were quite striking.
Both in content and in the rhetorical devices that the.
In both cases, the conflict began when a new family moved into the neighbourhood.
One goal was resolved by the death of a father figure.
God's grace, will you hold one more these calls, those will be the one we will give you,
or don't you just think that everything was forgotten, wasn't it?
And then, of course, we had the man who died, a husband died over here. And we've been friends since.
Both women use hypothetical if as their amazing grammatical tool.
This slide shows the funding of the important hypothetical you don't want to used as the condition of the rest.
Of the complications of the end, glorious voice over mothers who children these.
We noted earlier with two instances of W.H extraction by Gloria of whoever one Sisters-in-law rhetoric on the surface while the other opposition.
We move this case to the you complain about the lack of support from the men on the street under what got me.
In the past, where the female protagonist on the news when the men saw her from, you're going to be recruited behind the doors.
But what got me, the men never showed their faces when they all had me.
Nobody come out as soon as the female until coming down the street, the men to the door.
As a marginal celebrity, we is polarisation of participants in glorious times,
narrative one's own agenda while we, my over party undefendable in those lousy.
The females were Archey Bernabeu incisal.
The beginning with protagonist is 10 year old Gloria, who takes whatever action is possible, she is then replaced as protagonist by your mother.
For exemplifies these attributes to work will be.
You because have this extended narrative is.
Underlined by the many obstacles placed in her way, she has to deal with the hostile neighbours,
undependable husband or useless and prejudiced policeman when a police captain who is programmed to avoid responsibility.
More determination and ingenuity find a path to neutralising, if not overcoming, these cumulative threats to her and her family.
Knowing in advance that the clamour of the police wagon would bring the crowd of neighbours to the open,
she was able to replace the hidden anonymous opposition, one that she would not directly.
English word for speakers of English language estranges to me.
On central issues of the life experience where they would be projected to a broader audience no one will disagree with.
On the central issues in the regions of Europe, on the resources of the world, which is the conviction of these were important matters.
When they left, no doubt about what they believe is the result of them.
These speaker's words were reminders, of course, the decades ago.
Memorable one day, Lindsay. Each in their own particular way.
Working class, because none will be called education or do not yield to any will, no command of the English language.
Well, now that you mention Google. But the moment when they summoned up the rhetorical resources of the language.
Since we will be hearing the details of the ways in which Indonesia was involved, the voice,
whether it is the phrasing of the design, points to the issues of central importance in their lives.
Oh, and I can invest I can get that much faith in every.
If I hadn't gone out and defended myself when I did. If you don't want me here, then you people get together.
These are the voices of strange. They are taking from exploratory interviews, which precede quantitative analysis.
These are the first steps to understanding which begins, as always, are you listening to what people have to say?
Thank you so much. Thank you very much indeed. Do you want to stop sharing the screen so you can see if people have questions?
OK, you just have to remind myself how to do that.
It's the little things that you press again and then go back into that same sex drive and stuff during the spring.
OK, that's intense scrolling, as I think your son said.
That was wonderful. Thank you so much. Now time for questions.
If you could please press the button. I will be able to see it on the participant list and then I'll call on you.
So. Oh, is using the clock button properly after we had the first.
Any questions, please? I need you to hand button those or something to indicate that you want to ask questions and know it until that silence.
Everybody is struck dumb. No, I don't see any I don't see any Huns, at least yet.
Yes, please, Drosnin Temple. Yes, I'm sorry.
I've got over lively puppy trying to get my attention at the same time was asking the question.
So all these days, all these data. But when do we stop?
Because it's really striking that you're going right back to look at the, um, the individuals right back at the beginning.
Do we just go on forever collecting data? So this is the very general and vague question, but I hope it makes sense.
Well, I would I would just like to mention that, unfortunately, Bill has lost a hearing aid in the last days.
So I'm going to repeat the questions very loudly for him to hear, because that's just a technical problem we're going to be seeing about tomorrow.
So rather than ask when do we stop collecting all this data or should we just go on forever?
You yourself in the speech went back to some of your earliest work.
The idea is, do we just go on forever?
It's not a good version of your question. Yes, it is.
And by the way, it was an amazing pleasure to hear.
So amazing to hear the early data as well as well.
It's absolutely fascinating knowing the literature. But yeah, that's the question.
It was amazing to hear those early voices and so surprising to us.
We thought, you know, that those tapes wouldn't last. So what do you say, Bill?
Well, we have the fact of language change, language doesn't stay still.
What we can always follow along with this change in language.
But I think that. It's a good question.
In the light of what I discovered, when I teach a course on narrative, say.
Children should. Go and ask their grandparents questions like these.
It was one thing that happened in your life, but you never forget what would be.
When they come back to me with the same question, they say, how come they never told me this before?
The richness of human experience is not only.
We have another question from Jaycee. See if you could speak nice and loudly, that would help, so I know I my friend said, is that better?
Yes, yes, yes. Good, right. Bill, thanks very much. I enjoyed it greatly.
I know you've done work on the people who lead linguistic change.
And I imagine that not all the people you interviewed speak as eloquently and as elegantly as the people that you played us.
Is there a correlation between people's rhetorical abilities, if you like, and the likelihood that they will be in the vanguard of change?
They will be the leaders that people will will model themselves on them?
Well, these people with these wonderful rhetorical skills, are they likely to be the leaders of change?
Is it likely that people will model themselves on on speakers like these, or are the people who are leaders of change?
Maybe not so rhetorically elegant and eloquent?
Well, we come to your contribution to this. You, well, were amongst our oldest students one year.
And we know just. California.
Was then need to explore this new world came.
With the concept of.
Will. What do you have to do to change under the impetus of the using?
Social issues. Well, the way we change is being so.
One of the problems in the future, but.
Studies of. Motion moving forward on that scale is always doing.
Well. Well, who wants a diplomatic solution when we change every.
So this what she calls the third wave is much more expensive than the word Panopto.
You know, I think, as I if I could just jump in for a second.
No, you found that Donald thought for his age was quite advanced.
I mean, there were younger people who were farther advanced in that case than he was.
But as in his age group, he was advanced. So one would think he was an advanced speaker, I'm sure of change over the decades of his own.
Know, I think that Robert. Julie, in your video has turned itself off.
Oh, no. And my techs just left their onesie a little circle.
Yes. And for me, OK, you know, I can still see them.
I can see them. Yeah, I can see the problem. Maybe should never mind.
So, Damian is Damian Hall is the next question, please.
Thank you, ADT, and thank you, Bill. That was wonderful.
Thank you, Jillian, also. It's great. It's great to see you both.
And my question is you. What do you think?
Thank you very much. What do you think, if you can say is the most important contribution that all of this wonderful work has done?
I really enjoyed listening just for what these people have said, what they meant.
So we've we've all benefited greatly from the work over the last six decades that you've mentioned in the linguistic sense.
But is that more important than these life lessons you've written books about?
Both, after all. What do you think is the most important, in your own words, the linguistic analysis of grammatical and phonological structure?
Are these kind of life lessons that these great people are telling us?
Well, Damien, I want to question that I asked myself very quickly,
and I don't have the answer to it because I wrote a fair amount of poetry when I was growing up.
And in recent decades, we're expressing some of the same kinds of.
Hearings that will go on from all the people I've interviewed, so we ask yourself.
What are we up to? My answer to this is always the same as I give my students who ask me, what should I be doing?
Answer is if you reach the age of 70, when you feel you haven't wasted your time, that will be sufficient.
Wonderful. Thank you very much.
Do we have any further questions, if not?
Bill, can I ask a question?
I noticed in the in the last of the four speeches you had, there was obviously a lot of interaction with the intonational phrasing as well as,
let's say, the W.H. grunting and the syntactic structure. And they all had beautiful intonational contours with rises, et cetera.
But not everybody has these. So there can be also languages, not necessarily who have are quite flat in there.
And even in their questions, they do not necessarily rise.
To what extent do you think the intonation and the sentence structure interact in terms of change?
So I repeat that, no, he said, to what extent do you think internation, it can be quite variable,
both in between speakers and different languages who have which some of whom some of which have quite flat intonation, even in questions.
So do you think that there is a relationship between intonation and sentence structure in conveying meanings?
Is that good enough authority? Yes. And if which one?
He thinks that language change, I mean, contributes to more that more or less effects on language page which which more or less affects.
Well, yeah, if you're a little neglected,
to what extent the study of intonation and on January 1st of each year I find myself making a new resolution,
which is a really good one, the standards of getting those people going.
So. So when I first began studying linguistic variation, the task was to find linguistic variables which were most amenable to quantitative analysis.
And it turned out that both systems have been the leaders in this field and that the technical apparatus for analysing was quantitatively along,
three dimensions was laid out in the field.
So we take programme programme that it's been used throughout the world now by allowing you to sit down and.
In two weeks. We what you to take.
Oh, yes, indeed. I mean, I use the same Nagra tape recorder, you had to do my first internation studies and they were very reliable indeed.
Do we have any further questions?
A bill has been sitting and talking for a full hour or so, perhaps one more question, and then we give him a rousing hand, if possible,
with our little gadget, not a gadget, whatever you call this, the symbol that evely any further question, though, I don't want to just cut it short.
This has been an amazing experience, but this, this for us has really made the pandemic viable.
Is that having you here any, anything else, any comments, any questions.
We have recorded this so we should be able to play it back again, which is wonderful.
And Bill would be able to see it back again as well. Well, let me just make a last comment.
I would like to say thank you for inviting Bill,
and it's been great fun for me listening to some of these people who I've heard some before, but not all.
And just to think of ourselves as being, you know, in your community, we do remember I can talk to it so fondly.
We hope we'll get to see you in the reality. Yes.
2006 it is. Yes. And thank you so much.
And thank you so much. Thank you for a wonderful, wonderful talk.
Thank you very much indeed. Thank you.
I'll get back to you later. All right. Thank you. Bye.
Well, but. Thank you, professor.