Television can also be a factor in language change: Evidence from an urban dialect

Abstract

This article considers two instances of rapidly accelerating linguistic change in Glaswegian vernacular, th - fronting and l-vocalization , both typically associated with the Cockney dialect of London. Both changes have been underway for some time, but took off during the 1990s. In this article we consider a range of factors that are contributing to the rapid proliferation of these forms in the speech of inner-city Glaswegian adolescents. Our multivariate analysis shows very strong effects for linguistic factors, as well as strong positive correlations with social practices relating to local Glaswegian street style, some links with dialect contact with friends and family living in England, and—perhaps surprisingly—also positive correlations with strong psychological engagement with the London-based TV soap drama EastEnders . Our results suggest that the changes are being propelled by several processes: ongoing transmission and at the same time continuing diffusion through dialect contact; the local social meanings carried by these variants for these speakers; and strong engagement with a favorite TV drama. For this community at least, engaging with a favorite TV drama is an additional accelerating factor in rapid linguistic diffusion.

An analysis of post-vocalic /s-ʃ/ neutralization in Augsburg German: evidence for a gradient sound change

“…These forms of dialect leveling are very likely to come about because of the speakers' increasing contact with the standard language—for example, in school (Besch, 1983), via the media (cf. Stuart-Smith et al, 2013) and generally as a result of higher speaker mobility (cf. Clopper and Pisoni, 2006).…”

Sound change in the individual: Effects of exposure on cross-dialect speech processing

“…This competition between the local and standard varieties may reflect recency effects, particularly in my work, which is conducted in a General American dialect region, or more general expectations about the kinds of speech one is likely to encounter in a university laboratory setting. In addition, although recent research by Stuart-Smith (2011;Stuart-Smith et al 2013) suggests that media exposure can substantially impact language use, the effects of education and the media on exposure to the standard language variety are confounded for the studies discussed in this section because they were all conducted in a university setting with university student participants.…”

FromTVPersonality to Fans and Beyond: Indexical Bleaching and the Diffusion of a Media Innovation

“…The influence of the mass media on language and language change has recently received focused attention within sociolinguistics (see, e.g., Stuart‐Smith et al. ; Sayers forthcoming; Androutsopoulos forthcoming). Mass media can be mechanisms for the spread of both new, media‐generated innovations (Spitulnik ) and existing, incipient changes‐in‐progress (Stuart‐Smith et al.…”