How different the world of sociolinguistics would have been if a polite man would have asked people in New York departmwnt stores ‘excuse me, how do you pronounce the R in Labov?’
And sometimes the questions are downright dangerous. For example, when I type in the name of my independent but government-funded institute, a question pops up asking ‘who is behind this institute’. I don’t like that one bit.
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