Rit (Vísindafélag Íslendinga) - 01.06.1970, Page 432

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greatly increased interest in sociolinguistics in recent years,
above all, in the United States and Great Britain. Although
the present study was outlined before works such as Labov
(1966), Shuy (1968), and Strang (1968) were accessible,
attention is being paid to their methods and findings, which
will in part be of great value to our future research. Labov’s
view of a metropolitan area as a single, clearly defined speech
community within which different speech forms vary in a
characteristic pattern, according to stylistic and social vari-
ables, seems to be very fruitful.
The City
Eskilstuna has a population of ca. 67,000 and is the center
of a fairly densely populated, industrialized, and urbanized
area in the western part of the Málar region. It is situated
south of Lake Malar, 120 kilometers west of Stockholm.
Within a radius of about fifty kilometers seven other cities,
among them Vásterás (110,000 inhabitants), and several
other urbanized communities are crowded. Eskilstuna is a
markedly industrial city, and has been so for the last 300 years,
with iron and steel manufacture, especially cutlery, as the
chief branch of industry. During the last century it grew
from about 5,000 inhabitants to its present size. The rate of
population growth was particularly high in the periods 1880-
1907 (from ca. 8,000 to ca. 26,000) and 1930-1946 (from
ca. 30,000 to ca. 50,000). The majority of the people moving
into Eskilstuna seem to have come from the northern and
western parts of Sörmland and, especially at the end of the
nineteenth century, from southern and western Vástmanland
(Bergslagen). From about 1880 to 1945 it was the largest city
in the Málar region, with the obvious exception of Stockholm,
but has since been surpassed by Vásterás and Uppsala.
Geographical Boundary
As a practical geographical boundary for the investigation