Dialect Levelling in Britain - Cases

Cases

The following are the results of several research projects with a focus on dialect levelling. They enhance our knowledge of the dialect levelling that is taking place today in Great Britain. There has been research on the phenomenon of dialect leveling in Hull, Milton Keynes and Reading (Williams, & Kerswill, 1999):

Since the late 1970s a gap has been growing between the north and the south of England. The south has experienced economic growth while the north has seen a decline of its wealth. While southerners realize that using a standard language can increase work opportunities, northerners, discouraged by the high unemployment rates, don’t see why they should use the standard language promoted through education. Thus we notice more dialect levelling towards standard English in the south than in the north of England.

In towns that receive many immigrants of different social classes, children are exposed at a young age to different dialects and dialect levelling takes place unconsciously. To the contrary, in towns where this is not the case and families tend to stay in the same place for several generations, children mostly come into contact only with the dialect spoken at home.

However, even though northern youngsters don’t come into contact with many dialects other than their own, they do take over some non-standard southern consonantal variants. This may be explained by people who moved out of the area for a while such as students, people working in the military or people that worked outside of the area who then returned, bringing their altered accent with them. It may also be caused by TV and radio stations, many of which broadcast from London and the south.

• The survey of British Dialect Grammar in the metropolitan regions of Blackburn, Birmingham, Cardiff, Nottingham, Glasgow, London, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Preston, Sheffield, Teesside, Coventry, Swansea, Brighton, Leeds and Bristol (Cheshire, Edwards, & Whittle, 1989).

The major urban centres of Britain have certain grammatical features in common in their spoken English and so we could say that a ‘standardizing’ non-standard variety of English is developing.

• Social network and class culture as independent influences on language change (Kerswill, & Williams, 2000)

In Milton Keynes a new phenomenon has been investigated in linguistics research. A large group of working-class people have moved to Milton Keynes, away from their home town and kin, in the hope of finding better housing. Unlike traditional working-class communities they do not form close-knit networks and tend to keep themselves to themselves. This type of network is common with migrants everywhere. For some features, especially vowels, the levelling leans towards the Received Pronunciation norm. For other features, especially consonants, the levelling leans more towards a general, southern, non-standard norm.

Strong class awareness amongst youngsters and strong prejudice against ‘posh’ people explain why standard English and Received Pronunciation are not fully adopted. For the working class of Milton Keynes it is priority to establish a distinction between them and the upper class. This indicated that mobility and social class appear to be two separate influences that do not necessarily go hand in hand.