To study the oldest version of a country's language, scientists typically use a NORM to determine what exactly this variant is for a specific location. The NORM is a non-mobile, elderly male from the countryside, or a rural area, to adapt the acronym. However, the linguistic variations of the RULES across the country are definitely not the standard. Large differences in speech can be observed in social classes, age groups, living areas and opposite sexes, while the Average Joe is just a middle class male, living in the city and not answering all linguistic questions. First, the oldest inhabitants of a country are those who use the most traditional linguistic forms. This is what Labov was primarily concerned with, as he believed that the present could be used to explain the past. “Older adults' use of the linguistic feature represents typical use of that feature in the community when they themselves were young” (Wagner, 2012, p. 372), in contrast to the way it is used by the average adult in the present. This is a phenomenon called the “apparent time construct,” which causes older people to stop keeping up with modern language after a certain age. Labov concluded this led to the spread of vocalized /r/ in New York in the 1960s, when he realized that young people were beginning to use this phoneme while older people did not notice this change. To a large extent, this is reflexive, since older adults do not appear to do this consciously. Even if the elders are the voices of the past, it is the youth of a country who shape a new language by opposing the traditional ways. , therefore also those of the word. In the example mentioned above, the youngest people in New York City were the ones who basically... middle of paper ....../ William Labov. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Retrieved April 27, 2014. Labov, William. (1990). The intersection of gender and social class during linguistic change. Language Variation and Change 2: 205-254. Retrieved April 27, 2014.Christine, M. (2007). Social class, social status and stratification: revisiting familiar concepts in sociolinguistics. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics, 13(2), 149-161. Retrieved April 27, 2014. Trudgill, P. (2003). A glossary of sociolinguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Retrieved April 27, 2014. Wagner, S. E. (2012). Age classification in sociolinguistic theory. Compass of language and linguistics, 6(6), 371-382. Retrieved April 27, 2014, from the Academia.edu database.Wardhaugh, R. (1986). Introduction to sociolinguistics. New York, New York, USA: Blackwell. April extract 27, 2014.