Peripheral Communities and Innovation: Changes in the goose Vowel in a West Cumbrian Town

Jansen, Sandra

doi:10.1057/978-1-137-56288-3_12

Cited by 5 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…In some areas of the far North of England, such as Newcastle upon Tyne and West Cumbria, GOOSE-fronting is absent or at least much less common (Beal, Burbano-Elizondo & Llamas 2012;Jansen 2018). This motivates the use of distance from London as an operationalisation of listener region.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Speaker gender and salience in sociolinguistic speech perception: GOOSE-fronting in Standard Southern British English

Alderton¹

2018

Preprint

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Listeners’ perception of sound changes with strong socio-indexical associations can be influenced by priming them with social information about the speaker. It is not clear, however, whether this occurs for sociolinguistic variables that pass below the level of conscious awareness. This article hence investigates whether visual speaker gender affects the perception of GOOSE-fronting in Standard Southern British English, which is a sound change that is led by young women, yet does not index stereotypical social characteristics. Participants completed a word identification experiment based on a synthesised FLEECE-GOOSE continuum produced by a gender-ambiguous voice while exposed to an image of a male or female face. Only male listeners identified more fronted tokens as GOOSE when the face in the image was female. The findings suggest that a variable’s social meanings and salience may vary between groups of listeners, while also highlighting the need for good analytical practice when conducting priming experiments.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Speaker gender and salience in sociolinguistic speech perception: GOOSE-fronting in Standard Southern British English

Alderton¹

2018

Preprint

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“…The participants were all living in Lancaster (North West England) at the time of the experiment but were from a wide variety of geographical origins within the country. Little work has been conducted on the accent of Lancaster and the surrounding area, though research further north in Cumbria suggests that goose -fronting has reached urban, but not rural areas (Jansen 2018). In any case, the vast majority of listeners were not locals of the city and had moved there from elsewhere in the UK to study at university.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While the sound change is widespread throughout the UK, it appears to be more advanced in SSBE and related varieties than in northern accents (Ferragne & Pellegrino 2010; Williams & Escudero 2014). In some areas of the far North of England, such as Newcastle upon Tyne and West Cumbria, goose -fronting is absent or at least much less common (Beal, Burbano-Elizondo & Llamas 2012; Jansen 2018). This motivates the use of distance from London as an operationalization of listener region.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Speaker Gender and Salience in Sociolinguistic Speech Perception:goose-fronting in Standard Southern British English

Alderton

2020

Journal of English Linguistics

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Listeners’ perceptions of sound changes may be influenced by priming them with social information about the speaker. It is not clear, however, whether this occurs for sociolinguistic variables that pass below the level of awareness. This article investigates whether visual speaker gender affects the perception of goose-fronting in Standard Southern British English, a sound change that is led by young women yet does not fulfil criteria for sociolinguistic salience. Participants from across the United Kingdom completed a word identification experiment based on a gender-ambiguous synthesized fleece-goose continuum while primed with an image of a man’s or a woman’s face. The study did not find a significant main effect of priming, but men identified fronter tokens as goose when primed with a woman’s face. I argue that sociolinguistic priming effects may be over-stated and that future priming experiments should be designed with maximal statistical power where possible.

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Social meaning and the obsolescence of traditional local structures

Jansen

2021

EWW

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This paper discusses the obsolescence of h-dropping as a local feature in Maryport, West Cumbria. Using sociolinguistic interview data, a quantitative approach and mixed-effects modelling is used to explain the linguistic changes in the community. Sociolinguistic accounts of h-dropping always state that the feature is and has been stigmatised in England since the 18th century. However, the oldest speakers in the sample do not change their level of h-dropping in more formal speech styles, which indicates that the standard language ideology of “proper” English might not be pervasive for them. However, for speakers born after 1960 the use of h-dropping is decreasing in apparent time. From the 1960s onwards, Maryport has seen social change as the strong neighbourhood ties broke up and from the 1980s experienced strong job losses. I argue that these social changes are correlated with the decline and eventual obsolescence of h-dropping in the community.

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Peripheral Communities and Innovation: Changes in the goose Vowel in a West Cumbrian Town

Cited by 5 publications

References 31 publications

Speaker gender and salience in sociolinguistic speech perception: GOOSE-fronting in Standard Southern British English

Speaker gender and salience in sociolinguistic speech perception: GOOSE-fronting in Standard Southern British English

Speaker Gender and Salience in Sociolinguistic Speech Perception:goose-fronting in Standard Southern British English

Social meaning and the obsolescence of traditional local structures

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