An Introduction to Regional Englishes: Dialect Variation in England

135 Pages·2010·1.003 MB·Edinburgh Textbooks on the English Language

by  Joan C. Beal

EDINBURGH TEXTBOOKS ON THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
Series Editor: Heinz Giegerich
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This series provides introductions to the main areas of English Language
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study. Volumes cover aspects of the history and structure of the language n
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such as: syntax, phonology, morphology, regional and social variation, Old r
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English, Middle English, Early Modern English and international Englishes. d
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An Introduction to Regional Englishes o
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Dialect Variation in England l
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JOAN C.BEAL
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Are the dialects of England disappearing as ‘Estuary English’ proliferates, or are h
geographical differences as strong as ever? Joan C. Beal looks at recent research and e
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provides an overview of current regional variation in the accent, grammar and
vocabulary of English in England, along with a discussion of the evidence for dialect
levelling and the importance oflanguage as a marker oflocal and regional identity.
Each chapter of this introduction is fully illustrated with examples from a range of
accents and dialects and accompanied by an exercise involving either the analysis of data
from dialect surveys or corporaor the use ofcurrent fieldwork methods to collect data.
The volume concludes that, while ‘traditional’ dialects might be endangered, regional
variation is alive and well in England, and features of dialect are still clear markers of
regional and local identity.
Features:
• combines description with theoretical discussion, ideal for beginning students An Introduction to
• exercises provide hands-on experience of analysing and collecting data
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• includes a guide to resources available for study in the area
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Joan C. Beal is Professor of English Language at the University of Sheffield. She took her
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BA and PhD at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne and her teaching and research
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interests lie in dialectology and the history of English post 1700. B
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L Joan C. Beal
Cover design & illustration: River Design, Edinburgh
Edinburgh University Press
22George Square, Edinburgh EH8 9LF E
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ISBN 978 0 7486 2117 0 in
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1085 pages i-xii prelims:Regional Englishes 5/10/10 11:56 Page i
An Introduction to Regional Englishes
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Edinburgh Textbooks on the English Language
General Editor
Heinz Giegerich, Professor of English Linguistics, University of Edinburgh
Editorial Board
Laurie Bauer (University of Wellington)
Derek Britton (University of Edinburgh)
Olga Fischer (University of Amsterdam)
Rochelle Lieber (University of New Hampshire)
Norman Macleod (University of Edinburgh)
Donka Minkova (UCLA)
Edgar W. Schneider (University of Regensburg)
Katie Wales (University of Leeds)
Anthony Warner (University of York)
titles in the series include
An Introduction to English Syntax
Jim Miller
An Introduction to English Phonology
April McMahon
An Introduction to English Morphology: Words and Their Structure
Andrew Carstairs-McCarthy
An Introduction to International Varieties of English
Laurie Bauer
An Introduction to Middle English
Jeremy Smith and Simon Horobin
An Introduction to Old English
Richard Hogg
An Introduction to Early Modern English
Terttu Nevalainen
An Introduction to English Semantics and Pragmatics
Patrick Griffiths
An Introduction to English Sociolinguistics
Graeme Trousdale
An Introduction to Late Modern English
Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade
An Introduction to Regional Englishes: Dialect Variation in England
Joan Beal
An Introduction to English Phonetics
Richard Ogden
1085 pages i-xii prelims:Regional Englishes 5/10/10 11:56 Page iii
An Introduction to
Regional Englishes
Dialect Variation in England
Joan C. Beal
Edinburgh University Press
1085 pages i-xii prelims:Regional Englishes 5/10/10 11:56 Page iv
© Joan C. Beal, 2010
Edinburgh University Press Ltd
22 George Square, Edinburgh
www.euppublishing.com
Typeset in Janson
by Norman Tilley Graphics Ltd, and
printed and bound in Great Britain by
CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7486 2116 3 (hardback)
ISBN 978 0 7486 2117 0(paperback)
The right of Joan C. Beal
to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted in accordance with
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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Contents
Figures and tables viii
Acknowledgements ix
Map of locations mentioned in this book x
Abbreviations xi
1 Introduction 1
1.1 English dialects in the twenty-first century 1
1.2 The ‘death of dialects’ in the nineteenth century 2
1.3 English dialects and dialectology in the twentieth century 4
1.4 Dialects old and new 6
1.5 Outline 7
Exercises 7
2 Accent variation in England 10
2.1 Typology of English regional accents 10
2.2 Trudgill’s modern dialect features 13
2.2.1 But and path: the North–South divide 13
2.2.2 Rhoticity 15
2.2.3 ‘Velar nasal plus’ 17
2.2.4 ‘Yod-dropping’ 17
2.2.5 ‘happY tensing’ 18
2.2.6 Monophthongal versus diphthongal made 19
2.2.7 /l/-vocalisation 20
2.2.8 ‘H Dropping’ 21
2.3 Summary: Trudgill’s ‘modern’ dialect features and beyond 21
Exercises 23
Further reading 24
3 Dialect variation in England: morphology and syntax 25
3.1 Introduction: the study of regional grammar 25
3.2 Regional, non-standard or sub-standard? 29
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vi AN INTRODUCTION TO REGIONAL ENGLISHES
3.3 Variation in the verb phrase 30
3.3.1 Past tense paradigms 30
3.3.2 Present tense verb endings 32
3.3.3 Forms of be 32
3.3.4 Variation in the progressive 34
3.3.5 Contraction of negatives 34
3.3.6 Patterns of negation in interrogatives and tags 36
3.3.7 Periphrastic do 37
3.3.8 Modal verbs 37
3.3.9 Complementation 38
3.4 Regional variation in the noun phrase 39
3.4.1 Noun morphology 39
3.4.2 Second person pronouns 39
3.4.3 Pronoun exchange 42
3.4.4 ‘Gendered’ pronouns 43
3.4.5 Relative markers 43
3.4.6 Demonstrative pronouns 47
3.4.7 The definite article 48
3.5 Summary 49
Exercises 50
Further reading 50
4 Dialect variation in England: lexis 53
4.1 Introduction 53
4.2 Patterns of lexical variation 54
4.2.1 Words of Scandinavian origin 54
4.2.2 Words of French origin 55
4.2.3 Words of Dutch and Low German origin 58
4.2.4 Words of Celtic origin 60
4.2.5 Words of Romani/Angloromani origin 61
4.3 Retention in English dialects 62
4.4 Variation and change in regional lexis 63
4.4.1 Retention and loss of dialect words 63
4.4.2 Variation and innovation in regional lexis 66
4.5 Summary 70
Exercises 71
Further reading 71
5 Levellingand diffusion 73
5.1 Introduction 73
5.2 Levelling 74
5.3 Diffusion 78
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CONTENTS vii
5.3.1 Patterns of diffusion 78
5.3.2 The diffusion of consonantal variants 79
5.4 Resistance and divergence 82
5.4.1 Resistance and phonological structure 82
5.4.2 Divergence 83
Exercises 85
Further reading 85
6 Variation and identity 87
6.1 Introduction 87
6.2 Identity in early sociolinguistic studies 88
6.3 Theorising language and identity 92
6.3.1 The Labovian paradigm 92
6.3.2 The language-ideological approach 94
6.4 Language and identity in England: case studies 95
6.4.1 Middlesbrough: a place with no identity? 95
6.4.2 Corby: a Scottish–English contact community 99
6.4.3 Sunderland: quantifying local identity 101
6.5 Conclusion 102
Exercises 103
Further reading 107
References 108
Index 118
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Figures and tables
Figures
0.1 Locations mentioned in this book x
4.1 Distribution of beck,brook and burnin SED (from Orton and
Wright 1974: 87) 56
4.2 The Danelaw (from Barber et al. 2009: 139) 57
4.3 Completed SRN sheet (from Llamas 1999: 114) 68
5.1 Variants of faceand goatin Newcastle (after Watt and
Milroy 1999) 76
6.1 Extract from identity questionnaire (after Llamas 2007: 587) 96
Tables
2.1 Features of ‘modern’ English dialects (after Hughes et al.
2005: 71) 22
3.1 Personal pronouns in Standard English 39
3.2 Second person pronouns in Middle English 40
3.3 Demonstratives in Standard English 47
6.1 Social stratification of (ng) in Norwich (after Trudgill
1974: 92) 91
6.2 Identification scores and percentage of ‘H Dropping’
(after Burbano-Elizondo 2008: 213) 102
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Acknowledgements
I am immensely grateful to Heinz Giegerich for encouraging me to write
this in the first place, and to Esme Watson and the team at Edinburgh
University Press for their patience and support. I am also grateful to
Derek Britton for his helpful and constructive comments.
Thanks to Chris Montgomery for compiling the map of locations
(Figure 0.1). Thanks to the following for permission to reproduce
material: Cambridge University Press (Figure 4.2); Carmen Llamas
(Figures 4.3 and 6.1); Lourdes Burbano-Elizondo (Figure 6.1, Table 6.2
and the identity questionnaire accompanying the exercise for Chapter
6). Thanks to Emma Moore for permission to use the table of gram -
matical features which accompanies the exercise for Chapter 3.
Thanks to the University of Sheffield for granting me a semester’s
research leave in 2008–9, which allowed me to make considerable
progress on this book, and to the colleagues in the School of English
Literature, Language and Linguistics who took up my duties in this
period.
As always, I am grateful to my husband Ninian and my daughters
Madeleine and Alice for their support and forbearance while I was
writing this book. Special thanks to my future son-in-law Matt for the
constant supply of hot drinks he provided to keep me going.
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