Language Variation

Trdugill's research was also class-based and looked at regioanl accent forms. However, when compared to Petyt's research, Trudgill made a distinction between males and females in each class. Therefore, we also have the independent variable of gender as well as the use of the Velar Nasal.
- Trudgill collected his data from: reading a wordlist and a passage, and formal and informal conversations .   

Results: Male Female
middle middle class 96 100 lower middle class 73 97 upper working class 19 32 middle working class 9 19 lower working class 0 3

The vernacular "ing" is absent in the verbs "jumping" "walking" and "talking" of many speakers in Norwich.
- His results were very similar to Petyt's, the lower-classes tended to use the Velar Nasal while the upper-classes omitted it. 
- The absence of the Velar Nasal shows prestige. 
- The word list was highly formalised since the speakers were more conscious about their speech (Observer's paradox) so they upwardly converged (use of "ing") while the informal conversation was casual and was a truer identification of language features. 
- Women used less non-standard variants than men in the majority of contexts = which proves that situation plays a role in formality. 
- As the participants continued to meet the researchers, they felt more comfortable and relaxed, as the level of formality increased, which led to the use of non-standard features.