Endogenous change in inner-London teenage speech Diphthong Shift reversal and other vowel changes

1. Endogenous change in inner-London teenage speech? ‘Diphthong Shift’ reversal and other vowel changes Paul Kerswill and Eivind Torgersen Lancaster University

2. 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.’

3. 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)

4. 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)

5. Open and closed speech communities Open communities: allow variability: therefore heterogeneous Closed communities: disfavour variability: therefore more homogeneous

6. Four speech community types (Andersen, Røyneland) Endocentric – open (urban) Exocentric – open (urban or rural) Endocentric – closed (urban or rural) Exocentric – closed (rural)

7. Networks; identity Within each community: Different network types Different social identities being played out

8. 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.

9. 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.

10. Reading–Ashford short vowel project designed as a first attempt at looking at possible levelling in the vowel system of the south-east

11. Linguistic innovators: the English of adolescents in London (EAL) September 2004–August 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)

12. Web: http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fss/projects/linguistics/innovators/index.htm

20. Research Questions 1 What are some of the characteristics of spoken English in London in terms of phonetic and grammatical features?

21. Research Questions 2 What evidence is there that phonological and grammatical innovations start in London and spread out from there?

22. Research Questions 3 One-third of London’s 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?

23. Research Questions 4 Which types of Londoners, socially defined, innovate linguistically? Which types are in a position to spread innovations, once started?

24. 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]?

25. 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?

26. Sample (for both Hackney and Havering)

27. Languages spoken

28. Population Hackney: 208 365 Havering: 224 248

29. Social variables - 1 Age – 16–19 years, young people with a measure of mobility and independence

30. 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

31. 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

32. Vowels in the provincial south-east as evidence of innovation and levelling

33. GOAT-fronting and GOOSE-fronting in Reading

35. Table 1 Percentage use of variants of /aU/ (MOUTH), Milton Keynes Working Class, interview style

36. Table 2 Percentage use of variants of /aU/ (MOUTH), Reading Working Class, interview style

37. Replacement of both rural and urban local forms by an RP-like [aU] – perhaps a levelled, regionally and socially unmarked form

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

39. Table 4 Percentage use of variants of (a?) (PRICE), Reading Working Class, interview style

40. Replacement of widely stereotyped [?I] by a regionally and socially unmarked [A+I] ~ [AI]

41. Reading–Ashford short-vowel project (Torgersen & Kerswill 2004)

43. Re-stating conclusions from the Reading–Ashford study The Ashford shift seems to follow descriptions of recent change in London But the London descriptions don’t talk about the backing of STRUT We can now suggest that the Ashford/London shift is endogenous

44. 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 Andersen’s ideas about endocentric and exocentric communities

45. 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

46. 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??]

47. Research question … Are the vowel changes we have noted diffusing from London? How can we tell?

48. 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 Labov’s London interviews r1968 – men and some women, aged late teens–40s) Hackney archive, r1980s – elderly Londoners Eastside archive, r2002 – elderly Londoners

49. 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)

50. 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

51. Short vowel changes in London and the south-east: endogenous change or dialect levelling?

53. London ‘very old’ speakers

54. Labov 1968

55. COLT 1993

56. IViE 1998

57. IViE 1998 (normalised)

58. Hackney elderly 2005 (normalised)

59. Hackney young 2005 (normalised)

60. 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

61. Diphthong Shift (Wells 1982: 308, 310) 1. Front-closing diphthongs

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

63. 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 1850–69, 68% have at least some diphthong shifting, while for those born 1870–1889 the figure is 81%. Phonetically, the shift gets more marked with the later-born informants.

64. 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.

65. Diphthong Shift in London As a typologically similar variety, London would be expected to parallel NZE If it doesn’t, we would need to look for particular social motivations blocking it

66. Hackney elderly – Mr MG

67. Hackney elderly – Mrs F

68. Hackney elderly – Mr D

69. Elderly subjects closely follow Wells’s pattern for Cockney or Popular London

70. Hackney young - Mark

71. Hackney young - Tina

72. Mark and Tina show considerably less diphthong shift for all vowels except MOUTH

73. Hackney young - Brian

74. Hackney young - Alan

75. Brian and Alan show still less diphthong shift

76. 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!

77. 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

78. 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

79. 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

80. 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 It’s 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.

81. 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)

82. 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)

83. 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

84. 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)

85. 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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