Linguistic variation and national identities on the Scottish/English border
Lead Research Organisation:
University of York
Department Name: Language and Linguistic Science
Abstract
Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.
Publications
Docherty, G.J.
(2011)
Variation in voice onset time along the Scottish-English border
Llamas C
(2009)
Linguistic Accommodation and the Salience of National Identity Markers in a Border Town
in Journal of Language and Social Psychology
Llamas C
(2014)
Scottish, English, British?: Innovations in Attitude Measurement
in Language and Linguistics Compass
Llamas C.
(2019)
Outstanding sounds
in English & Media Centre emagazine
Llamas, C.
(2010)
Language and Identities
Watt D
(2014)
Sociolinguistics in Scotland
Watt D
(2010)
Levels of Linguistic Accommodation across a National Border
in Journal of English Linguistics
Watt, D.
(2014)
Language, Borders and Identity
| Title | AISEB exhibition |
| Description | Exhibition at Ron Cooke Hub, Heslington East campus, University of York, November 2012. Two parts: (1) photographic exhibition (portraits of selected interviewees, scenes of the four fieldwork sites) by Paul Watt, professional photographer (www.paulwatt.com); (2) audio-visual presentation using 3Sixty immersive multimedia exhibition space, Ron Cooke Hub (audio clips, written quotes, photographs of fieldwork sites, data charts, diagrams, animations, etc.). |
| Type Of Art | Artistic/Creative Exhibition |
| Year Produced | 2012 |
| Impact | Invitation from curator of Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery, Carlisle, to contribute audiovisual materials on dialect and accent issues to a future exhibition on identity on the Scottish/English border (no date yet set). Press interest: ITV request for TV interview; requests for interviews from a variety of UK radio stations, including BBC Radio Carlisle; articles in York Press, Newcastle Chronicle. |
| URL | http://www.york.ac.uk/news-and-events/features/accents-and-identities/ |
| Description | The AISEB project made significant theoretical and methodological contributions to the field of variationist sociophonetics (the study of pronunciation differences in their social contexts). Through our dissemination activities and published outputs (particularly the two volumes Watt and Llamas edited) we also influenced how research is done in language and identity studies, and linguistic border studies. We found correlations between linguistic behaviour and social/political attitudes, which in the context of devolution to Scotland and later the prospect of a subsequent independence referendum, were of major concern to inhabitants of the Scottish/English border region. We also gathered results from listening tests carried out on a subset of the AISEB interviewees with a view to finding out more about listeners' sensitivity to various local pronunciations of vowels and consonants, and how listeners attributed these speech forms to Scottish and English speakers. |
| Exploitation Route | The AISEB corpus of recordings, and the statistical and qualitative data deriving from it, has been or could be put to use in the following areas: speech technology (speech and speaker recognition; accent classification); forensic phonetics; clinical linguistics and phonetics; academic linguists and social psychologists; school-level teaching; museum and exhibition curation. |
| Sectors | Aerospace, Defence and Marine,Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Education,Government, Democracy and Justice,Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections |
| URL | http://www.york.ac.uk/language/research/projects/aiseb/ |
| Description | The main users of the AISEB findings have thus far been other academic linguists, but the corpus of recordings has also started to be used for speech technology applications, in particular an automatic accent classifier system developed by Georgina Brown, one of Watt's current PhD students. |
| First Year Of Impact | 2012 |
| Sector | Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Education,Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections |
| Impact Types | Cultural,Policy & public services |
| Description | British Academy/Leverhulme Trust Small Research Grants Scheme |
| Amount | £9,996 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | SG122751 |
| Organisation | The British Academy |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 07/2013 |
| End | 12/2014 |
| Title | AISEB corpus |
| Description | Corpus of audio recordings of interviews from AISEB project (~200 people interviewed in Gretna, Carlisle, Eyemouth and Berwick, 2008-2011). |
| Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
| Year Produced | 2012 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| Impact | Development of Y-ACCDIST automatic accent classifier system by Georgina Brown, PhD candidate, University of York. |
| URL | http://www.york.ac.uk/language/research/projects/aiseb/ |
| Description | Tyler Kendall/Anne Fabricius collaboration |
| Organisation | Roskilde University |
| Country | Denmark |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Joint research and output publications |
| Collaborator Contribution | Joint research and output publications |
| Impact | Watt, D., Llamas, C., Docherty, G.J., Fabricius, A.H. & Kendall, T. (2012). Interaction of merging vowels and derhotacisation in Borders English. Conference of the British Association of Academic Phoneticians (BAAP), Leeds, March 2012. |
| Start Year | 2011 |
| Description | Tyler Kendall/Anne Fabricius collaboration |
| Organisation | University of Oregon |
| Country | United States |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Joint research and output publications |
| Collaborator Contribution | Joint research and output publications |
| Impact | Watt, D., Llamas, C., Docherty, G.J., Fabricius, A.H. & Kendall, T. (2012). Interaction of merging vowels and derhotacisation in Borders English. Conference of the British Association of Academic Phoneticians (BAAP), Leeds, March 2012. |
| Start Year | 2011 |
| Description | Article in English & Media Centre emagazine, issue 86 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | 'Outstanding sounds' article in English & Media Centre emagazine, issue 86, 2019, by Carmen Llamas and Dominic Watt. The article discusses the methods and results of experiments run as part of the AISEB project which made use of an adapted version of the 'Implicit Association Test' to gauge the automaticity of association between selected pronunciations of key phonological variables in the Scottish/English border region and the assumed identity of the talker as either Scottish or English, or neither of the two. It was written for a non-specialist audience. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | https://www.englishandmedia.co.uk/e-magazine/ |
| Description | Berwick Civic Society talk |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Talk sparked questions and discussion afterwards; follow-up emails. None |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2010 |
| Description | Berwick Probus Club talk |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | talk sparked questions and discussion afterwards; follow-up emails. None |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2010 |
| Description | CPD workshop for A-Level English Language teachers |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | 'Measuring attitudes: the Social Category Association Test'. Presentation at CPD workshop for A-Level English language teachers, 5th July 2019, University of York. The talk was intended to introduce A-Level English Language teachers from across the UK to new quantitative methods for investigating links between pronunciation features and social identities, using their implementation on the AISEB project as illustration. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | https://www.york.ac.uk/language/news/events/events2019/continuingprofessionaldevelopmentworkshopfore... |
| Description | Carlisle and District University of the Third Age |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Other academic audiences (collaborators, peers etc.) |
| Results and Impact | talk sparked questions and discussion afterwards; follow-up emails. None |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2010 |
| Description | English & Media Centre emagazine English Language conference talk, February 2020 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | Invited talk 'Outstanding sounds' by Carmen Llamas at English & Media Centre emagazine English Language conference, London, 27th February 2020. The audience was composed of approximately 900 English Language teachers from across the UK. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| Description | Newcroft Social Group talk |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | talk sparked questions and discussion afterwards None |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2010 |
| Description | Plenary talk at Sheffield Postgraduate Conference in Linguistics |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | 'Proximity and Distance: variation and change in bordering localities' (invited plenary talk by Carmen Llamas, Postgraduate Conference in Linguistics, 19th June 2019), attended by postgraduate students from the University of Sheffield, Sheffield Hallam University, and other universities across the region. The talk inspired discussion about the specific topic of focus but also about issues relating to language and identity in borderland contexts more generally. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Roland Bibby Memorial Lecture, Morpeth |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | talk sparked questions and discussion afterwards; follow-up emails. Invited to give another lecture in this series at a future date; letter of support from Secretary of Northumberland Language Society identified as non-academic end user for data from ESRC large research grant application (September 2014). Approached by Christopher Hudson, Science Development Technical Co-ordinator, to run a hands-on demonstration of computer-based acoustic analysis of speech at Centre for Life, Newcastle upon Tyne (date not yet arranged). |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2010 |
| Description | Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery talk, #1 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | talk sparked questions and discussion afterwards; follow-up emails Visit by representative of Tullie House Museum to project exhibition at University of York in November 2012; invitation to put on exhibition about identity on the Scottish/English border at Tullie House in future (date not specified). |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2010 |
| Description | Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery talk, #2 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | talk sparked questions and discussion afterwards; follow-up emails Visit from representative of Tullie House Museum to project exhibition at University of York in November 2012; invitation to contribute to exhibition on identity on the Scottish/English border at Tullie House in future (date not specified) |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2010 |