ABSTRACT
William Labov is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania, USA. Since the mid-1960s, he has revolutionized the study of sociolinguistics. He has published important work on the way a speaker's language reflects his or her social class, and descriptions of varieties of nonstandard English used by different ethnic groups in the USA, for example Blacks and Puerto Ricans in New York. Many of his papers are on technical aspects of sociolinguistics and language change, but he has also written many influential articles on language in education, including articles on the relationship between reading problems and nonstandard English and peer-group membership, and oral story-telling styles. Several of his articles on educational topics are collected in Labov (1972a), and other theoretical papers on language and social class are collected in Labov (1972b). A great deal of work has been published in both the USA and Britain to develop Labov's work on the relation between varieties of English and educational problems. Outstanding contributions include Macaulay (1978) on language and education in Glasgow; Milroy (1980) on nonstandard English in WC areas of Belfast; and V. K. Edwards (1979) and Sutcliffe (1981) on British Black English.
