Trugill/ Labov/ Tidholm- English Dialect

The dropping of 'ing', pronounced 'ng' through the nasal, was investigated by Peter Trugill in the 70's. He examined this theory on 5 groups of society:
-lower working class
-middle working class
-upper working class
-lower middle class
-middle middle class
-males
-females
I predict that Trugill found that this dropping of velar nasal 'ng' was found in the dialect of mainly males in the lower working class because its suggests quicker talking and that this is a feature of accent. People in upper classes tend to be overt prestige and want to sound more standard English, whereas males in the lower working class are proud of their accents and dialect, and the sense of individuality in their society so would carry this feature.

Labov researched the 'r' pronunciation in New York dialect, investigation this theory in 3 shopping stores in the 1960's. It was considered that to have vocalization of the final 'r' was recognized as having high status. He went into Saks (expensive New York store), Macy's( (middle class store) and S. Klein's (cheapest of the 3 stores). He asked shopping assistances a question about where an item would be in the store and they would answer with a floor number. He would ask them to repeat their reply, as if he hadn't heard their response. He would then go off and record their dialect. He found that the Macy's would pronounce 'flo-ar' the most, showing that the most expensive shop, had the most overt prestige New York accent. This feature of dialect decreased as the stores got cheaper. In Macy's it was most apparent that when asked to repeat themselves, shoo assistances would use this vocalization.

Thomas Tidholm studied the definite article reduction in dialects. In particular, the Yorkshire dialect was know for this feature, e.g. t' instead of the. He found out that the older generation used this form of dialect and it was majorly men over women and was spoken by middle-class/working-class families. In 3 years time, Tidhom predicted that definite article reduction will not be part of dialect in 3 generations time.