Social Network Analysis and Language Change

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European Journal of English Studies 1382-5577/00/0403-0217$15.002000, Vol. 4, No. 3, pp. 217223 Swets & Zeitlinger

Social Network Analysis and Language Change:Introduction

Lesley MilroyUniversity of Michigan

This special issue of EJESis devoted to seven sociohistorical accounts oflanguage variation and change. All these articles focus on applications ofsocial network analysis of the kind which originated in anthropologicalresearch, mainly during the 1960s and 1970s, and which was first intro-

duced to sociolinguistics by a study of the Belfast vernacular which JamesMilroy and I carried out in 1975. A full description of this work waspublished in 1980.1Subsequently, our article Linguistic Change, SocialNetwork and Speaker Innovation and James Milroys Linguistic Varia-tion and Changeintroduced an historical focus by examining the implica-

tions of social network analysis for theories of language change.2 J.K.Chambers, in his book Sociolinguistic Theory, provides a useful review ofa number of sociolinguistic studies which have applied the concept.3Ofparticular value is his description of the ways in which different research-

ers have measured network strength in such a way as to reflect the every-day social practices of communities. The goal of these studies of contem-porary communities has generally been to explicate the informal social

mechanisms which allow speakers to maintain their nonstandard dialectsin the face of pressure from legitimized standard languages. Conversely,

change in the operation of these social mechanisms can, it has been sug-gested, produce important social prerequisites for linguistic change.

An individuals social network is quite simply the sum of relationshipswhich he or she has contracted with others, and social network analysis

Correspondence: Lesley Milroy, Program in Linguistics, 1080 Frieze Building, Ann Arbor,MI, 48109 USA. E-mail: [email protected]

1 Lesley Milroy,Language and Social Networks, 2nd edn. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987 [1st

ed. 1980]).2 James Milroy and Lesley Milroy, Linguistic Change, Social Network and Speaker

Innovation,Journal of Linguistics 21 (1985), 33984; James Milroy,Linguistic Vari-ation and Change (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992).

3 J.K. Chambers, Sociolinguistic Theory(Oxford: Blackwell, 1995).


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examines the variable structures and properties of personal networks. A

fundamental postulate of such an analysis is that individuals create per-

sonal communities which provide them with a meaningful framework forsolving the problems of their day-to-day existence. Although a social net-

work may be seen as a boundless web of ties which reaches out through awhole society, for practical reasons network studies generally anchornetworks to specific individuals, focusing on first-order network ties i.e.,

those persons with whom they directly interact.Personal social networks are characterised by ties of different types and

strengths, and structural relationships between links can vary. In particu-

lar, if a network consists chiefly of strong ties, and those ties are multiplexor many-stranded, and if the network is also relatively dense i.e. many ofthe ties of ego are linked to each other then such a network has the

capacity to support its members in both practical and symbolic ways. Thatis, in addition to providing assistance of a moral and practical kind, it canalso support the maintenance of symbolic value systems such as linguistic

or other cultural practices. The chief issue here for the linguist is thatstrong ties both inhibit linguistic change and support linguistic norms.

The norm-enforcing capacities of groups built up mainly of strong ties

partly explains why innovators are likely to be persons weakly linked tothe group; indeed, using a measure of network strength, the Belfast com-munity studies we carried out showed that susceptibility to outside influ-

ence increased in inverse proportion to strength of tie with the group.Where groups are loose-knit that is, linked internally mainly by weakties they are therefore likely to be generally more susceptible to innova-

tion. For this reason, weak network ties are likely to play an important partin the construction of a theory of linguistic diffusion and change. Follow-ing M. Granovetters work,4we argued in our 1985 article that weak and

apparently insignificant interpersonal ties (of acquaintance as opposedto friend, for example) are important channels through which innovationand influence flow from one close-knit group to another, linking such

groups to a wider society. To support this argument, the article presents adetailed quantitative analysis of the history and present-day distribution ofthree Belfast phonological variables, suggesting that the spread of one of

them across hard sectarian lines of demarcation to penetrate the dialect ofyoung speakers is difficult to explain except in such terms. It was alsosuggested that this weak tie model of change and diffusion could be ap-

plied at the macro level to account for the tendency of some languages to

4 M. Granovetter, The Strength of Weak Ties, American Journal of Sociology 78(1973), 136080.


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SOCIAL NETWORK ANALYSIS AND LANGUAGE CHANGE 219

be more resistant to change than others (Icelandic versus English, for

example). The general argument is that a type of social organization which

is based on overlapping closeknit networks will inhibit change, while onebased on mobility (for whatever reason), with a concomitant weakening of

network ties, will facilitate it.Although the idea that innovations are transmitted through weak net-

work links may at first sight seem counterintuitive, a little thought sug-

gests its plausibility. First, it is likely (in the networks of mobile individu-als at least) that weak ties are more numerous than strong ties. Second,many more individuals can be reached through weak ties than through

strong ties; consider, for example, the relatively tenuous links set up byparticipants at academic or business conferences, which link cohesivegroups associated with each institution and through which new ideas and

information pass. Conversely, information relayed through strong tiestends not to be innovatory, since those linked by strong ties tend to sharecontacts (that is, to belong to overlapping networks). Thus, mobile indi-

viduals who have contracted many weak ties, but as a consequence of theirmobility occupy a position marginal to any given cohesive group, are in afavourable position to diffuse innovation. Interestingly for the issues con-

sidered in this volume, this conclusion is in line with the traditional as-sumption of historians of language that the emergent, mobile merchantclass were largely responsible for the appearance of Northern (and other)

dialectal innovations in Early Modern (Standard) English.5

The articles which follow all attempt to extend to speech communitiesof earlier periods the insights of social network analysis which have been

developed in ethnographically oriented studies of contemporary commu-nities. Some concentrate on issues arising from the norm enforcementcapacities of closeknit networks, while others are more concerned with the

twin corollaries that language change is rapid to the extent that such net-works are looseknit, and that individuals who are loosely connected tolocalized networks are likely to be linguistic innovators. While some au-

thors (particularly Fitzmaurice and Bax) are primarily concerned withmethodological issues, all in effect deal with the problems besetting theextension of social network analysis from contemporary sociolinguistics

to historical research.Most obviously, the historical record leaves gaps, and scholars must

make do with whatever relevant social and linguistic information has been

preserved. While historians gain in having access to hindsight, it is not

5 See, for example, A.C. Baugh and Thomas Cable,A History of the English Language,3rd edn. (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978), p. 194.


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strong ties which allow the variety to emerge as a focused norm. A good

deal is known about the social organisation of tenth-century monasticism,

and of lfric and thelwold, two powerful figures around whom theWinchester School monasteries are centred. This information allows Lenk-

er to examine the social conditions which gave rise to a focused Winches-ter norm, and also to examine the loose ties between monasteries throughwhich she proposes that the norms of the group are diffused. Although she

takes care to spell out the hazards of projecting a sociolinguistic networkanalysis so far back in history, the early mediaeval monastic system pro-vides something close to a sociolinguistic laboratory for this kind of anal-

ysis.Similar comments may be made of Alexander Bergss analysis of the

distinctive Wycliffite language of the tightknit Lollard communities of the

fifteenth century. This group, concerning which a considerable amount ofsocial information is available, developed a recognizable style which isevident in thirty surviving manuscripts. Bergs quantitatively examines the

characteristics of this style with respect to two grammatical variables.Networks such as those of the Winchester group and the Lollards might bedescribed as coalitions i.e. alliances which have been contracted for

specific purposes (religious and political in these cases). Bergs also exam-ines a very different kind of network structure the family network of thefifteenth-century Pastons which can be studied with reference both to the

exceptional corpus of letters which survives and to the social characteris-tics of family members. He analyses the language use of persons whoseties to the family network are of differing strengths and concludes, in line

with the predictions of network analysis, that those with looser ties can becharacterized as linguistic innovators. Bergss article includes a third casestudy of the language of the tenth-century Peterborough Chronicle to dem-

onstrate the limits of this kind of sociohistorical linguistic analysis: suffi-cient data is simply not available for even a tentative account of the socialnetworks of twelfth-century scribal innovators. Bergs also provides an

extensive methodological discussion of the issues which need to be facedin applying network analysis historically in terms of Labovs principle ofuniformity. This principle holds that the forces which drive linguistic

change are the same throughout history, thus allowing researchers toproject backwards into history principles derived from research into con-temporary communities.

Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade deals with a family network in a man-ner comparable to Bergs treatment of the Pastons. Her focal actor is SarahFielding, sister of the eighteenth-century novelist Henry, and the database

is provided by the collection of the letters of these two authors. An impor-


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tant member of this family-based network is the novelist Samuel Richard-

son, whose role as a linguistic innovator Tieken had already considered

elsewhere.8There, she was particularly interested in Richardsons influ-ence on Samuel Johnson. She notes that Henry Fielding mentored Sarah, a

letter-writer and novelist, to the extent of suppressing individual charac-teristics of her language. However, after his death her language, like John-sons, showed evidence of the influence of Richardson, confirming

Tiekens earlier view of him as a linguistic innovator.The four papers considered so far have all discussed language mainte-

nance or language change in specific personal or institutional communi-

ties, attending also to the major methodological hazards which beset at-tempts to apply social network analysis to networks which are no longeramenable to ethnographic observation. The contributions of Fitzmaurice

and Bax are somewhat differently oriented in that they concentrate onthese methodological issues. Fitzmaurices article reflects both broadlyand deeply on the applications of network analysis to historical language

situations. With attention to the example of the group of influential lan-guage users who cluster round Joseph Addison, the key figure behind theinfluential magazineThe Spectator, her paper constitutes a careful discus-

sion of the nature of social influence, which she sees as a precondition forlinguistic influence. She is also concerned with the more general validityof applying the social network construct historically. Fitzmaurice is inter-

ested in understanding the influence of individual writers, as opposed tothe more general influence of publications such as The Spectator. In par-ticular, she argues that the understanding of coalition formation is crucial

in assisting such an understanding. As noted above, coalitions differ fromfriendship and family networks in that they are alliances which are consti-tuted for specific purposes. The Spectatorgroup is a clear example of such

a coalition. Fitzmaurice refers to the substantial contemporary literatureon coalition formation, arguing that, given the patchy nature of survivingsocial information, coalitions are easier to handle than friendship ties; the

social construction of friendship is less readily understood. Her article as awhole is a careful consideration of the range of issues which need to beconsidered by the historian of language wishing to apply social network

analysis to material from earlier periods.

8 Samuel Richardsons Role as Linguistic Innovator: A Sociolinguistic Analysis, inLanguage, Usage and Description. Studies Presented to Noel Osselton on the Occa-

sion of his Retirement, eds. Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade and John Frankis (Amster-dam/Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 1991), 4757.


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While his contribution is also methodological, Baxs focus is very

much narrower. He begins by identifying a specifiable and influential

eighteenth-century network which he describes as the Streatham Group.This network centres on the figure of the wealthy brewer Henry Thrale,

who commissioned Sir Joshua Reynolds to paint a collection of portraitsof family and friends to be displayed in the library of his house atStreatham Park, Surrey. While Baxs ultimate interest, like that of Fitz-

maurice, is in linguistic influence specifically the influence of membersof the Streatham Group upon one another his focus in this article is onthe mechanics of constructing an appropriate and valid network strength

scale against which variable linguistic data can be assessed.Hickeys contribution is different from those addressed hitherto in that

he investigates ongoing linguistic change in a contemporary community

the prosperous Dublin elite of Irelands twentieth-century tiger economy.A coordinated set of vowel changes are evident in the language of thisdiffuse but selfconsciously cosmopolitan group which Hickey describes as

dissociative. By this, he means that they display a reaction against thefocused norms of traditional Dublin English which have been maintainedby the closeknit networks characteristic of the working-class communities

of the city. Hickey identifies innovatory vowel variants which are charac-terised by maximal linguistic distance from their corresponding elementsin the traditional system. His paper serves as a foil to those preceding it in

demonstrating the richness of linguistic, ethnographic and other socialdata available to the sociolinguist investigating change in progress. Such ademonstration highlights the methodological constraints inherent in the

sociohistorical enterprise which have formed a substantial part of the dis-cussion of the other six authors.

Taken together, the seven articles in this volume discuss specific speech

communities which span an entire millennium. Each addresses issues as-sociated with the transmission of linguistic influence through ties con-tracted in personal communities. Some concentrate more on methodologi-

cal and some on more substantive linguistic issues, but together they con-stitute a remarkably focused attempt to reconstruct the everyday sociallives of the men and women of the past, with a view to examining how the

ties contracted in these lives are influential in producing changes whichare evident in their own writings, and which have also turned out to beimportant elements in the macro level history of the English language.


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Social Network Analysis and Language Change

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