Endogenous change in innerLondon teenage speech Diphthong Shift reversal and other vowel changes

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Endogenous change in inner-London teenage speech?
Diphthong Shift reversal and other vowel changes
Aberdeen, 23rd March 2005

• Paul Kerswill and Eivind Torgersen
• Lancaster University

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Why study London?

• Wells (1982) on London
• Its working-class accent is today the most
  influential source of phonological innovation in
  England and perhaps in the whole English-speaking
  world.

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Endogenous vs. exogenous change

• Endocentric (speech) communities (after Andersen
  1988, 1989 Røyneland 2004 Marshall 2004)
• urban, central
• young people speak more non-standardly than
  adults
• characterised by endogenous change (i.e.
  generated internally to the community not by
  contact)

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• Exocentric (speech) communities
• rural, peripheral
• young people speak more standardly than
  adults (as a result of dialect levelling)
• favours levelling of features between dialect
  areas (exogenous change through contact)

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Open and closed speech communities

• Open communities
• allow variability therefore heterogeneous
• Closed communities
• disfavour variability therefore more
  homogeneous

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Four speech community types (Andersen, Røyneland)

• Endocentric open
• (urban)

• Exocentric open
• (urban or rural)

• Endocentric closed
• (urban or rural)

• Exocentric closed
• (rural)

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Networks identity

• Within each community
• Different network types
• Different social identities being played out

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Previous projects

• Milton Keynes project
• showed use of geographically widespread,
  low-salience(?) forms
• the levelled accent is perceived as not broad
  quite hard to identify.

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Three cities project (Milton Keynes, Reading and
Hull)

• This project found evidence of the use of what we
  called levelled vowels in the two southern
  towns, and the rapid spread of th-fronting
  northward.

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ReadingAshford short vowel project

• designed as a first attempt at looking at
  possible levelling in the vowel system of the
  south-east

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Linguistic innovators the English of adolescents
in London (EAL)

• September 2004August 2007 (ESRC ref. RES 000 23
  0680). Grant held jointly by Paul Kerswill
  (Lancaster) and Jenny Cheshire (Queen Mary,
  University of London)
• RAs Eivind Torgersen (Lancaster), Sue Fox
  (London)

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• Web
• http//www.lancs.ac.uk/fss/projects/linguistics/in
  novators/index.htm

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Research Questions 1

• What are some of the characteristics of spoken
  English in London in terms of phonetic and
  grammatical features?

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Research Questions 2

• What evidence is there that phonological and
  grammatical innovations start in London and
  spread out from there?

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Research Questions 3

• One-third of Londons primary school children
  have a first language other than English. Does
  this degree of multilingualism have any long-term
  impact on mainstream English?
• Does the use of a teenage multiracial vernacular
  English lead to change?

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Research Questions 4

• Which types of Londoners, socially defined,
  innovate linguistically?
• Which types are in a position to spread
  innovations, once started?

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Research Questions 5

• Given differences between inner and outer London
  boroughs in ethnic profile, proportion of recent
  migrants, non-first language English speakers,
  and socio-economic class, is there evidence that
  different linguistic features, including
  innovations, are characteristic of inner London
  Hackney vs. outer London Havering?

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Research Questions 6

• In what kinds of conversational contexts do we
  find non-standard features, including
  innovations, manifested? That is, are such
  features manipulated on account of their symbolic
  value, linked perhaps to ethnic and other
  identities?

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Sample (for both Hackney and Havering)
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Languages spoken

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Population

• Hackney 208 365
• Havering 224 248

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Social variables - 1

• Age 1619 years, young people with a measure of
  mobility and independence

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Social variables - 2

• District Inner city vs. outer city hypothesis
  that features originating/widespread in outer
  London will have a better chance of spreading to
  e.g. Milton Keynes and Reading
• Changes in Hackney (inner city) may be
  endogenous, but may also arise through language
  contact
• Changes here may have difficulty in diffusing
  because of supposed lack of contact?
• Changes in Havering (outer city) may be towards
  standard and levelling because of greater
  mobility and ??more open communities

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Social variables - 3

• Ethnicity Inner city has a far greater
  proportion of people from non-English speaking
  backgrounds/people of non-English ethnicity than
  outer city
• We assume ethnicity is not fixed, but variably
  salient and emergent, contextually bound

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Vowels in the provincial south-east as evidence
of innovation and levelling
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GOAT-fronting and GOOSE-fronting in Reading
Man, b. 1915, Reading
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Boy, b. 1981, Reading
(Figures from Kerswill Williams 2005)
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Table 1 Percentage use of variants of /aU/
(MOUTH), Milton Keynes Working Class, interview
style

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Table 2 Percentage use of variants of /aU/
(MOUTH), Reading Working Class, interview style
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• Replacement of both rural and urban local forms
  by an RP-like aU perhaps a levelled,
  regionally and socially unmarked form

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Table 3 Percentage use of variants of (a?)
(PRICE), Milton Keynes Working Class, interview
style

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Table 4 Percentage use of variants of (a?)
(PRICE), Reading Working Class, interview style
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• Replacement of widely stereotyped ?I by a
  regionally and socially unmarked AI AI

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ReadingAshford short-vowel project (Torgersen
Kerswill 2004)
Short vowel changes in Ashford
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Short vowel changes in Reading
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Re-stating conclusions from the ReadingAshford
study

• The Ashford shift seems to follow descriptions of
  recent change in London
• But the London descriptions dont talk about the
  backing of STRUT
• We can now suggest that the Ashford/London shift
  is endogenous

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• The Reading shift is a collection of unrelated
  changes
• but it leads to the same result as Ashford
• so we conclude it gets there through dialect
  levelling
• and is therefore exogenous (contact-induced)
• A conclusion which fits in with Andersens ideas
  about endocentric and exocentric communities

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Summary of south-east vowel changes noted in
previous research

• Lowering/backing of TRAP in 20th cent (e.g.
  Hurford, Beaken, Sivertsen)
• recent backing of STRUT
• recent centralisation/fronting of FOOT
• recent fronting of GOOSE, often extreme
• recent fronting of offset of GOAT

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• changes in PRICE (onset being lowered and
  fronted)
• changes in MOUTH (onset being lowered and backed
  to a low-front position)
• EU ? æ? ? a?
• (rural S.E. ? urban S.E. ? levelled
• southern?)
• stability in FACE broad diphthong of the type
  æ??

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Research question

• Are the vowel changes we have noted diffusing
  from London?
• How can we tell?

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Methodological issues in investigating vowel
change in London

• Real vs. apparent time
• Solution combine both methodologies
• Available archive recordings
• Corpus of London Teenage Speech (COLT, part of
  BNC), r1993 teenagers of various/unknown
  origins
• Intonational Variation in English (IViE), r1998
  teenagers of West Indian origin
• Labovs London interviews r1968 men and some
  women, aged late teens40s)
• Hackney archive, r1980s elderly Londoners
• Eastside archive, r2002 elderly Londoners

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• Operationalising London
• Social complexity of London makes the search for
  true vernacular speakers more meaningless than
  normal
• extreme ethnic heterogeneity of all central
  London boroughs
• differences in income, occupation, lifestyle
• differences in mobility
• differences in network type (esp. family vs.
  non-family oriented)

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• Solution to operationalisation problem
• first stratify sample by accessible/observable
  criteria (sex, inner vs. outer city, white Anglo
  Londoners vs. other)
• then examine individuals networks and existing
  groups, using data from ethnographic interviews
  in search for factors which allow us to gain
  insight into linguistic behaviour. This may allow
  prototypical people to be identified

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Short vowel changes in London and the south-east
endogenous change or dialect levelling?
Trudgill Dialects in Contact, p. 51
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Trudgill Dialects in Contact, p. 51
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London very old speakers
KIT FOOT DRESS LOT TRAP STRUT
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Labov 1968
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COLT 1993
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IViE 1998
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IViE 1998 (normalised)
GOOSE
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Hackney elderly 2005 (normalised)
START
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Hackney young 2005 (normalised)
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• The real time and apparent time data confirm the
  slow and continuing anti-clockwise shift of all
  short vowels throughout the 20th century
• Hard to say anything about the order of changes
• DRESS and TRAP lowering agrees with previous
  published studies
• STRUT backing seems not to have been noted before

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Diphthong Shift (Wells 1982 308, 310)

• 1. Front-closing diphthongs

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• 2. Back-closing diphthongs
• 3. PRICE-MOUTH crossover

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Trudgill on Diphthong Shift as drift in early
New Zealand English

• Trudgill (2004) has recently presented a case for
  the existence of drift in the closing
  diphthongs of New Zealand English there is
  strong evidence that, since the 19th century
  settlement, the vowels of PRICE and MOUTH have
  acquired strongly Diphthong Shifted variants
  giving rise to pronunciations such as ?? and
  ??, respectively.
• The argument is that NZE inherited the tendency
  towards diphthong shifting, not so much the
  pronunciations themselves. His evidence for this
  is that of the oldest New Zealanders recorded,
  born 185069, 68 have at least some diphthong
  shifting, while for those born 18701889 the
  figure is 81.
• Phonetically, the shift gets more marked with the
  later-born informants.

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• The ONZE project (Gordon et al. 2004) finds that,
  in 19th century NZE, diphthong shift occurred in
  the following order
• MOUTH, PRICE, GOAT, FACE, GOOSE, FLEECE
• The typologically similar variety, London
  English, would be expected to have experienced
  the same drift over the same period and
  indeed diphthong shifted vowels have been the
  norm in London and the south-east for 100 years
  or more (2004 maps 2,3,5). Trudgill discusses
  evidence that suggests the following order for
  the south-east of England, with diffusion
  spreading west and north from London
• MOUTH, PRICE, FACE/GOAT
• - with data for the remaining vowels being
  complicated by phonological factors and early
  fronting of GOOSE in the south-west and Norfolk.

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Diphthong Shift in London

• As a typologically similar variety, London would
  be expected to parallel NZE
• If it doesnt, we would need to look for
  particular social motivations blocking it

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Hackney elderly Mr MG
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Hackney elderly Mrs F
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Hackney elderly Mr D
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• Elderly subjects closely follow Wellss pattern
  for Cockney or Popular London

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Hackney young - Mark
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Hackney young - Tina
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• Mark and Tina show considerably less diphthong
  shift for all vowels except MOUTH

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Hackney young - Brian
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Hackney young - Alan
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• Brian and Alan show still less diphthong shift

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Endogenous change in inner London?

• 1. Short vowels
• The short vowel chain shift seen in Ashford but
  only suspected for London is now confirmed for
  London
• STRUT is backer than in Ashford/Reading/ MK,
  suggesting a more advanced stage in London, but
• FOOT is backer, suggesting a less advanced stage
• The two burnout informants, Brian and Alan,
  have greater STRUT backing and less FOOT fronting
  than the others
• Suggest this is endogenous change
• no external model for this
• STRUT backing more advanced than in south-east
  periphery (but what about FOOT fronting?)
• However, see our later discussion below!

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• 2. Diphthong Shift (Wells/Trudgill)
• Old shifts
• MOUTH established Cockney feature stabilised as
  shifted onset and assimilated offset
• PRICE diphthong shift has been reversed. Vowel
  is mostly low-front near-monophthong
• FACE reversed. Vowel is narrow half-close
  closing diphthong

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• B. New shifts
• GOAT fronting present in the two non-Burnouts
  Mark and Tina
• Replaced by high-back closing diphthong in the
  speech of the two Burnouts Brian and Alan
• GOOSE fronting very marked in all young
  speakers

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Reversal of Diphthong Shift

• The loss of Diphthong Shift is in the reverse
  order of its introduction in New Zealand English
• GOAT/FACE
• PRICE
• MOUTH
• (for which there is no loss of Shift)
• GOOSE is fronted and not strongly diphthongised,
  so falls partly outside the scope of Diphthong
  Shift
• We still need to investigate Diphthong Shift of
  FLEECE most likely not shifted

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Origins of inner London changes

• Diphthong Shift reversal sounds like RP, but
  there is no reason to propose this as a model
• W Indian English possible model for back STRUT,
  non-fronted FOOT and the non-diphthong-shifted
  vowels
• Only one of the four subjects is of W Indian
  ancestry, suggesting W Indian as the origin of
  these features in non W Indians speech
• Its hard to call this endogenous change in the
  strict sense of generated within the linguistic
  system, since it results from dialect contact
• We are at a very early stage of research on this.

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Is there evidence of diffusion of features to
periphery (Reading, Milton Keynes, Ashford)?

• 1. Features which appear more advanced in inner
  London than in periphery (i.e. present in both,
  but more marked in London
• STRUT-backing
• Reversal of diphthong shift for PRICE
• Labiodental r and th-stopping (need checking)
• to which we add short vowel shift, for which we
  have argued for diffusion from London
  (Torgersen/Kerswill 2004)

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• 2. Features which are shared in equal measure by
  inner London and periphery
• GOOSE-fronting
• GOAT-fronting (but separate development by some
  inner Londoners)
• FOOT-fronting (but not shared by all inner
  Londoners)
• th-fronting, t-glottalling (need checking)

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• 3. Features which are not shared by periphery and
  inner London
• Reversal of Diphthong Shift for FACE (London
  only)
• Different developments in MOUTH
• Reversal of Diphthong Shift in periphery
• Preservation and modification of diphthong shift
  in inner London

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Tie-in with ideas about endocentric and
exocentric speech communities (Andersen)

• Peripheral young people are more levelled (and
  perhaps more standard, given presence of vertical
  levelling) than their parents. This suggests
  exocentricity (receptiveness to outside norms)
• Inner-London young people are diverging from
  existing norms. They introduce new, locally
  distinctive (marked) forms. This suggests
  endocentricity in the sense that dialect contact,
  if any, is within the community (and not with
  people located in another geographical centre)

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Conclusion

• Some evidence of diffusion from inner London
• But many new forms found in London, with little
  evidence (yet) of outward diffusion
• Inner London is endocentric by comparison with
  the apparent exocentricity of the peripheral
  towns
• Divergence in inner London levelling in the
  periphery
• Need to look now at Havering is it more like
  the peripheral towns?
• Need to look at group identities in inner London,
  especially ethnicity and cultural orientations
  (e.g. locally relevant Burnout/Jock
  dimension)

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