Drummond, RJ

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Introduction and AimsThe UrBEn-ID project is a two-year ethnographic sociolinguistic study funded by the LeverhulmeTrust running from July 2014-July 2016. The project explores the ways in which young people (YP) in an urban environment use language (including features of what might be called Multicultural Urban British English) to enact identities in their day to day lives.  Having only recently finished collecting the data, this poster offers some preliminary thoughts.Challenges• Don’t know what to expect day to day.• Erratic attendance• Exclusions (common for individuals to be excluded temporarily)• Mood swings (and the freedom to have them)• Unclear role of researchers in the context• Playing by their (YP) rules, which are very different (humour, politeness, education)• We don’t want to annoy anyone (might jeopardise the project)• Explaining the project in an             accessible, meaningful, and non-patronizing way for YP and staff.• Combining different approaches to data collection, data analysis, identity, ethnicity, and even linguistics.AcknowledgmentsWe owe enormous thanks to the students, staff, and                          teachers at the two PRU learning centres. Obviously the                            project could not have been done without their support                and good humour.The project is funded by a Leverhulme Trust project grant RPG-2014-059MethodsData collectionLinguistic ethnography. Two researchers visited each centre 1-2 times per week over the 2014/15 academic year, observing and taking part in whatever came up. Speech data has come from: spontaneous interactions in and out of class; interviews/conversations between individuals or small groups of young people and one researcher; peer or self-recording by the young people, often while outside smoking; word lists.Observational data was gathered via fieldnotes in the form of two shared researcher diaries.  Audio recording: 53+ hoursFieldnotes: 413,000+ wordsData analysisMethods from…• Variationist sociolinguistics                          (sociophonetic analysis)• Interactional sociolinguistics                                 (discourse analysis)Word-initial TH-stoppingRealisation of word initial /θ/ as [t] is strongly associated in the UK with West Indian   Englishes and Creoles (Wells 1982)                   and British Creole (Patrick 2008). Yet in the PRU context it does not                        appear to have the same association.                Boys from all ethnicities are regular               users, and there is no sign of ‘ownership’. Some examplesJamal, on laptop in class“Man’s held down the [t]ing, and pressed                              the [t]ing and moved the [t]ing, but it’s not                    working”Callum, in class“Where’s your other [t]ing?”Jake, in class“Have you saw that [t]ing where that guy asks the girls for his number?”Regular th-stoppers are not always aware. Jake and Abdou are discussing with Rob whether Abdou says [t]ree for /θ/ree (he does).Jake Yeah you do yo, you say [t]ree bro.Abdou No I don’t.Jake Yeah you doRob Why what’s wrong with saying [t]ree?Abdou I don’- I jus- cos it’s not [f]reeJake You always say [t]ree I don’t know what you’re on about.Abdou But it’s not but I don’t though.Jake You do.Rob But why is it wrong to say…Abdou It’s not wrong but obviously I don’t say it, cos it’s not [f]ree.Rob Drummond, Manchester Metropolitan UniversityPreliminary conclusionsThe fact that word initial th-stopping (especially in certain words) is used apparently entirely naturally by speakers of different ethnicities suggests this is not an ethnicity ting. In fact, despite their associations with non-white varieties of English and ‘non-Anglo’ speakers, we would argue that th-stopping and other MUBE features are not the primary agents of ethnicity work in this context. We suggest that ethnicity is being performed in other ways, through linguistic and social practices, and that for the boys at least, th-stopping might be indexing something altogether different.To be continued….Tales of the unpredictable: Researching TH-stopping in urban British EnglishContextThree research sites: two Pupil Referral Unit (PRU) centres and one mainstream school.The focus here is on the PRU centres – both cater for Yrs 10 and 11 (age 14-16) with    approximately 12 students at any one time (29 discussed here).  The centres follow a reduced curriculum with peripatetic subject teachers and permanent youth worker/coordinator staff.Participants. ‘Ethnicities’ are presented here due to their central role in existing studies into urban youth language. Preliminary findingsMulticultural Urban British English (MUBE)One initial aim of the project was to explore the extent to which features of Multicultural London English (MLE) (eg Cheshire et al 2011, Fox 2015) can be found in Manchester, thus raising the possibility of a multi-city urban youth variety of English in the UK (MUBE) (Drummond 2013).Taken as a group, the following                   comparisons can be made:While the general Northern BrEng features remain, some specifically MCR features are more variable:mmu.ac.uk/mcysurben-id.org robdrummond.co.uk/uklvc2015_drummond.pdfr.drummond@mmu.ac.uk@robdrummondUKLVC10. 1-3 Sept 2015, University of YorkWhite BritishWhite British/White IrishBlack British, Caribbean heritageWhite/Black British, Caribbean heritageWhite British/ PakistaniBlack British,  African heritageFeature MLE MancPRICE monophthongisation  FACE monophthongisation  MOUTH monophthongisation  GOAT monophthongisation  ?Extreme GOOSE fronting  Reduction in h-dropping  DH-stopping  TH-fronting  K-backing  ?‘this is me’ quotative  Simplified article allomorphy  ‘You get me?’ discourse marker  Pronoun ‘man’ – ‘Man’s listening’  Word initial TH-stopping  FeatureTradMancYouth MancLack of FOOT/STRUT split  Lack of TRAP/BATH split  LettER  HappY  Dark /l/  ?  = non th-stoppers th-stoppers–Cheshire, Jenny, Paul Kerswill, Sue Fox, and Eivind Torgersen. 2011. Contact, the feature pool and the speech community: The emergence of Multicultural London English. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 15(2), 151-196.Drummond, Rob. 2013. Adolescent identity construction through Multicultural (Manchester) English. UK Language Variation and Change conference 9 (UKLVC). 2nd-4th September, University of Sheffield.Fox, Susan. 2015. The new cockney. Palgrave Macmillan.Hickey, Ray. 2007. Irish English. Its History and Present-day Forms. Cambridge University Press.Patrick, Peter. 2008. British Creole: Phonology. In A Handbook of Varieties of English. Vol. 1: Phonology, ed. Kortmann, Schneider, Upton, Mesthrie & Burridge. (Topics in English Linguistics, ed. Bernd Kortmann & Elizabeth Closs Traugott.) Berlin, New York: Mouton de GruyterWatson, Kevin. 2007. Liverpool English. Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 37(03), 351-360.Wells, John. 1982. Accents of English 3: Beyond the British Isles. Cambridge University Press.

Tales of the unpredictable: researching TH-stopping in urban British English

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Tales of the unpredictable: researching TH-stopping in urban British English

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