The Role of Language in the Cultural-Led Regeneration of Coastal Towns

ESRC博士后奖学金的主要目的是向学术和非学术受众传播我完成的博士论文的研究结果。本文研究了英国最东部城镇洛韦斯特夫英语的元音合并和发音变化，这是一种东盎格鲁语。这项研究主要集中在东安格利亚对中世纪英语元音的音位区分的保留上，比如road- roww，这种音位区分在17世纪晚期的大多数其他英语变体中都消失了。根据对来自30个社会语言学访谈的生产和感知数据的分析，对合并的长期抵制归因于传入形式和接收元音系统之间的结构不协调，而最近突然开始的合并被认为是由于第一次世界大战以来Lowestoft渔业的衰落导致的重大人口变化和流动性的增加。具有挑战性的声音变化模型预测方言水平发生通过波或反分层扩散。本文还对现有的并购研究方法提出了质疑。我采用方法创新来识别和量化合并，引入了一种新的方法来区分时变数据的统计阈值，这在语言学领域之外有更广泛的应用。为了传播给学术观众，论文将发展成四篇论文发表。两篇文章将重点关注方言水平和东盎格鲁方言学的发现，而两篇文章将介绍论文中采用的方法论创新。我将继续发展我的研究技能，并通过学习编程语言Python和获得机器学习经验来进行核心计算训练。这将使我能够与计算领域的研究人员合作，因为我寻求超越我自己的研究领域，为未来的跨学科出版物而努力。我将通过扩大我的专业网络，参加为我提供国内和国际平台的会议来促进这一目标。部分研究奖学金时间将专门用于为我未来的学术职位做准备，因为我打算完善和提交一份早期开发的资助提案的改进版本，以提交ESRC新研究者资助计划，同时也在剑桥的部门进行教学，作为进一步发展我的教学技术的一种手段。为了吸引非学术界的观众，该奖学金将包括在Lowestoft社区举办一系列公共研讨会，旨在促进社区自我价值，解决口音刻板印象和语言态度，并让年轻一代了解他们的遗产和历史。这些研讨会将支持有关Lowestoft再生的当地政策议程，这些政策议程以文化为主导，在很大程度上依赖于开发其海洋遗产。这些事件将通过分析博士期间通过社会语言学访谈收集的定性数据来了解，这些数据目前尚未分析。该分析可以为政策制定者提供有关沿海社区恢复中人们所面临的社会经济挑战的具体数据，因为我打算编写一份关于阶级、教育、性别和年龄对语言态度和意识形态的影响的报告，这些报告可以用于Lowestoft背景下的经济、社会和移民结果。总的来说，奖学金提供了一个独特的机会，以确保我的工作达到学术和非学术受众，同时允许我接受额外的培训，发展我的研究技能和技术，这将最终为我在学术界的成功职业生涯做好准备。

The primary aim of the ESRC Postdoctoral fellowship is to disseminate the findings of my completed PhD dissertation to both academic and non-academic audiences. The dissertation investigates vowel mergers and sound change in Lowestoft English, an East Anglian variety spoken in the UK's easternmost town. The study focusses primarily on East Anglia's exceptional retention of a phonemic distinction between the Middle English vowels in pairs such as road-rowed, which collapsed in most other varieties of English in the late 17th century. Based on analyses of production and perception data from 30 sociolinguistic interviews, long-term resistance to the merger is attributed to structural incompatibility between the incoming form and the recipient vowel system, while the recent and abrupt onset of the merger is argued to follow significant demographic shifts and increased mobility, resulting from the decline of Lowestoft's fishing industry since World War I. Lowestoft is found to be innovative in its linguistic choices, challenging models of sound change that predict dialect levelling occurs via wave or counter-hierarchical diffusion. The dissertation also casts doubt on received methods for studying mergers. I employ methodological innovations for the identification and quantification of mergers, introducing a novel approach to the discrimination of statistical thresholds across time-varying data, which has broader application beyond the field of linguistics. For dissemination to academic audiences, the dissertation will be developed into four papers for publication. Two articles will focus on the findings regarding dialect levelling and East Anglian dialectology, while two will introduce the methodological innovations that were employed in the dissertation. I will continue to develop my research skills and undergo core computational training by learning the programming language Python and gaining experience in machine learning. This will allow me to collaborate with researchers in computational fields, as I seek to move beyond my own research area for future cross-disciplinary publications. I will facilitate this goal by expanding my professional network, attending conferences that provide both national and international platforms for me to disseminate research. Part of the research fellowship time will be dedicated to preparing me for future academic positions, as I intend to refine and submit an improved version of an earlier developed funding proposal to the ESRC New Investigator Grant scheme, while also undertaking teaching in the department at Cambridge, as a means of further developing my pedagogical techniques.To reach non-academic audiences, the fellowship will include a series of public workshops in the Lowestoft community, designed to promote community self-worth, address accent stereotyping and language attitudes, and engage younger generations with their heritage and history. These workshops will support local policy agendas concerning the regeneration of Lowestoft, which are culture-led and largely dependent on exploiting its maritime heritage. These events will be informed by analysis of the qualitative data gathered through sociolinguistic interviews during the PhD, which remain unanalysed at present. The analysis can provide policymakers with concrete data on the socio-economic challenges faced by people in recovering coastal communities, as I intend to produce a report on the impact of class, education, gender and age on language attitudes and ideology, which can be used in relation to economic, social, and migration outcomes within the context of Lowestoft. Overall, the fellowship provides a unique opportunity to ensure my work reaches both academic and non-academic audiences, while allowing me to undertake additional training that develops my research skills and techniques, which will, ultimately, prepare me for a successful career in academia.