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

J. MARSHALL
can choose a high level of integration into local networks and a high level of
use of local vernacular features. In fact, Lesley Milroy also points to the
importance of mental orientation:
Both the low-status vernaculars and RP may be viewed as owing their relative
stability to covert ideologies of solidarity and reciprocity (1987:185).
Later linguistic studies have not always been uncritical of Milroy’s
research:
[ ] neither stratificational analysis nor network analysis alone is capable of
answering all questions; they must be considered as two approaches to quantifying
certain aspects of a complex picture which includes subjective evaluation and other
(perhaps as yet unidentified) socio-cultural factors (Lippi-Green 1989: 215,
emphasis mine).
Lippi-Green notes of Milroy’s work in the urban neighbourhoods of Belfast
that, while it provides a departure point, there is still a ‘practical and
methodological gap between a study of this type and one of an isolated
mountain village of 800 persons’ (p. 218). As we shall see, the Doric data
supports this cautious viewpoint of social network theory for rural
communities.
She writes that age and sex are indicators of group alliance about which
the individual has no choice, and within which he or she must function. The
openness, density and multiplexity of her social networks are more about the
individual as a relatively free agent. One participates in the social life of a
community to the extent one wishes, but one cannot control the family or
community into which one is born. Of course, one can decide whether to stay
in the community and about strengthening ties with it. This viewpoint supports
what has been said in this study about the freedom of choice available to
individuals. People are born in a certain generation, and belong to one of the
two sexes, but have a lot of say in the extent to which they build community
ties and conform to community language norms.
Lippi-Green finds that social network integration alone, or the
interaction of integration and age and sex, cannot explain or predict linguistic
behaviour, and that subjective evaluation from the perspective of the
individual can clarify many of the problems of the quantitative analysis of
group behaviour. She notes that previous insights into the social matrices of
rural communities were constrained by the urban model, causing theoretical
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