Selection of the linguistic variable

 New York City people have their own special accent. Labov's preliminary studies led to the definition of the linguistic variable: He took the pronunciation of /r/, the absence or presence of consonantal /r/ in postvocalic position to find the reason for that type of pronunciation. His hypothesis was that there is a certain social significance in the way of producing this sound, that there is a distinct difference in the social environment of the people with or without deletion of postvocalic /r/. According to his theory people having the same value of /r/ pronouncing would be in the same social group . The highest social group would pronounce /r/ in most occurrences while the lowest class would show the least.

/r/ is a frequent sound, therefore it perfectly fits the needs of gaining data by short time interviews with many different speakers. To get these data Labov tried to get in contact with people without letting them know of his studies.