Individuell språklig variaiton och förändring – sex informanter inspelade 1967, 1996 och 2018

In this article, the behaviour of six speakers in Eskilstuna, Sweden, is analysed across their lifespans. They were recorded in 1967, 1996 and 2018. In 1967, Bengt Nordberg recorded 83 Eskilstuna speakers for the first large-scale sociolinguistic investigation of language variation and change in the Nordic countries, and in 1996, I made the recordings for the project Continu- ity and Change in Present-Day Swedish: Eskilstuna Revisited, combining a panel study with 13 re-recorded informants and a trend study with 72 new informants. In 2018, I found 6 of the 13 panel speakers from 1996 and recorded at least 50 minutes with each informant. The interviews from three different points in time, combined with an integration index questionnaire carried out in 1996, allow for a description and discussion of how variation, change and stability at the level of the individual speaker are influenced by a combination of different factors. The results demonstrate, contrary to William Labov’s assumption (2001, p. 447) of an age of stabilisation at 17, that individuals can and do change their linguistic behaviour after early adulthood. Even the oldest informants have by no means remained stable. There is a tendency for young infor- mants to increase their use of standard variants and use more standard language when they are middle-aged, whereas older informants increase their use of local variants as they grow older and retire from work. As this panel study draws on considerable ethnographic knowledge about the informants and their life histories, it was possible to explore how individuals’ linguistic behaviour is influenced by intersecting social factors: not only sociodemographic status, gender and age, but also their level of education, type of occupation, social mobility and integration in the local community. Attitudes to the local community and the local language are clearly of importance. It is also demonstrated that each individual can be influenced by different factors in different ways.