‘I don’t speak with a Geordie accent, I speak, like, the Northern accent’: Contact‐induced levelling in the Tyneside vowel system

Abstract

Evidence is presented in this paper of the levelling of the Tyneside (Newcastle) English vowel system toward that of a putative regional standard. This process is hypothesised to follow from the fragmentation of tight‐knit urban communities that formed after large‐scale immigration to Tyneside from elsewhere in the British Isles during the 18th and 19th centuries. High levels of dialect contact brought about by this influx are argued to have promoted the creation of an urban koiné, which in its contemporary form appears increasingly to be losing specifically local features. In addition to contact and mobility as agents of change, the history of unusually acute stigma attached to Tyneside speech should be considered. These and other social factors inform an analysis of the FACE and GOAT variables in the speech of 32 contemporary Tyneside English speakers of various ages, both sexes and from two social class groups.

Enregisterment, Commodification, and Historical Context: “Geordie” Versus “Sheffieldish”

“…This repertoire of Geordie features, set out in Table 2 The last of these <or> for word-final <er> indicates a feature not easily represented in semi-phonetic spelling, the Northumbrian Burr (a uvular trill with secondary lip rounding). The only feature which I found had disappeared from the repertoire by the late 20th century was the use of <ye> for <a> in FACE words: interestingly, one of the features that Watt (2002) found subject to levelling in the late 20 th century.…”

What makes acquired foreign accent syndrome foreign?

“…Such information is not always available for a particular dialect. However, Tyneside English has received greater focus over recent years (Docherty & Foulkes, 1999;Watt, 2000Watt, , 2002Watt & Milroy, 1999). These publications predominately concentrate on vowel quality.…”

Language shift and apparent standardisation in Early Modern English

“…Dialect levelling is thought to be the process behind the loss of highly localised dialect features in the North of England and the emergence of a more general Northern English (e.g. Watt 2002).…”