It has been suggested that morphosyntax has more constrained social meanings than phonological variation, despite the scarcity of empirical research evidencing this claim. By using frequency correlations to isolate stylized moments of grammatical variation, this paper provides evidence of the rich social meanings constructed by nonstandard¹ grammar. In particular, we show that, whilst definite article reduction (DAR), nonstandard were, and negative concord work together in one British working class young person's speech to produce an intimate, collaborative style, these variants are used strategically to index subtly different states and alignments. We also show that other grammatical variants – use of nonstandard irregular preterit forms and demonstrative them – are not used strategically to convey interactional positioning. The different function of these variants demonstrates the diversity of morphosyntax, raising questions about the relationship between grammar and social meaning, ideology, pragmatics and linguistic processing. We argue that addressing these questions not only benefits our understanding of social meaning across different levels of linguistic architecture, it also provides us with better evidence to advocate for alternative (and more suitable) models of linguistic variability in educational discourse.

有人提出，尽管缺乏实证研究来证明这一主张，但形态音符比语音变异具有更多的社会意义。通过使用频率相关性来隔离语法变化的风格化时刻，本文提供了由非标准¹语法构建的丰富社会意义的证据。特别是，我们表明，虽然定冠词还原（DAR），非标准的是，和负和谐的工作集中在一个英国工人阶级年轻人的讲话产生一个亲密的，合作式的，这些变体战略性地运用到指数微妙的不同状态和对齐方式。我们还表明，其他语法上的变化-使用非标准的不规则过去时态的形式和示范它们–不用于策略性地传达互动定位。这些变体的不同功能证明了形态语法的多样性，从而引发了关于语法与社会意义，意识形态，语用学和语言处理之间的关系的疑问。我们认为解决这些问题不仅有益于我们理解不同语言结构水平上的社会意义，而且还为我们提供了更好的证据来主张在教育话语中使用语言变异性的替代（且更合适）模型。