Language Change + Variation

Social Climbing in Bradford, W.Yorkshire - 1985

• Petyt focused on the omission of the initial /h/ sound - H-dropping.
• He measured the frequency of this across social classes.

• His results followed the basic trend of greater regional accent use in working class, decreasing moving up the social class scale
  --> Lower working class speakers used it in almost all instances of /h/ initiated words 
  --> Upper-middle class speakers used it only app. 1 in 10 opportunities
• Petyt then developed this; in instances of social mobility where an individual has moved up the socio-economic scale, they may modify their speech closer towards RP, making less use of H-dropping (etc)
• From here he then found that speakers who have moved up try to implement this modification in their speech
  --> this resulted in hypercorrection and often resulting in incorrect vowel sounds 

Vernacular in different registers, Norwich - 1974

• Similar to Petyt, however looked at the distinction between males + females in each social class
• He used four different contexts: reading a wordlist, reading a passage, formal conversation and casual conversation
  
  
• Respondents treated the word list as a highly formalised activity hence they were highly conscious of pronunciation resulting in lower non-standard use.
• Casual speech created most informal context, resulting in the possible observer's paradox. 
  
  
• Trudgill's findings mirror Petyt's; upper classes used far less non-standard language than those of working classes
• The use of gender allowed more results; women generally used non-standard  variants less frequently than men in all social classes

Peer groups, Reading - 1980s

• Wider range of linguistic analysis than Petyt + Trudgill, focused on grammatical variants
• Identified 11 non-standard features + measured frequency in speech of boys and girls in an adventure playground
  
  
• Group A - middle-class, Group B - working-class 
• Higher use of non-standard forms in Group B in 5 of 8 grammatical variants, roughly equal in 2 and lower use in 1
• Possibly shows increased variability of younger language users
• Chesire concluded that for all children, patterns of non-standard usage are an important part of identity for each group 

Perception of 'trustworthiness' interpreted in different accent forms - 1970s

• The same joke was told to people but in different accents
  
• RP meant the mark of a person who was reliable, well-educated and confident
• Regional varieties scored higher on friendliness, sincerity and were perceived to be more persuasive than RP

Anti-Language - Michael Halliday

• Explains forms of sociolect that arise to support subcultures seeking some sort of covert identity.
• Often related to the idea of deviance - behaviour that is against normal practices of society + sometimes criminality

Michael Halliday identified nine common features

• language of anti-society that exists within society as an alternative
• word lists form main evidence of anti-languages
• mostly formed by relexicalising existing vocabulary items
• users communicate meanings that are inaccessible to non-users
• subcultures w/ an anti-language view it as a fundamental part of their identity
• conversation is main form of communication used to uphold the anti-lang
• it is a vehicle of resocialisation
• there is a continuity + exchange between language + anti-language

Koneisation

• A new standard variety of language is formed by contact of two existing dialect forms of a language
• The new koine form that emreges exists separately from source dialects + does not interfere with their use

Paul Kerswill - Milton Keynes - 1990s

• Identified a regional koine in Milton Keynes as a result of speakers from the south relocating there in mid 20th-Century
  --> Milton Keynes saw large number of speakers come to it w/ existing regional dialect forms different from that spoken by natives
• Kerswill identified that this emergence was a shared, standard form in the area representing the combination of native + incoming accent forms
  --> the distinct accent forms were retained by communities in their own language use

Dialect Levelling

• Strong relation to Estuary English
• The gradual eradication of marked differences between local dialects or sociolect forms
• Most commonly applied to changes in accent features of regional forms in recent decades

Kerswill - Milton Keynes + Reading - 1990s

• Estuary English seen as a variety weilding strong influence over localised, regional dialects
• Features found in Milton Keynes, i.e. fronting vowel sounds, were of a similar fashion to EE; similar patterns were found in Reading

- Jane Stuart-smith found that TH fronting and the glottal stop were emerging in Glaswegian accents, but not that EE was supplanting the dialect.

Code-Switching

• describes the ability of a speaker to 'switch' between different language varieties in his/her language use, often w/ other individuals that are able to do this + have shared experiences of several diff language forms
• can take place across the whole range of accent + dialect forms

Sebba

• London Jamaican - speakers of this are able to incorporate SE, RP, Jamaican Creole + Cockney forms in their language use
• The environment in which this takes place means that some speakers, usually young, will have to adapt to a world in which they encounter many language forms
• From this is, it is easy to see how London Jamaican or MEYD (Fox) emerges + how this skill enables speakers to deal w/ complexities of their language community
• Sebba is keen to point out the sophistication of language use + the highly-skilled manipulation of language involved opposed to criticisms that levelled new forms as being 'dumbed down'

Sociolinguistic Maturation

• the age at which a speaker becomes far elss susceptibnle to influence of diff varieties of language on their own usage
• no set age; most results suggest it 'sets in' around late teens to early twenties, after whicvh an adult speaker is much less likely to significantly alter their accent/dialect patterns due to any new strong sociolinguistic factor i.e. moving to another part of the UK
• children before reaching this are much more likley to modify + vary usage

Researchers

• Sebba - older family members not merging w/ London + English speech forms anywhere near same level as young girls resulting in the girls able to employ techniques ie. code-switching + form new varieties ie. London Jamaican, by becoming main promoters of change

Kerswill

• In Milton Keynes, he found that older caregivers + parents of children had not had their speech modified by features of new MK dialect emerging
• Youngest children exhibited patterns of speech similar to caregivers perhaps showing that most language forms experienced were within the home + from caregivers
• Older girls in mid-teens showed strongest incidence of emerging MK dialect; they were being shaped by the koneisation + were shaping new speech community + form
• Fox and Kerswill's research in MEYD also hypothesised about the future of such youth dialects + whether they will be carried into adulthood by speakers

Macy's vs. S.Klein - 1966

• Labov looked into the way people alter their language depending on where they are; he looked at this on a fairly basic level of how workers talk depending on what shop they are in
• Studying people in S.Klein he found that people spoke a more common form of AE, more typical of SE
• Those in Saks and Macys, considered more upper-class were found to alter their language much more, making it more similar to a form of American RP
• Labov denoted this to the perceived prestige attributed to  each place resulting in the need for the accent to "improve" as the shop's status increased