Linguistic variation has been studied primarily in communities with the dominant social organization of our time: ethnic diversity, socioeconomic stratification, and a population size precluding community‐wide face‐to‐face interaction. In such communities literacy introduces extra‐community linguistic norms, and variation correlates with ethnicity and class. This study investigates variation in the ancestral language of a population with a very different social structure: small size, dense kinship ties, common occupation, absence of social stratification. Their Gaelic shows a high level of soc ... More

Linguistic variation has been studied primarily in communities with the dominant social organization of our time: ethnic diversity, socioeconomic stratification, and a population size precluding community‐wide face‐to‐face interaction. In such communities literacy introduces extra‐community linguistic norms, and variation correlates with ethnicity and class. This study investigates variation in the ancestral language of a population with a very different social structure: small size, dense kinship ties, common occupation, absence of social stratification. Their Gaelic shows a high level of socially neutral individual variation, with variants originating in settlement‐period dialect mixture; a subsequent history of social isolation, endogamy, and regular face‐to‐face interaction eliminated any need for linguistic accommodation, while social homogeneity and absence of extra‐community norms permitted the variants to remain socially neutral. Examination of the theoretical assumptions and established methodologies prevailing in dialectology and descriptive linguistics offers a number of explanations for delayed recognition of linguistic variation unrelated to social class or other social sub‐groupings. Detailed examination of the social structure of one community offers explanations for the strikingly divergent usage of close kin and age‐mates. Reports of similar variation phenomena in locations with similar social‐setting and social‐organization features (minority‐language pockets in Ireland, Russia, Norway, Canada, and Cameroon) permit the recognition of factors that contribute to the emergence and persistence of socially neutral inter‐speaker and intra‐speaker variation. Facets of language use related to social structure remain to be investigated in communities with still other forms of social organization before the few communities that represent them disappear altogether.