0 Enregisterment in Historical Contexts: A Framework Paul Stephen Cooper A thesis submitted to the University of Sheffield for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics February 2013 1 ABSTRACT In this thesis I discuss how the phenomena of indexicality and enregisterment (Silverstein 2003; Agha 2003) can be observed and studied in historical contexts via the use of historical textual data. I present a framework for the study of historical enregisterment which compares data from corpora of both nineteenth-century and modern Yorkshire dialect material, and the results of an online survey of current speakers so as to ascertain the validity of the corpus data and to use ‘the present to explain the past’ (Labov 1977:226). This framework allows for the identification of enregistered repertoires of Yorkshire dialect in both the twenty-first and nineteenth centuries. This is achieved by combining elicited metapragmatic judgements and examples of dialect features from the online survey with quantitative frequency analysis of linguistic features from Yorkshire dialect literature and literary dialect (Shorrocks 1996) and qualitative metapragmatic discourse (Johnstone et al 2006) from sources such as dialect dictionaries, dialect grammars, travel writing, and glossaries. I suggest that processes of enregisterment may operate along a continuum and that linguistic features may become ‘deregistered’ as representative of a particular variety; I also suggest that features may become ‘deregistered’ to the point of becoming ‘fossil forms’, which is more closely related to Labov’s (1972) definition of the ultimate fate of a linguistic stereotype. I address the following research questions: 1. How was the Yorkshire dialect enregistered in the nineteenth century? 2. How is Yorkshire dialect enregistered in the present day? 3. How do these compare, and how might we account for the results of this comparison? In so doing, I highlight that we can gain insights into the social value of linguistic features in historical contexts. 2 DECLARATION I declare that this thesis is my own work and has not been submitted in substantially the same form for the award of a higher degree elsewhere. 3 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost I would like to thank my parents for both encouraging and enabling me to get this far: to my Dad for his unwavering faith and support (emotionally and financially!); my Mother for her unwavering attention, support, and occasional (and massively helpful) proof-reading skills; and to my sister Nic for her belief in me and her company (particularly where certain TV shows were involved…) Secondly, I’d like to thank Mel for being my study buddy and getting the whole writing-up process started, and for her support and understanding; and Jen for being a sympathetic ear for shared PhD-related issues and for being an all-round brilliant friend. I would also like to thank my supervisors, Professor Joan Beal and Dr Jane Hodson – I could not have asked for better supervisors! Your help, support, and guidance has been invaluable and is massively appreciated. Thanks also must go to the School of English at the University of Sheffield for the many wonderful opportunities they have presented me with over the last few years; in particular Dr Chris Montgomery and Dr Emma Moore for their professional guidance; and also Hugh Escott, who provided me with details of the work of Totley Tom. Finally, thanks to Michael McIntyre for pronouncing a reduced definite article as [t] when performing a Yorkshire accent and inspiring me to embark upon this project in the first place; and to the French Language – for including the word enregistrement, which always makes me giggle. 4 CONTENTS Abstract 1 Declaration 2 Acknowledgements 3 List of tables 8 List of figures 11 1. Introduction 15 1.1 Research Aims & Overview 15 1.2 Linguistic Studies of the Yorkshire Dialect 18 1.2.1 Definite Article Reduction 18 1.2.2 Monophthongal FACE and GOAT 20 1.2.3 Alternate Diphthongs 20 1.2.4 /h/-dropping 21 1.2.5 Lexical Items 22 1.3 Nineteenth-Century Studies of the Yorkshire Dialect 24 1.3.1 Phonological Features 24 1.3.2 Definite Article Reduction 28 1.3.3 Lexical Items 30 1.4 Conclusions 31 2. Enregisterment 32 2.1 Indexicality and Enregisterment 32 2.2 Processes of Enregisterment 35 2.3 Metapragmatic Activities 38 2.4 Commodification 41 2.5 ‘Deregisterment’ 43 2.6 Enregistered Varieties 44 2.6.1 Geographical Varieties 44 2.6.2 Social Varieties 53 2.7 Enregisterment in Historical Contexts 59 2.8 Conclusions 63 5 3. Historical Context: The Nineteenth Century 65 3.1 Industrialisation & Geographical Mobility 65 3.2 Social Change & Social Mobility 68 3.3 Linguistic Awareness 71 3.4 Studying Enregisterment in the Nineteenth Century 77 3.5 Conclusions 81 4. Methodology 83 4.1 Nineteenth-Century Corpus Design 83 4.2 Modern Corpus Design 92 4.3 Sampling Methodology 95 4.4 Search Methodology 96 4.5 Online Survey 98 4.6 Conclusions 102 5. Results I: Nineteenth-Century Corpus Data 100 5.1 Nineteenth-Century Qualitative Corpus 102 5.1.1 Definite Article Reduction 103 5.1.2 Representations of Phonological Features 107 5.1.3 Lexical Items 112 5.2 Nineteenth-Century Quantitative Corpus 115 5.2.1 Nineteenth-Century Yorkshire Dialect Literature 116 5.2.2 Nineteenth-Century Yorkshire Literary Dialect 126 5.3 Conclusions 136 6. Results II: Modern Corpus 138 6.1 Modern Qualitative Corpus 138 6.1.1 Definite Article Reduction 139 6.1.2 Representations of Yorkshire Phonological Features 143 6.1.3 Lexical Items 150 6.1.4 Morphological Features 152 6.2 Modern Quantitative Corpus 153 6.2.1 Modern Yorkshire Dialect Literature 154 6.2.2 Modern Yorkshire Literary Dialect 160 6.3 Conclusions 166 6 7. Results III: Data Analysis 168 7.1 Corpus of Nineteenth-Century Yorkshire Dialect Material 168 7.2 Nineteenth-Century Diachronic Results 173 7.2.1 Diachronically Consistent Features 173 7.2.2 Common Dialect Literature Features 178 7.2.3 Common Literary Dialect Features 179 7.3 Corpus of Modern Yorkshire Dialect Material 180 7.4 Online Survey 183 7.4.1 Non-Yorkshire Respondents Online Survey Results 184 7.4.2 Non-Yorkshire Respondents ‘Provide Yorkshire Features’ 190 ddddResults 7.4.3 Non-Yorkshire Respondents Multiple Choice Results 192 7.4.4 Summary of Non-Yorkshire Respondents Multiple Choice 198 ddddResults 7.4.5 Yorkshire Respondents Online Survey Results 198 7.4.6 Yorkshire Respondents ‘Provide Yorkshire Features’ Results 203 7.4.7 Yorkshire Respondents’ Multiple Choice Results 205 7.4.8 Summary of Yorkshire Respondents Multiple Choice Results 210 7.4.9 Overlap between Yorkshire and non-Yorkshire respondents’ 211 ddddresults 7.4.10 International Respondents’ Online Survey Results 216 7.4.11 International Respondents’ ‘Provide Yorkshire Features’ 218 dddddResults 7.4.12 International Respondents’ Multiple Choice Results 219 7.4.13 Overlap between International, Yorkshire, and non- 223 dddddYorkshire respondents’ results 7.5 Conclusions 228 7 8. Discussion 230 8.1 Implications of ‘Overlap’ in Quantitative Results 230 8.2 Enregisterment ‘Levels’ 234 8.3 ‘Deregisterment’ 237 8.4 ‘Fossil Forms’ 241 8.5 Enregistering “Yorkshire” 245 8.6 Enregistering Nineteenth-Century “Yorkshire” 257 8.7 Conclusions 266 9. Conclusion 269 9.1 Issues Addressed 269 9.2 A Framework for the study of Enregisterment in Historical Contexts 273 9.3 Limitations 274 9.4 Summary of Key Contributions 277 9.5 Areas for Future Study 278 9.6 Concluding Remarks 280 Bibliography 282 8 LIST OF TABLES Table Title Page 2.1 Non-standard orthographical representations of RP pronunciations 34 2.2 Phonological, morphosyntactic, and lexical items enregistered as 45 “Pittsburghese” 2.3 Enregistered Repertoire of “Geordie” Features 47 2.4 Features of “Yoopanese” 50 4.1 Corpus of Nineteenth-Century Dialect Literature texts sampled for 87 Quantitative Analysis 4.2 Corpus of Nineteenth-Century Literary Dialect texts sampled for 89 Quantitative Analysis 4.3 Corpus of Nineteenth-Century Qualitative Material 91 4.4 Corpus of Modern Dialect Literature and Literary Dialect texts 93 sampled for Quantitative Analysis 4.5 Corpus of Modern Qualitative Material 95 4.6 Consistently Occurring Features in Nineteenth Century Quantitative 97 Corpus Material 4.7 Tokens of non-standard orthographical representations of Yorkshire 98 dialect in 1,000-word sample from Bywater (1839) 4.8 Yorkshire Dialect Features included in Multiple Choice Exercise in 99 Online Survey 4.9 Online Survey Multiple Choice Criteria 100 5.1 Diachronic Distribution of Lexical Items in Nineteenth-Century 114 Commentary Material 5.2 Nineteenth-century dialect literature texts containing specific regional 121 dialect versus “Yorkshire” dialect 5.3 Range of DAR forms in Nineteenth-Century Yorkshire Dialect 123 Literature 5.4 Frequently and consistently-occurring lexical items in nineteenth- 126 century Yorkshire dialect literature 5.5 Diachronic Distribution of Lexical Items in Literary Dialect 135 9 6.1 Forms of Second-person Pronouns in Modern Yorkshire Dialect 160 Literature 7.1 Commonly-occurring dialect features in 1,000-word sample from A 169 Friend to’t Shevelders (1850) 7.2 Commonly-occurring dialect features in 1,000-word sample from 170 Brontë (1847) 7.3 Mean averages of commonly-occurring dialect features in dialect 171 literature versus literary dialect across nineteenth-century corpus 7.4 Mean averages of commonly-occurring dialect features in dialect 181 literature versus literary dialect across modern corpus 7.5 Online Survey Respondents