anaLyze the data

Blom and Gumperz posited that social events, defined in terms of

participants, setting, and topic, restrict the selection of linguistic variables (421)
in a manner that is somewhat analogous to syntactic or semantic restrictions. That
is, in particular social situations, some linguistic forms may be more appropriate
than others. Among groups of men greeting each other in workshops along the
fjord, the variety of language used differed from that used by teachers presenting
text material in the public school, for example. It is important to recognize that
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different social events may, for example, involve the same participants in the
same setting when the topic shifts. Thus, teachers reported that they treated
lecture versus discussion within a class as different events. While lectures were
(according to teachers reports) delivered in the standard Bokml, a shift to the
regional Ranaml was used to encourage open debate. Blom and Gumperz call
this type of shift, wherein a change in linguistic form represents a changed social
setting, situational switching (424).
The definition of metaphorical switching relies on the use of two language
varieties within a single social setting. Blom and Gumperz describe interactions
between clerks and residents in the community administration office wherein
greetings take place in the local dialect, but business is transacted in the standard.