This book is the fifth in a series of publications concerning the position and role of language in a large metropolitan area. In this sociolinguistic description Detroit is chosen as a case study of a large Northern urban area which has shown a dramatic increase in its Negro population within the last half century. The primary goal of the study was to describe the correlation of phonological and grammatical variables with the social variables of status, sex, age, racial isolation, and style in the speech of Detroit Negroes. Of these, social status is shown to be the single most important variable correlating with linguistic differences. In addition to the correlation of linguistic with social variables, several aspects of the nature of the linguistic variables are considered, including the extent to which the social differentiation of linguistic variables is quantitative or qualitative; the relation between socially diagnostic phonological and grammatical variables; and the effect of independent linguistic constraints on variability. Although technical terms are kept to a minimum, the study is clearly intended for the reader who is acquainted with the theory and methods of modern linguistic analysis. (JD)