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.

标准和白话长期以来一直是英国社会地位和社会流动性的基石之一。伦敦一直以来都是英国英语高音和低音的发源地，在新的移民潮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。最近推出了这些新的伦敦品种的第二代演讲者，这是应对理论和现实挑战的独特机会。这些问题大致分为三个方面：(I)大规模变化，(Ii)个人认知，以及(Iii)知觉和偏见。由于新的伦敦语言变体最近，到目前为止还不可能进行大规模的实时分析(不像美国、新西兰和澳大利亚的多代方言工作)。随着时间的推移，白话特征有时会传播并成为新的标准，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。前两代新的伦敦方言形式的出现是考察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，不同年龄段在语言变化中的作用，以及评估复杂社会环境中相互竞争的变化模式。在较小的范围内，个体方言认知是一个较新的、较少被理解的领域。我们跨年龄组的实时数据提供了新的潜力来解决这一“变异主义社会语言学的研究空白”(Schreier 2021)。我们对个体认知的研究可以解决的悬而未决的理论问题包括，人们对方言特征有多大的控制力，是什么决定了这种控制力，以及个人如何在一生中发展他们的言语能力，这是社会流动性的一个关键因素。我们特别关注一个研究不足的问题，即儿童是否在很小的时候就学会了言语形式的环境社交意义。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的看法进行(不变的)调查，这将对公平获得机会和生活结果产生影响。研究计划为了记录沿着这些平行轨迹的实时变化--既有代际的，也有寿命的--我们追求三种不同的语言数据类型(自然主义、感性和实验性)，涵盖所有可用的主要年龄段。自然主义数据将来自三种采样格式，前两种是实时的：面板数据(15年前记录的重新采样发言者)、趋势数据(记录同一年龄段的新样本)和表观时间数据(目前不同的年龄段)。自然主义数据还将包括跨情景录音，重点放在个人曲目的开发上。收集到的数据将被用来记录不断变化的社会对重音形式的看法，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)。这三种类型的数据将并行收集，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。我们的顾问团包括来自主要教育和文化利益相关者团体的代表：小学、SENCO、中学和大英图书馆。研究结果将通过会议、研讨会和文章向学术同行传播；通过教师研讨会、在线无意识偏见建议和不断变化的伦敦英语节向利益攸关方传播；通过该项目和伦敦英语语料库网站向普通公众传播。