I just stumbled upon an article in the New York Times archives, from ten years ago, about the disappearance of the New York City accent.

Back in the 1960’s, Professor Labov, then at Columbia University, did one of the first studies to show that classic New Yorkese was linked to lower socioeconomic status. He figured that the correct use of the ”r” sound would be a good indicator of social position. In other words, the higher people’s social class, the more likely they would be to use the ”r” conventionally.

The professor went to three department stores — Saks, Macy’s and the now-defunct S. Klein — each catering to a different socioeconomic group, and asked employees for the location of a department he knew to be on the fourth floor. Sure enough, he soon discovered that that the clerks serving the more affluent shoppers in upscale Saks said ”fawth flaw” far less frequently than their peers at bargain-basement Klein’s, with Macy’s somewhere in the middle. A 1986 study using the same methodology (substituting the now-gone J. W. May’s for Klein’s) confirmed that the trend still existed, and it almost certainly continues today, Professor Labov said.