Reading Working Papers in Linguistics 4 (2000) - The University of ...

J. MARSHALL
anthropologists. As many of the respondents in the Doric study are farmers, or
their wives or children, numbers three and four have been slightly revised, and
some extra questions added 1 . These are similar, but more specifically stated.
Some critics (Maehlum 1983, Coates 1986) have noted that social network
criteria are biased towards males, especially in working-class and traditional,
rural communities. This is likely to cause a ‘gender effect’. Questions three to
five above are not appropriate for women who manage homes and children,
and their answers yield low network strength indices, yet they may interact
strongly with locals in a non-working environment. The Doric questions were
therefore worded specifically to include housewives and children, and the
questions were often rephrased during the interviews to tease out such
possibilities.
In sum then, Lesley Milroy finds strong evidence to support the theory
that a dense, multiplex network structure will predict relative closeness to
vernacular norms. She believes that this is because a close-knit network has
the capacity to exercise close supervision and control over its members. She
does, however, point to certain constraints on the capacity of network
structure to influence language use, saying that the relationship between the
two is not absolute. Its influence is most felt in communities where traditional
sex/network equivalence patterns are preserved. When these patterns are
disturbed for some reason, such as geographical mobility or high male
unemployment, the relationship between network and language use is less
close (Milroy 1987: 162). Of course, this compromises the general
applicability of the theory.
She also admits that the question of why some speakers are more
closely integrated into local networks than others cannot easily be answered,
and that this placed limitations on how we should interpret correlations
between language use and network structure. The line of causality is not predetermined
and necessary here. She asks the question ‘does a person choose to
be more or less closely integrated into his community and to signal his choice
when he speaks?’ She cites Le Page as saying that
The individual creates his system of verbal behaviour so as to resemble those
common to the group or groups with which he wishes from time to time to be
identified (Le Page 1968, cited in Milroy 1987:182, my emphasis).
1 The questions were designed to have local relevance, based on observations made during the pilot study.
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