Derek, Iris and Gaye, have all agreed to partake in this investigation.
I am going to look at the lexis and phonology of the two accents, where I will try to identify the differences between them. I hope to find out if there are any specific lexical terms that appear only in one accent and not the other. The pronunciation of words in each accent is also going to be very important to identify which Derek’s accent resembles the most.
There are different ways I could investigate how Derek’s language has changed over the years. One way would be to record Derek, Gaye and Iris, in casual conversation using a voice recorder. They don’t all have to be partaking in the same conversation, but if they were it would make transcribing the data easier, and may bring up similar words that I will then be able to compare. There are two ways they could be recorded, overtly and covertly. If I did it overtly then they would know the recording was taking place, and may speak differently as a result. If they acted differently then it is possible their accents would change as well, and this may mean drawing any conclusions from the data would be difficult. A better way of recording casual conversation is by setting up the recording in secret, and telling the subjects after it has taken place. In this case it would be less likely that their speech will change as a result of the recording.
Another way of getting data would be to do an interview with all three people, and ask them a series of questions. I could ask them questions about the games they used to play as a child, and what they did in the school playground. I think it could also be quite interesting to see how playground games differed regionally, and how they have changed over time. It will also hopefully make the participants display their natural accent, because when they think about their childhood they tend to forget the fact they are being recorded. Lexical differences may also emerge through this common topic of childhood games.
I am going to record the three participants in casual conversation and also use questioning techniques to gather data. I will covertly record all three participants in casual conversation using a Mini Disc recorder with a microphone input. I will also ask them some questions about their childhood in a separate recording, these will be:
1). What games did you play as a child either with your friends or family?
2). Did you play any different games at school, for example tig, or hide-and-seek?
These questions should allow the participants to speak freely about their childhood and do it in a natural manor. The benefit of this recording being overt is that I am able to control the conversation more than if it were covert. Overt recordings usually result in the participants behaviour being affected, and as a result their speech. However, the subject of ‘childhood games’ often makes people forget about the recording taking place, and the results can be quite good.
Once I have collected the data, I will set about trying to identify trends in the speech of Iris and Gaye. I will make a note of the words that sound different in each accent, and use combinations of letters to show how it was pronounced in the London or Yorkshire accent. I am not going to use a phonetic alphabet to identify the phonological differences, mainly because I would have to transcribe all the recordings in a phonetic form. Transcribing takes a long time, and to do it in a phonetic form would just take too long. So instead I will use letter combinations, to show the different the sounds used.
When the recordings have been analysed and all the words identified, I will make up a short story with the words laced into it. This means I will have a recording of Derek saying the words I have identified as being different. This will allow me to compare the two recordings and determine which pronunciation he uses.
I shall also be looking at the lexis each speaker uses in the recordings. If Gaye and Iris use a different word to describe the same thing then I will make a note of it. I will then ask Derek which word he would feel most comfortable using.
Description of the Data
1st Transcript
In the 1st Transcript, there were three people taking part in the conversation. Derek is a 47 year old male who has lived in Essex for 18 years. When he left school at 18 he moved up to Yorkshire, and studied at Bradford University. He has now lived in Yorkshire for nearly 30 years with his wife Gaye.
Gaye is also 47 and has lived in Yorkshire all her life. She was born in York and moved to the Bradford area when she was 18, again to go to Bradford University. Gaye and Derek have lived in Bingley, West Yorkshire, for nearly 30 years now.
Iris is a female in her late 70’s, and has lived in Hornchurch, Essex all her life. She is Mother to Derek, and Mother-in-law to Gaye.
The recording took place in a car on the way to Essex on the 2nd October 2004. Gaye and Iris were sitting on the front two seats, with Gaye driving, Derek and I were sitting on the back seats. The conversation recorded was casual, Gaye and Iris did not know the recording took place until afterwards. Derek knew the recording was taking place as he could see the recording equipment I had.
I used a Mini Disc player/recorder, to record the conversation on to a Mini Disc. I plugged a Microphone into the input socket on the Mini Disc player, enabling me to record what was going on.
2nd Transcript
At the start of the 2nd transcript there were two participants, but later a third person enters the conversation. They were Derek, Gaye and me. Derek and Gaye both appeared in the 1st transcript, and I was prompting them to speak. I did this by asking them various questions about the games they played as a child, in the play ground and at school. The recording took place in my kitchen on the 25th of November 2004. Derek and Gaye knew I would be recording some of the things they were saying, but not necessarily all of it.
Story 1
This is a recording of Derek reading out the story I had written using all the key words. He knew he was being recorded, as I asked him to read the story out into the microphone.
Analysis
I have studied the recordings shown in the 1st Transcript, and I have been able to make three main distinctions between the Standard English pronunciation and the London pronunciation. The differences are, an ai sound instead of an ay sound in for example the word day; an oi sound instead of y or i sounds in words like buy right and like; and a short a sound in words like shut and under. These were the most prominent pronunciation differences in the transcript, and I hope they will be the most obvious to spot in Derek’s speech. The London pronunciations are listed in table1 of the appendix.
The next stage of analysis will be to create a short story with some specific words laced into it. These are words that Iris has used, and I know she pronounced differently. These ‘key’ words will allow me to compared the way Iris pronounces them and the way Derek does. From the recording of Derek, I should be able to determine whether he still has some aspects of the London accent in his speech.
This is the story that I wrote using the key words. The sounds I’m concentrating on are highlighted, however the copy Derek read from did not have any highlighted words.
The little boy and his cat.
One day the little boy decided to buy a cat. He then shut it in a small room upstairs because he hates cats, he likes dogs a lot more. When the little boy was nineteen he decided to let the cat out of the little room upstairs because he thought it was entitled to some love and affection. He didn’t understand this when he was a little boy, but now he was all grown up he realised his mistake. The cat made him pay for keeping him in the little room upstairs all that time. The end.
This table shows the key words used in the story, and how the London pronunciation differs from the standard. The third column, Derek’s usage, indicates whether or not the London sound was used.
This table shows two things, firstly Derek pronounces almost all these key sounds in a London accent as I predicted. However, you can see he does not pronounce ‘up’ or ‘shut’ with an ‘a’, as the London speaker did. Instead he uses more of a Yorkshire pronunciation, with a defined ‘u’ sound.
Now I have analysed the aspects of Derek’s speech that appear to have a London origin, I will see what features have a Yorkshire origin. Firstly, one of the lexical differences I have come across between Iris and Gaye, is that Gaye uses the word ‘quid’ instead of ‘pound’. Iris uses the word pound, however she pronounces it ‘parnd’. After discovering this lexical difference, I asked Derek which word he most commonly uses. He said that he doesn’t tend to use the word ‘quid’, and prefers to use ‘pounds’. This means he hasn’t accommodated the lexical difference, and would still use the London term. There weren’t a great deal of lexical differences in the recordings I have, but I believe if I had more data to work with there would be a considerable number of differences.
This table demonstrates the phonological differences in the Yorkshire accent:
The two most obvious differences are the strong ‘u’ sound in words like ‘lovely’, and an ‘i’ sound instead of a ‘y’ in words like ‘forty’ and ‘only’.
The strong ‘u’ sound appears to be a characteristic of the Yorkshire accent that Derek has picked up. In the London accent, a normal ‘u’ sound is pronounced as an ‘a’, for example ‘ap’ instead of ‘up’. In this case Derek uses the Yorkshire variant rather than the London, and shows that his accent is actually a composite of both London and Yorkshire accents.
Another noticeable characteristic of the Yorkshire speaker was the dropping of an ‘h’ sound at the start of a word. I have found specific research that backs up this finding:
Petyt - carried out research in Bradford examining the dropping of an ‘h’ sound at the beginning of words. Found that people who dropped some ‘h’ sounds tended to be lower down the social hierarchy. 93% of working class speakers dropped ‘h’ sounds and the further up the social hierarchy you went, the less ‘h’ sounds were dropped.
There is evidence in my recordings to show that Derek drops some of the ‘h’ sounds at the start of words like ‘house’. However, Gaye does not drop every ‘h’ it is only some of them, so to assume Derek should drop them all is not fair. I think there is sufficient evidence to prove that Derek has picked up this aspect of the Yorkshire accent.
Sentence analysis – I think it is worthwhile mentioning the different ways that Derek and Gaye prefer to describe events. When talking about what they used to play at school, the speakers use two different methods of explanation. Derek is more descriptive in his speech, explaining the rules and regulations of the games. Gaye on the other hand talks about why she played those games, and what effect they had on her. Gaye is more personal in her speech, she talks more about her life and explains about her schooling. Research has shown that women talk more about personal experience than men do, and I think you can see this from my transcripts.
Conclusion
I think there is sufficient evidence to suggest my hypothesis is supported and in fact Derek Barber’s lexis and phonology were more like his mother than his wife. However, there is evidence to suggest that Derek’s accent displays features of both London and Yorkshire accents. He uses two out of the three distinct London pronunciations I identified, these being an ai sound instead of an ay sound and an oi sound instead of y or i sounds. The other feature of London accents, the changing of u sounds to a sounds has been lost by Derek. He appears to have picked up the Yorkshire way of saying it, with a more pronounced u sound.
In terms of Lexis, the restricted data I was able to collect did not show many differences in the actual lexis used by the speakers. One example I did come across is that Gaye uses the word ‘quid’, even when Iris has just said the word ‘pound’. Derek also uses the word pound, and not the word quid which appears to be a Yorkshire term. I’m sure there are some words that Derek has picked up since he’s been in Yorkshire, but the data I collected was unable to show much evidence of that.
So I have managed to prove my hypothesis, however it would be more conclusive with additional data and further research, which I will talk about in the evaluation section.
Evaluation
The data I was able to collect and transcribe in the time allowed for this investigation, was fairly brief. When investigating language, it is important to collect not only a large amount of data, but on several different occasions. This is because there are many factors that can affect people’s language. For example, I collected data from both Iris and Derek when they were in conversation together. As Iris is Derek’s mother I think his accents may change slightly when talking to her. I have in fact noticed he speaks more southern after a phone call to his mother, and I think this may have influenced the data I collected. However, I did sample Derek’s speech on another occasion when Iris was not present, and did still show signs of a London accent. However the London aspects of Derek’s speech weren’t as easy to spot when listening to the 2nd Recording. I think the accent wasn’t as strong as in 1st Recording, because in the first Derek’s accent was influenced by the presence or Iris.
If I had more time to do the investigation I would most definitely collect more data, to make drawing any conclusions more persuasive. I would also compare Derek’s accent with more people, from varying back grounds. It is important to sample people from different social backgrounds, as research by individuals such as Petyt (above) show that accent can be more pronounced in people lower down the social hierarchy.
I found it very difficult to identify features of the Yorkshire accent in Gaye’s speech. There could be two reasons for this, firstly that she has quite a good middle class background, meaning her accent may not be as characteristically ‘Yorkshire’ as, say, someone who has lived in the centre of Bradford all their lives. Secondly the very fact that she is female makes a big difference. This is because the main difference between male and female speech is that women use more standard speech forms than men. So basing my research on how two ‘women’ differ from standard English may be unreliable. However differences were found, but they may have been more conclusive if men were used instead of women as they will show more deviations from Standard English. Gaye and Iris were used as controls mainly because they were available, and willing to partake in my research. It would be much harder to covertly record strangers, as there are ethical issues to consider.
