[2] He was one of the first to apply Labovian methods in Britain with his research in 1970–1 on the speech of Bradford, Halifax and Huddersfield.
However, he found that differences in speech persisted as an indicator of social class, age and gender.
This PhD dissertation was later adapted into a book, Dialect and Accent in Industrial West Yorkshire.
[3] The work was criticised by Graham Shorrocks on the grounds that the sociolinguistic methods used were inappropriate for recording the traditional vernacular and that there was an inadequate basis for comparison with earlier dialect studies in West Yorkshire.
[4] In a review in Language in Society, Joan Beal methodologically critiqued Petyt's decision to categorise the social class of women according to their husband's occupation.