Premium
‘We all speak the same round here’: Dialect levelling in a Scottish‐English community
Author(s) -
Dyer Judy
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
journal of sociolinguistics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1
H-Index - 51
eISSN - 1467-9841
pISSN - 1360-6441
DOI - 10.1111/1467-9481.00179
Subject(s) - levelling , indigenous , interpretation (philosophy) , linguistics , identity (music) , dialectology , ideology , sociology , history , speech community , language contact , geography , art , political science , cartography , law , aesthetics , philosophy , ecology , politics , biology
In this paper the formation of a new dialect in Corby, Northamptonshire, a former steel town in the English Midlands, is traced across three generations. The study focuses on whether dialect levelling processes can account for the features of the new dialect formed by contact between the displaced Scottish and indigenous English inhabitants in the town. The results of a variationist analysis of the reflexes of two phonological variables are interpreted within a language ideology framework, with reference to commentary from the speakers themselves. Such a combination of perspectives offers a means of socially embedding the interpretation of the data with reference to the identity issues arising from this contact situation.