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Variation and Change in Aberdeen English

A Sociophonetic Study

by Thorsten Brato (Author)
©2016 Thesis XX, 216 Pages

Summary

This book is the first major sociophonetic work on the urban accent of Aberdeen in North-East Scotland. The study shows how the accent has changed following the large-scale immigration from other parts of Scotland and the UK since the 1970s. It is rooted in a dialect contact framework and based on sociolinguistic interviews with a stratified sample of 44 Aberdonians. The study uses an innovative method to assess the importance of the individual speaker in innovating and conserving the local accent. Based on six phonological variables, it shows how the traditional variants are replaced or marginalised, supraregional forms gain ground and strongly marked forms typical of Glaswegian or London English are added to the local feature pool.

Table Of Contents

  • Cover
  • Title
  • Copyright
  • About the authors
  • About the book
  • This eBook can be cited
  • Contents
  • Tables
  • Figures
  • Abbreviations
  • Preface
  • 1 Introduction
  • 2 Aberdeen and North-East Scotland
  • 2.1 Key historical developments
  • 2.2 The social structure of the city today
  • 3 Sociolinguistic setting
  • 3.1 The polar structure of Scots and English
  • 3.2 The status of Scots in Aberdeen and the North-East
  • 4 Theoretical frameworks
  • 4.1 Processes and outcomes in dialect contact
  • 4.2 The importance of children and teenagers in contact-induced change
  • 4.3 Assessing innovation and conservatism
  • 5 Research context and research propositions
  • 5.1 Aberdeen in the context of previous dialect contact research
  • 5.2 Research propositions
  • 6 Data and methodology
  • 6.1 Study design
  • 6.1.1 Informant selection
  • 6.1.2 Sociolinguistics questionnaires
  • 6.1.3 Linguistic variables chosen for this study
  • 6.1.4 Recording procedure and types of material
  • 6.2 Phonetic analysis
  • 6.3 Statistical analysis
  • 6.3.1 Using mixed-effects modelling in sociolinguistic research
  • 6.3.2 Statistical modelling
  • 6.3.3 Interpreting the Rbrul output
  • 6.4 Assessing innovation and conservatism
  • 7 Linguistic variables
  • 7.1 (boot)
  • 7.1.1 Background
  • 7.1.2 Methodology
  • 7.1.3 Findings
  • 7.1.3.1 Interview style
  • 7.1.3.2 Wordlist style
  • 7.1.4 Summary and discussion
  • 7.2 (out)
  • 7.2.1 Background
  • 7.2.2 Methodology
  • 7.2.3 Findings
  • 7.2.3.1 Interview style
  • 7.2.3.2 Wordlist style
  • 7.2.4 Summary and discussion
  • 7.3 (hw)
  • 7.3.1 Background
  • 7.3.2 Methodology
  • 7.3.3 Findings
  • 7.3.3.1 Interview style
  • 7.3.3.2 Wordlist style
  • 7.3.4 Summary and discussion
  • 7.4 (l)
  • 7.4.1 Background
  • 7.4.2 Methodology
  • 7.4.3 Findings
  • 7.4.3.1 Interview style
  • 7.4.3.2 Wordlist style
  • 7.4.4 Summary and discussion
  • 7.5 (postvocalic r)
  • 7.5.1 Background
  • 7.5.2 Methodology
  • 7.5.3 Findings
  • 7.5.3.1 Interview style
  • 7.5.3.2 Wordlist style
  • 7.5.4 Discussion
  • 7.6 (th)
  • 7.6.1 Background
  • 7.6.2 Methodology
  • 7.6.3 Findings
  • 7.6.3.1 Interview style
  • 7.6.3.2 Wordlist style
  • 7.6.4 Summary and discussion
  • 7.7 Summary of key findings
  • 8 Discussion
  • 8.1 Linguistic processes and outcomes of dialect contact in Aberdeen
  • 8.2 The role of age and other social factors
  • 8.3 Evaluation of the model of assessing innovation and conservatism using mixed-effects regressions
  • 9 Conclusion
  • References
  • Index
  • Appendix
  • A-1 Overview of speaker metadata
  • A-2 Wordlist

Thorsten Brato

Variation and Change in Aberdeen English

A Sociophonetic Study

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About the authors

Thorsten Brato works in the Department of English and American Studies at the University of Regensburg. His research interests include sociophonetics, World Englishes and language variation and change.

About the book

This book is the first major sociophonetic work on the urban accent of Aberdeen in North-East Scotland. The study shows how the accent has changed following the large-scale immigration from other parts of Scotland and the UK since the 1970s. It is rooted in a dialect contact framework and based on sociolinguistic interviews with a stratified sample of 44 Aberdonians. The study uses an innovative method to assess the importance of the individual speaker in innovating and conserving the local accent. Based on six phonological variables, it shows how the traditional variants are replaced or marginalised, supraregional forms gain ground and strongly marked forms typical of Glaswegian or London English are added to the local feature pool.

This eBook can be cited

This edition of the eBook can be cited. To enable this we have marked the start and end of a page. In cases where a word straddles a page break, the marker is placed inside the word at exactly the same position as in the physical book. This means that occasionally a word might be bifurcated by this marker.

Details

Pages
XX, 216
Year
2016
ISBN (ePUB)
9783631701898
ISBN (PDF)
9783653071962
ISBN (MOBI)
9783631701904
ISBN (Hardcover)
9783631680933
DOI
10.3726/978-3-653-07196-2
Language
English
Publication date
2016 (December)
Keywords
Dialect Scotland UK Phonology North-East Scotland
Published
Frankfurt am Main, Bern, Bruxelles, New York, Oxford, Warszawa, Wien, 2016. XX, 216 pp., 42 b/w graphs, 62 b/w tables

Biographical notes

Thorsten Brato (Author)

Thorsten Brato works in the Department of English and American Studies at the University of Regensburg. His research interests include sociophonetics, World Englishes and language variation and change.

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238 pages