Salience in Sociolinguistics: A Quantitative Approach

This work proposes a definition of the notion of salience in sociolinguistics. Salient linguistic variants are those that are easily picked up by the listeners, and these stand in opposition to 'invisible' variants, which are, even if they also show complex social stratification, completely ignored. Taking a quantitative angle, this work sees salience as a function of relative frequency differences, giving it an empirically testable operationalisation.