Books by William (University of Pennsylvania) Labov

Labov extends his widely used framework for narrative analysis to matters of greatest human concern: accounts of the danger of death, violence, premonitions and large-scale community conflicts. This book provides a rich range of narratives that grip the reader's attention together with an analysis of how it is done.

This groundbreaking study of New York speech founded the discipline of sociolinguistics, presenting a pioneering new account of social variation in language. In this second edition, Labov reviews forty years of findings in sociolinguistics, and brings the reader up to date on the methods, results and achievements of sociolinguistic research.