Generations of London English: Language and Social Change in Real Time

几代伦敦英语：实时语言和社会变化

• 批准号: ES/W013118/1
• 负责人: Devyani Sharma
• 金额: $ 102.88万
• 依托单位: Queen Mary University of London
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2023 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=ES%2FW013118%2F1
• 关键词: Generations; London; English; Language; Social

RATIONALEStandard and vernacular speech have long been among the cornerstones of social status and social mobility in the UK. London has always been a source of both 'high' and 'low' register British English speech forms, and the last 25 years have been a particularly dramatic period of change, spurred by new waves of migration and social contact. The recent availability of a second generation of speakers of these new London varieties represents a unique opportunity to address both theoretical and real-world challenges. These fall into three broad areas: (i) large-scale change, (ii) individual cognition, and (iii) perception and bias. Due to the recency of new London speech varieties, it has so far been impossible to conduct large-scale, real-time analysis (unlike multi-generational dialectological work in the US, New Zealand, and Australia). Vernacular features sometimes spread and become the new standard over time, but in other cases remain socially restricted, with potential social stereotyping or marginalisation. The availability of the first two generations of new London dialect forms is a unique opportunity to examine these large-scale social and linguistic changes. Theoretical debates that the large-scale societal analysis can advance include formal linguistic models of phonetic, prosodic, and grammatical change, the role of different age groups in language change, and assessing competing models of change in complex social environments. At a smaller scale, individual dialect cognition is a newer and less well-understood area. Our real-time data across age groups offers new potential to address this "research lacuna in variationist sociolinguistics" (Schreier 2021). Unresolved theoretical questions that our study of individual cognition can address include how much control people have over dialect features, what determines that control, and how individuals develop their speech repertoire over their lifespan, a crucial factor in social mobility. We take a particular interest in the under-studied question of whether children pick up on ambient social meanings of speech forms at a very young age. And finally, our longitudinal perspective allows a deeper investigation of not just language use but (un)changing perceptions of those speakers, with implications for fair access and life outcomes. RESEARCH PLANIn order to document real-time change along these parallel tracks - both generational and lifespan - we pursue three distinct linguistic data types (naturalistic, perceptual, and experimental) across all the main age groups available. Naturalistic data will derive from three sampling formats, the first two of which are real-time: panel data (resampling speakers recorded 15 years ago), trend data (recording a new sample of the same age group), and apparent time data (different age groups at the present time). Naturalistic data will also include cross-situational recordings for the focus on individual repertoire development. Elicited data will be gathered to document changing social perceptions of accent forms as well as changing grammaticality judgements. Finally, experimental data will be gathered using novel designs to study control and recall (e.g. whether accent stereotypes lead to selective recall about a person) in adults, adolescents, and children. These three data types will be gathered in parallel, drawing on the complementary expertise of the research team in working with sociolinguistic interviews, child language experiments, and corpus construction. Our advisory panel includes representatives from key educational and cultural stakeholder groups: primary schools, SENCOs, secondary schools, and the British Library. Findings will be disseminated to academic colleagues via conferences, seminars and articles; to stakeholders through teacher workshops, online unconscious bias recommendations, and a Changing London English festival; and to the general public via the project and London English Corpus website.

基本原理标准和白话语言长期以来一直是英国社会地位和社会流动性的基石。伦敦一直是“高”和“低”语域英式英语语音形式的发源地，在新一波移民和社会接触的推动下，过去 25 年是一个特别戏剧性的变化时期。最近出现的这些伦敦新品种的第二代演讲者代表了解决理论和现实世界挑战的独特机会。这些分为三大领域：（i）大规模变化，（ii）个人认知，以及（iii）感知和偏见。由于新的伦敦语音变体的出现较晚，迄今为止还无法进行大规模的实时分析（与美国、新西兰和澳大利亚的多代方言学工作不同）。随着时间的推移，乡土特征有时会传播并成为新标准，但在其他情况下仍然受到社会限制，存在潜在的社会刻板印象或边缘化。前两代新伦敦方言形式的出现是研究这些大规模社会和语言变化的独特机会。大规模社会分析可以推进的理论辩论包括语音、韵律和语法变化的正式语言模型，不同年龄组在语言变化中的作用，以及评估复杂社会环境中变化的竞争模型。在较小的范围内，个体方言认知是一个较新且不太了解的领域。我们跨年龄组的实时数据为解决这一“变异社会语言学的研究缺陷”提供了新的潜力（Schreier 2021）。我们对个人认知的研究可以解决的未解决的理论问题包括人们对方言特征有多少控制力、决定这种控制力的因素以及个人如何在其一生中发展自己的言语技能，这是社会流动性的关键因素。我们对一个尚未充分研究的问题特别感兴趣，即儿童是否在很小的时候就了解了言语形式的环境社会意义。最后，我们的纵向视角不仅可以对语言使用进行更深入的调查，还可以对这些说话者（不变）改变的看法进行更深入的调查，这对公平机会和生活结果具有影响。研究计划为了记录沿着这些平行轨道（代际和寿命）的实时变化，我们在所有主要年龄组中追求三种不同的语言数据类型（自然主义、感知和实验）。自然数据将源自三种采样格式，其中前两种是实时的：面板数据（对 15 年前记录的说话人进行重采样）、趋势数据（记录同一年龄组的新样本）和表观时间数据（不同年龄组的说话人）。目前的年龄组）。自然数据还将包括跨情境录音，以重点关注个人技能的发展。将收集收集到的数据，以记录不断变化的社会对口音形式的看法以及不断变化的语法判断。最后，将使用新颖的设计收集实验数据，以研究成人、青少年和儿童的控制和回忆（例如，口音刻板印象是否会导致对一个人的选择性回忆）。这三种数据类型将同时收集，利用研究团队在社会语言学访谈、儿童语言实验和语料库建设方面的互补专业知识。我们的顾问小组包括来自主要教育和文化利益相关群体的代表：小学、SENCO、中学和大英图书馆。研究结果将通过会议、研讨会和文章传播给学术同事；通过教师研讨会、在线无意识偏见建议和改变伦敦英语节向利益相关者提供；并通过该项目和伦敦英语语料库网站向公众公开。