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SUMMARY:Accent of birth? Linking phonological variation to attitudes and i
 dentities on the Scottish/English border - Dr Dominic Watt\, Department of
  Language and Linguistic Science\, University of York
DTSTART:20100121T170000Z
DTEND:20100121T183000Z
UID:TALK20198@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Ruth Cumming
DESCRIPTION:The 'Accent and Identity on the Scottish-English Border' proje
 ct (AISEB) project (ESRC RES-062-23-0525) seeks to identify and explore th
 e connections between three types of data elicited from inhabitants of fou
 r border towns (Gretna\, Carlisle\, Eyemouth and Berwick-upon-Tweed). The 
 first type mixes impressionistic phonetic transcriptions and acoustic meas
 urements of consonant and vowel variables in their speech which are known 
 to vary in line with social and geographical factors. The second relates t
 o the ways in which inhabitants of the border region categorise themselves
  and others living on either side of the border\, and their attitudes towa
 rds these groupings and the labels used to denote them (Scottish\, English
 \, British\, Northumbrian\, Borderer\, etc.). Interviewees are also asked 
 about their language attitudes\, and to specify particular features they a
 ssociate with the different varieties of English spoken in the area. The t
 hird type of data derives from a series of perception experiments\, in whi
 ch listeners are exposed to speech stimuli manipulated so as to elicit jud
 gments of the speaker's nationality and demographic characteristics.\n\nIn
  this paper I focus specifically on /r/\, which is mentioned by our inform
 ants as a key diagnostic feature of Scottish versus English speech more of
 ten than any other phonological variable. Patterns of phonetic variation a
 nd the presence or absence of /r/ in syllable codas are examined in detail
  in the speech of older and younger men and women in each of the four comm
 unities. These are then related to informants' overtly expressed attitudes
  towards the local accent and the national groupings to which they can be 
 said to belong. I consider these results in light of current explanations 
 of historical sound change which foreground the role of language-internal 
 factors\, versus those which place the motivations and communicative needs
  of speakers first.
LOCATION:GR05\, English Faculty\, 9 West Road (Sidgwick Site)
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