born Dec. 4, 1927, Rutherford, N.J., U.S.
U.S. linguist.
After working for many years as an industrial chemist, Labov began graduate work in 1961, focusing on regional and class differences in English pronunciation on Martha's Vineyard, Mass., and in New York City, and ways to quantify phonetic change and variation. Most of his later research dealt with the same issues in increasingly sophisticated ways, culminating in his monumental Principles of Linguistic Change (1994). The discovery that American English pronunciation was becoming regionally more rather than less divergent countered popular belief and attracted the attention of many outside his field.