Sociophonetic variation in Stoke- on-Trent’s pottery industry Hannah Leach Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy School of English University of Sheffield June 2018 2 Abstract This thesis presents a sociophonetic analysis of two dialect variables in twenty-six speakers from Stoke-on-Trent; specifically, speakers who worked in the city’s pottery industry. The recordings used come from an oral history archive, and much of the analysis presented considers the impact of the social and spatial structures of the pottery industry on dialect variation. The analysis presented also combines quantitative and qualitative methodologies in order to examine both broader patterns of dialect variation in the selected speakers, and how the same variables may be used in the construction of meaning-in-interaction. Finally, I consider the impact of using oral history data in this kind of sociophonetic analysis. I use literature on the social structures of the industry and the content of the recordings themselves to model an internal hierarchy for the industry, which I then examine alongside auditory and acoustic data from two linguistic variables: /h/-dropping, and the (i) vowel. /h/-dropping is particularly sensitive to industrial role, with speakers in mass production roles more likely to drop /h/ and those in administrative, managerial and design roles less likely to. I demonstrate how this links to the established social meanings of /h/-dropping as a historical dialect feature of English. The (i) vowel is less sensitive to this internal hierarchy quantitatively, but I describe how its realisation is particularly conditional on linguistic factors. Both variables are also examined qualitatively in discourse moments, and according to topic. /h/-dropping (and retention) appears to be associated with meaning on micro-, meso- and macro-social levels, allowing me to design an indexical field (Eckert, 2008) of its potential social meanings in this dataset. Variation in the (i) vowel appears to be less motivated by topic, but I demonstrate that some speakers do use more extreme acoustic tokens in particularly expressive talk. 3 Contents page Abstract 3 Contents 4 Acknowledgements 10 List of tables 12 List of figures 14 Map of locations 1: Map of Stoke-on-Trent’s location in 18 Staffordshire, and the UK Map of Locations 2: Map of locations within and around the City of 19 Stoke-on-Trent and the county of Staffordshire 1. Introduction 20 2. Background 23 2.1 Overview 23 2.2 Stoke-on-Trent and The Potteries: a brief history 23 2.2.1 The 18th Century and the birth of industrialised pottery 26 2.2.2 The 19th Century and the growth of the city 29 2.2.3 Six towns, one city: the federation of Stoke-on-Trent 33 2.2.4 The 20th Century and the rise and fall of Stoke-on- 34 Trent 2.2.5 Stoke-on-Trent in the 21st Century 39 4 2.3 The social life of the pottery industry 42 2.3.1 The socio-spatial structure of the potbank 45 2.3.2 The stages and departments of pottery production 46 2.4 Stoke-on-Trent in dialectology 50 2.4.1 Linguistic work on Stoke-on-Trent 50 2.4.2 Folk dialectology in Stoke-on-Trent 54 2.4.3 Perceptual dialectology in Stoke-on-Trent 56 2.4.4 Stoke-on-Trent’s position in the UK 59 2.4.4.1 Stoke-on-Trent and the Midlands 60 2.4.4.2 Stoke-on-Trent and the North 61 2.4.4.3 Stoke-on-Trent as a ‘hybrid’ variety 64 2.5 Language in marginal, post-industrial Britain 69 2.6 Language and occupation 72 2.7 Summary 76 3. The oral history archive 77 3.1 Overview 77 3.2 What is oral history? 77 3.2.1 The development of an oral history methodology 78 3.2.2 Methodological issues in oral history work 82 3.3 Oral history and linguistics 87 3.3.1 Oral history use in linguistic studies 88 3.3.2 Methodological implications of oral history use in 91 linguistic studies 3.4 The Potteries Museum oral history archive 96 3.4.1 Construction and history of the archive 96 3.4.2 Implications of the archive on the project 100 3.4.3 Selection of speakers from the archive 102 5 3.5 Summary 106 4. Phonetic methodology 108 4.1 Overview 108 4.2 Phonetic variables 108 4.3 Extraction and measurement 110 4.3.1 Forced alignment 110 4.3.1.1 The FAVE suite 112 4.3.1.2 Previous work with FAVE 115 4.3.1.3 Pilot study and outcomes 118 4.3.2 Method of annotation and analysis 123 4.4 Statistical analysis 125 4.5 Ethical approval 126 4.6 Summary 128 5. /h/-dropping 129 5.1 Overview 129 5.2 Background 129 5.2.1 Development of /h/-dropping and associated social 130 stigma 5.2.2 /h/-dropping in varieties of English 132 5.2.3 /h/-dropping in Stoke-on-Trent 135 5.2.4 Linguistic constraints of /h/-dropping 139 5.3 Method of analysis 140 5.3.1 Coding 140 5.3.2 Selection and extraction 143 5.4 Results 145 5.4.1 Overview 145 6 5.4.2 Linguistic factors 149 5.4.2.1 Discussion of linguistic factors 155 5.4.3 Social factors 158 5.4.3.1 Discussion of social factors 161 5.5 Summary 167 6. The (i) vowel 169 6.1 Overview 169 6.2 Background 169 6.2.1 The (i) vowel in varieties of English 169 6.2.2 KIT/schwa drift 171 6.2.3 The (i) vowel in Stoke-on-Trent 173 6.2.4 The phonetics of (i) 177 6.3 Method of analysis 182 6.3.1 Coding 182 6.3.2 Selection and extraction 184 6.3.3 Transformation and normalisation 188 6.4 Results 189 6.4.1 Overview 190 6.4.2 Whole dataset summary 193 6.4.3 Linguistic factors 201 6.4.3.1 Discussion of linguistic factors 218 6.4.4 Social factors 233 6.4.4.1 Discussion of social factors 242 6.5 Summary 244 7. Exploring social meaning, style and topic 246 7 7.1 Overview 246 7.2 Background 246 7.2.1 Style and Attention to Speech 247 7.2.2 Style, accommodation and audience 249 7.2.3 Style and Speaker Design 252 7.2.4 Framework for analysis 258 7.3 /h/ variation according to style and topic 260 7.3.1 Overview 260 7.3.2 /h/ and Attention to Speech 263 7.3.3 Broad patterns of /h/ and topic 267 7.3.4 Audience-related /h/ style shifting 270 7.3.5 Curating a ‘skilled’ persona through /h/ variation 275 7.3.6 /h/ and ‘emotional’ talk 280 7.3.7 Summary 284 7.4 (i) variation according to style and topic 288 7.4.1 Overview 288 7.4.2 Case study: Firing_SJ 293 7.4.3 Case study: Design_RC 299 7.4.4 Case study: Design_WH 308 7.4.5 Summary 312 7.5 Evaluation 313 8. Conclusion 317 8.1 Overview 317 8.2 Research findings and contribution to knowledge 318 8.2.1 Quantitative variationist sociolinguistics 318 8.2.2 Qualitative social meaning analysis 321 8 8.2.3 Oral history and linguistic methods 326 8.4 Evaluation of dataset 329 8.5 Limitations 333 8.6 Future research 335 8.7 Final words 336 Bibliography 338 Appendix 1 – Ethics approval 356 9 Acknowledgements I used to hate Stoke-on-Trent. Growing up there, I thought it was boring, insular, grotty, and I couldn’t wait to get away. When I discovered linguistics, I realised barely anything had been done on Stoke-on-Trent’s local accent (which baffled me), so I started to work on it. Ten years later, not only have I completed three theses on various aspects of the local variety, doing so has enabled a complete turnaround in my attitude to the city. In the BBC’s 2009 adaptation of Austen’s Emma, Mr Knightley says of Miss Bates, “she deserves your compassion, not your contempt”, and that’s stuck with me. Stoke-on- Trent has had an enormous reversal of fortunes and yet, its residents’ devotion to their art and heritage remains steadfast (and so it should, because nothing is comparable to Potteries ware), as does their warmth and humility. I’ve frequently described my thesis as “my big, tragic love letter to Stoke”, and I hope that comes across to anyone who reads it. I owe the city for bringing me up and giving me a purpose. I am so grateful to the Wolfson Foundation for funding this project. I never felt like I deserved the money, but everyone involved in the Foundation has always gone out of their way to make me feel like I did. Thanks to Kate Lovatt, Camille Brouard and Becky Phillips for helping with transcription. The Venn diagram of ‘people who helped with the writing of this thesis’ and ‘people who supported me through this thesis’ is practically a circle, but there are some whose knowledge and help I could not have done without. Gareth Walker, Ranjan Sen, Josef Fruehwald, Danielle Turton and Sebastian Karcher have been brilliant, and I’ll never forget Gillian and Karl Gehring’s kindness on my first day in Sheffield. Perhaps above all, Sam Kirkham deserves a medal for answering every single one of my questions patiently, and giving up so much of his time to help me.