Sociophonetic Variation, Orientation and Topic in County Durham Thomas Patrick Devlin PhD University of York Language and Linguistic Science September 2014 Abstract This thesis presents a sociophonetic study of four villages in County Durham which have not previously been explored in sociolinguistic literature. As well as examining socially- conditioned phonological variation across the villages, the study analyses the linguistic relationship between the research site and two larger localities with their own urban varieties of English, which are situated at either side of the research area: the city of Sunderland to the north and the Teesside conurbation to the south. The study examines phonological variability in the linguistic production of a socially-homogeneous group of thirty-two speakers, split equally across the four villages and stratified by emically-defined age groups. More than 6500 tokens of the MOUTH, FACE, GOAT and START variables (following Wells’ 1982 method of classifying sets of vowels) are analysed from recorded sociolinguistic interviews with informants. The findings are compared to previous sociolinguistic investigations of other varieties of North East English in terms of the levelling of variants local to the area. The established methodological comparison of read speech and conversational styles is complemented by detailed investigation of the conversational topic in which the production occurs, and its effect on phonological variation. An Identity Questionnaire (pioneered by Llamas 2001) explores identity construction in County Durham and how this is shaped by local speech patterns. This is achieved by surveying speakers’ individual attitudes and perceptions about their local area and accents. The correlation of this language ideology data and speakers’ actual linguistic performance allows the study to assess the role orientation plays in variant usage. While some variables (GOAT and MOUTH) demonstrate change in the direction of levelled variants, highly local forms are favoured in individual villages in terms of the FACE and START vowels which only pattern with geographical areas below the regional level (younger speakers close to Teesside overwhelmingly use the local START form found in Teesside; younger speakers further north retain the local FACE variant found in Tyneside and Sunderland). However, speakers across all locations produce a higher proportion of local variants in the highly local conversational topic of coal mining. 2 Contents Abstract ..................................................................................................................................................... 2 List of figures ............................................................................................................................................. 8 List of tables ............................................................................................................................................10 Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................................11 Author’s Declaration ...............................................................................................................................12 1. Introduction ........................................................................................................................................13 1.1 Research Objectives ......................................................................................................................16 2. Literature Review ................................................................................................................................21 2.1 Overview .......................................................................................................................................21 2.2 Examining variation ......................................................................................................................22 2.2.1 Variation across space ...........................................................................................................22 2.2.2 The theoretical development of spatiality in sociolinguistics................................................23 2.3 Time as a sociolinguistic variable ..................................................................................................27 2.3.1 Real time vs. apparent time ...................................................................................................28 2.3.2 The importance of adolescence .............................................................................................33 2.4 Exploring language change ...........................................................................................................36 2.4.1 Combining variation and change: Dialect contact .................................................................36 2.4.2 Convergence and Divergence ................................................................................................37 2.4.3 Levelling and Dialect Levelling ...............................................................................................38 2.4.4 Regional Dialect Levelling ......................................................................................................42 2.4.5 The social differentiation of mobility .....................................................................................45 2.5 Conversational topic .....................................................................................................................47 2.5.1 Preservation of traditional pronunciations in nostalgic topics ..............................................50 2.6 Communities of Practice ...............................................................................................................51 2.7 Identity and patterns of linguistic variation and change ..............................................................56 2.7.1 Indexing identity, orientation and affiliation in linguistic practice ........................................56 2.7.2 Place, community and identity ..............................................................................................57 2.7.3 Language ideology and evaluation ........................................................................................59 3. Methodology .......................................................................................................................................62 3 3.1 Overview .......................................................................................................................................62 3.2 The community .............................................................................................................................62 3.2.1 The North East of England .....................................................................................................63 3.2.2 Reasons for exploring the language of East Durham .............................................................73 3.3 Sample ..........................................................................................................................................75 3.3.1 Social variables analysed in this study ...................................................................................76 3.3.2 Social variables excluded from analysis .................................................................................79 3.4 Data elicitation ..............................................................................................................................81 3.4.1 The sociolinguistic interview ..................................................................................................82 3.5 Fieldwork.......................................................................................................................................88 3.5.1 Ethics ......................................................................................................................................88 3.5.2 Recruitment of participants ...................................................................................................89 3.5.3 Interview procedure ..............................................................................................................91 3.5.4 Equipment ..............................................................................................................................94 3.6 Analysis of Recordings ..................................................................................................................94 3.6.1 Auditory Analysis ...................................................................................................................95 3.6.2 Acoustic Analysis ....................................................................................................................96 3.6.3 Statistical Analysis ................................................................................................................101 3.7 Summary .....................................................................................................................................102 4. MOUTH .............................................................................................................................................104 4.1 Overview .....................................................................................................................................104 4.2 Definition of MOUTH ..................................................................................................................104