Recent work in Language Variation and Change

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Recent work in Language Variation and Change

• David Britain
• Department of Language and Linguistics
• University of Essex
• dbritain_at_essex.ac.uk
• http//privatewww.essex.ac.uk/dbritain

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Three themes

• Dialect levelling, innovation diffusion and the
  role of the media
• Migration, ethnicity and new varieties of
  English
• Real time change were the early sociolinguists
  right?
• What we (think we) know
• A case study
• What we dont know.

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Out with the old and in with the new(s)

• Dialect levelling the erosion of local dialect
  features in favour of forms with a wider social
  or geographical currency.
• Diffusion the geographical spread of linguistic
  forms from one place to another.
• The diffusion conundrum How come working class
  adolescents have picked up the dialect forms of
  distant places, when they have no contact with
  people from those places? What is the role of
  the media?

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Levelling(Kingston 2000)
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TH-fronting(Kerswill 2003)
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Other diffusing forms within the UK, and beyond

• T glottalisation
• L vocalisation
• /str stj/ palatalisation
• /r/ labiodentalisation
• Quotative BE like
• High Rising Terminals (Uptalk)

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Estuary English?

• Claims that heavy dialect levelling and the
  diffusion of innovations from London has
  triggered emergence of a Superdialect, or rather
  a supralocal dialect, in the south-east.
• Evidence for widespread similar innovations, and
  widespread levelling.

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But

• Significant differences still exist across the
  patch
• e.g. London v The Fens
• Relative pronouns in subject position
• I saw the woman ____ won the lottery
• And in object position
• I ate the cake _____ he baked

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The diffusion conundrum

• How come working class adolescents have picked up
  the dialect forms of distant places, when they
  have no contact with people from those places?
  What is the role of the media?
• Peter Trudgill v Jane Stuart-Smith
• Lexicon versus structure
• Face-to-face communication
• Exposure versus diffusion

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Stuart-Smiths Glasgow project

• Relationship between
• exposure to media Cockney
• use of TH fronting (and other features)
• contact with English people
• attitudes to London accents
• ability to mimic London accents.

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Findings

• Glasgow adolescents used TH fronting MORE than
  actors on Eastenders (8)
• Eastenders and other London-media programmes were
  very popular (9)
• Positive correlations with use of TH fronting and
  contact with relatives from and visits to London
  (12)
• London accents were not popular (13)
• Those who DID have positive attitudes towards
  London more likely to use TH fronting (13)
• Very poor ability to mimic London accent (14)
• Exposure to media Cockney correlated with higher
  amounts of TH fronting, but only when reading
  (17)

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Quotative BE LIKE

• 25 years old
• English, German, Spanish, etc.
• How could a change diffuse so rapidly across the
  world and infiltrate other languages? TV series
  such as Friends?
• Different social patterning in the UK
• Are they actually used on Friends, etc? Nobody
  seems to have checked
• Hedges commitment and accountability?
• Use in other languages using different forms
  suggests it is the function which is diffusing
  not (just) the form.
• Lexical?

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High Rising Terminals

• No reports of systematic use before 1950
• Sporadic early reports in NZ, Oz and US in 1960s
• Now used across English-speaking world and also
  in other languages (e.g. German).
• Again, how could such a change diffuse rapidly
  across the world and infiltrate other languages?
  Watching Neighbours on TV?
• Used most by women
• Associated in media with powerlessness and
  hesitancy
• BUT
• Used more in narratives than opinions
• Use on TV very low indeed
• Useful function of affiliation marking.

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So

• Trudgill argued that the media may play a
  softening-up role, creating positive associations
  of different accents in peoples minds
• Stuart-Smiths research has highlighted just how
  complex the associations are between contact,
  attitude, media exposure and language.

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Migration, ethnicity and the spread of new
varieties of English

• According to the 2001 census
• Large non-White population in the UK 4,635,000
• Large White non-British population 2,000,000
• Little research on their varieties of English, or
  the effects of their Englishes on the British
  White population.

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Recent research initiatives

• Fox (2003, 2007) English among adolescents of
  White and Bangladeshi ethnicities in Tower
  Hamlets
• Cheshire, Kerswill, Fox and Torgersen (2007-)
  English among variety of ethnic groups in Hackney
• Khan (2007) Caribbean, Pakistani and White
  Englishes of Birmingham
• Guzzo (2005, 2007) Bedford Italian English.

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Case Study.hiatus resolution

• What happens when a vowel at the end of a word
  meets a vowel at the beginning of the next word
  this is hiatus
• Traditional English system is complex
• Research with Sue Fox has suggested change is
  underway in London, especially among Bangladeshi
  adolescents, but spreading to British White
  adolescents
• Bangladeshi forms also found among Bedford
  Italian English speakers.

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Hiatus

• Definite article the pear, the apple
• Indefinite article a pear, an apple
• High front vowel anybody j else?
• High back vowel who w else?
• Non-high vowel vodka r anyone?

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A ? vowel in Tower Hamlets (Fox 2007)
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• Glottal stop was found
• MOST after articles the and a
• Quite a bit instead of linking/intrusive /r/
  (after non-high vowels)
• LEAST after high vowels.
• Replicates child language acquisition pattern

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Bedford Italians

• Large migrations in 1950s
• Guzzo, Britain and Fox (2007) examined 3
  generations of Italians in Bedford
• 1st generation native speakers of Italian
• 2nd generation had traditional system
• 3rd generation had Bangladeshi system of glottal
  stops

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Questions.

• What do these (and other) results tell us?
• Is this evidence of a pan-ethnic London variety?
• A pan-ethnic variety, but not restricted to or
  even originating from London?
• Are there similarities in the heritage languages
  which can account for these developments?
• Simply the result of very heavy dialect contact
  as a result of migration and mobility?
• A co-incidence?

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Doing it again Restudies of dialect surveys.

• Apparent Time
• Comparing different age groups in the same
  community, using preset-day age as a simulation
  of the passing of time.
• versus
• Real Time
• Comparing samples of data taken from similar
  people/communities at different points in time.

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Do we (substantially) change our accents over our
lifetime?

• Age grading

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Do we (substantially) change our accents over our
lifetime?

• Age grading
• Lexicon versus structure
• Progress through the lifecourse involves changes
  in family status, gender relations, employment
  status, social networks, place of residence,
  community participation, institutional
  participation, engagement in the marketplace
  all of which have implications for patterns of
  variation. It is unlikely that speakers pass
  through all the identity changes of a lifetime
  without making any changes in their use of
  sociolinguistic variables (Eckert 1997 152).

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Doing it again Restudies of dialect surveys.

• Panel Studies
• Same people, data collected at different times
• Queens Xmas broadcasts
• 7-Up series
• Trend Studies
• Same sort of people, data collected at
  different times
• Belgian and Dutch TV reporting
• Regional Spanish newsreaders

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Sociolinguistic time-depth and the emergence of
real time studies

• Marthas Vineyard
• Labovs 1962 study. the social motivation of
  phonetic variation and change (Pope et al 2007
  616)), ideologically motivated language change
  (Blake and Josey 2003 479)
• Two studies of Marthas Vineyard in last 5 years
  
• Blake and Josey (2003)
• Pope, Meyerhoff and Ladd (2007).

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• Vineyarders no longer appear to locate
  themselves strongly in opposition to tourists
  from the mainland, and thus they seem to be
  releasing the symbolic centralized /ay/
  diphthong/ay/ centralization has lost its
  earlier social meaningThis study provides
  sociolinguistic evidence for a shift in a sound
  change on Marthas Vineyard documented by
  LabovThe sociolinguistic findingssuggest that,
  with a change in the socio-economic structure of
  the Vineyard, locals allegiance to a traditional
  way of life has diminished. As a consequence,
  there has been a decline in the linguistic
  marking of opposition to non-local populations
  (BJ 2003).

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• We have shown that a strict replication of
  Labovs methods demonstrates that onset
  centralization is alive and well for /ay/ We
  have also shown the same kinds of correlations
  with attitudes toward Marthas Vineyard that
  Labov found in his original studythe information
  gatheredsuggests that the antipathy toward the
  summer people that Labov documented was still
  very much present in 2002, and that the symbolism
  of centralization remains much the same as when
  he conducted his research (P, M L 2007).

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Thanks to

• Dan Clayton
• St Francis Xavier College
• Julie Blake
• Sue Fox
• Please do contact me if youd like to follow up
  anything you heard in the talk
  dbritain_at_essex.ac.uk