Milroy Belfast study

• Milroy and Milroy

  concluded a higher social network contained more non standard forms
• what is a criticism of milroy study?

  only looked at one community so didn't consider other communities
• Milroyandmilroy suggest which gender has a dense network

  Men have dense, closed networks. They use a high number of non-standard forms. Women have less dense and open networks. They use a much smaller number of non-standard forms.
• Which study challenges milroy in Belfast

  A study of the Clonard women and Hammer men in Belfast challenges these findings.
• What did study in Belfast find

  This study found that due to a rise in unemployment, men had to travel out of the community to find a job and the women all ended up working together in the town.
• Which gender looking at clonard women at hammer men in Belfast found uses closed networks and open networks 


  As a result, the men ended up with quite open networks and women ended up with quite a closed network.
• Milroy looked at the 


  Non Standard pronunciation of a
• On could argue that it does not depend on the group itself, but actually how integrated you are into the group.

  Leslie Milroy's research in Belfast into open and closed networks looked at how close people were in their social group, giving them a rating from 1-5. Open=don't know eachother well, closed=dense connections, everyone is very familiar with one another. Within closed networks where it is a lot more personal and intimate there is more conformity to the non-standard

  whereas if it is an open network, not as intergrated, more standard language is used because of the uncertainty of people, want to show overt prestige whereas if you're more familiar with the people you will use more standard language.