Regularity-01922

The meaning attached to local descent and dialect use- being part of the "local team"-is clearly seen when we consider those members of the community who dissociate themselves from this "team." Traditionally, in northern Norway the local community of equals was separated from the landowning commercial and administrative elite by a wide gulf of social and judicial inequality. Since the latter were the introducers and users of standard Norwegian, the standard form was-and to some extent still is-associated with this inequality of status. Many of the functions of the former elite have now been incorporated into the local social system. Individuals who fill these functions, however, continue to be largely of nonlocal descent. Although they may pay lip service to locally accepted rules of etiquette and use the dialect on occasion. Since the different social meanings which attach to the dialect are regular and persistent, they must in some way be reinforced by the pattern of social ties.