Class matters: the sociolinguistics ofgooseandgoatin Manchester English

Abstract

A B S T R A C TThis paper reports on patterns of sociolinguistic variation and change in Manchester's GOOSE and GOAT vowels on the basis of the acoustic analysis of 122 speakers, stratified by age, gender, socioeconomic status, and ethnicity. GOOSE fronting is an internal change showing little social differentiation, except before /l/ as in school and pool, where, in contrast to most other dialects of English, GOOSE shows advanced fronting inversely correlated with socioeconomic status. GOAT fronting, on the other hand, is a change brought from outside the dialect by the highest status groups, displaying a pattern of monotonic social stratification, a female lead, and a strong effect of ethnicity. The role of attitudes toward the community in the realization of the vowels is compared with the effect of social class construed in terms of distances between social groups. Social class turns out to be a better predictor, suggesting that the role of attitudes and identity may be overestimated in research eschewing a systematic exploration of social class at the same time.The quality of the long back vowels GOOSE and GOAT has been changing in many dialects of English. The fronting of GOOSE has been found in most varieties across the English-speaking

Dynamic acoustic-articulatory relations in back vowel fronting: Examining the effects of coda consonants in two dialects of British English

“…The fronting of goose is typically limited before a coda lateral , due to the backing effect of the dorsal gesture in coda laterals. Despite this, recent research shows that some dialects do show fronting before /l/, which may represent a later stage of the sound change (Baranowski, 2017).…”

td-deletion in British English: New evidence for the long-lost morphological effect

“…4.Manchester is defined as the area within the M60 ring road. See Baranowski and Turton (2015) and Baranowski (2017) for an overview of which areas are included in our analysis of the Manchester speech community.…”

“…7.See Baranowski (2017) for further information on the operationalization of social class in the sample.…”

Secondary education as a group marker in St. Louis, Missouri

“…While it is not the primary focus of this paper, I also code for social class due to its wellknown correlation with linguistic variation. Because occupation is the best available variable for approximating social class (Baranowski & Turton 2018), I operationalize class by coding speakers based on their occupation, following the approach outlined in Baranowski (2017). As most speakers were either lower-middle or middle-middle class under this approach (one, a telephone lineperson, was upper-working class), I condense the factor into a binary variable of working/lower-middle class vs. middle-middle class.…”