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

SALIENCE IN LANGUAGE CHANGE
‘Salience’ as an explanatory factor in language change:
evidence from dialect levelling in urban England 1
Paul Kerswill and Ann Williams
Department of Linguistic Science, The University of Reading
Abstract. The article considers the notion of salience as applied in the
explanation of language change through dialect contact, focusing particularly on
Trudgill’s 1986 exploration of the idea. The article opens with a discussion of
six studies which have explicitly used ‘salience’ in an explanatory capacity.
This leads to the conclusion that the factors involved in salience are many and
varied. There follows a critique of Trudgill’s salience model; while problems
(mainly to do with circularity) are identified, Trudgill’s model is considered to
be testable. Data from a study of dialect levelling in England shows that, while
language-internal factors play a part, it is in the end sociodemographic and other
language-external factors that account for the salience of a particular feature.
Finally, a three-component model of salience is presented: first, it is suggested
that salience is only relevant in the case of dynamic linguistic phenomena (those
involved in acquisition or change). Second, language-internal factors are listed,
and third the all-important language-external factors are given. It is suggested
that there are bidirectional causal links between the second and third
components.
1. Introduction: dialect contact and language change
A current theme in contact linguistics is the interplay between internal,
external (contact-based) and a range of non-linguistic factors in language
change (see Jones et al. (eds.) forthcoming). Because of the uniqueness of
every case of language change and the problem of finding controls, it is
extremely difficult to predict, for a particular constellation of factors, exactly
what the outcome will be. However, in assessing their role, there is a great
deal to be gained by post hoc argumentation. This article explores some of
these factors by appealing to a notion which seems to lie at the cusp of
internal and external motivation: that of salience, which we can provisionally
define rather simply as a property of a linguistic item or feature that makes it
in some way perceptually and cognitively prominent. Salience is a notion of
1 We are very grateful to Peter Auer, Jenny Cheshire and Peter Trudgill for valuable comments on earlier
drafts of this article. This is a version of an article which will appear under the same title in Jones et al. (eds.)
(forthcoming).
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