Obsolesence vs. stability in a Shetland dialect: evidence from three generations of speakers
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Glasgow
Department Name: School of Critical Studies
Abstract
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Organisations
People |
ORCID iD |
| Jennifer Smith (Principal Investigator) |
Publications
DURHAM* M
(2013)
Was/were alternation in Shetland English
in World Englishes
Smith J
(2011)
A tipping point in dialect obsolescence? Change across the generations in Lerwick, Shetland 1
in Journal of Sociolinguistics
Smith J
(2012)
Bidialectalism or Dialect Death? Explaining Generational Change in the Shetland Islands, Scotland
in American Speech
| Description | Significant new knowledge: in recent years, a number of claims have been made that the highly distinctive dialect spoken in Lerwick, Shetland, is disappearing, being replaced by a more standard variety in the younger generations of speakers. However, these claims were largely based on observation, rather than rigorous research. Our research addressed that gap by providing an empirical quantitative investigation of language use across three generations of speakers in this community. We found that in the youngest generation, half of the speakers continued to use the dialect extensively, whereas the other half used very few dialect forms in their speech. These results suggests that the Lerwick dialect may indeed indicate the first signs of rapid obsolescence of the local dialect in favour of more standard norms. We also conduced a follow up study to test the claim that our results did not show obsolescence per se, but were merely the reflection of 'bidialectalism' in this community, where speakers have access to both standard and dialect in their linguistic repertoire. In the case of the younger speakers, some of them chose to use their 'standard voice' in the original recordings, and others their 'dialect voice', hence the split in use. To test this possibility, we returned to the community and recorded the younger speakers 1) with a community 'insider' and 2) with a community outsider. These new results confirmed our original findings: half of the younger speakers only spoke in standard, regardless of whether they were talking to an insider or outsider. New research questions: These findings provide concrete evidence for dialect shift in a hitherto distinct variety of Scots and in the changing linguistic landscape of the UK more generally. However, it also raises the question of how such a shift occurs. Does it take place in the preschool years through the lack of dialect use by caregivers in the home? Or does formal schooling play a part in dialect loss? And what of the increasing globalisation of English through e.g. internet access? These results provide a wealth of questions for future linguistic research. New research resource: we created a large-scale fully searchable database of vernacular Lerwick speech (approx. 300,000 words). This provides a high quality archival record of a dialect which may disappear in the coming years. It also provides a resource for linguistic research in other areas beyond sociolinguistics: the text to sound aligned corpus can be used across a variety of platforms, and can yield detailed spectrographic, syntactic and semantic analyses. |
| Exploitation Route | Non-academic: one of the aims of the Curriculum for Excellence in Scotland is to develop the study of the Scots language. However, the resources available for such study are sparse, and largely confined to historical data. The text to sound aligned corpus arising from the research can be made available to educationalists to use in the preparation of materials for contemporary dialect study in the classroom. Academic: to date, the corpus has been subject to a number of linguistic analyses, used by sociolinguistics, phoneticians and syntacticians. Beyond linguistics, the corpus provides an invaluable resource for folk historians in investigating the numerous narratives of past lives in Shetland. |
| Sectors | Education,Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections |
| Description | We returned to Lerwick in Shetland to present our findings to an audience of over 300 community members, including teachers and local journalists. This led to a headline article in The Shetland Times and a radio appearance to discuss our results further. |
| Sector | Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections |
| Impact Types | Cultural |
| Description | The British Academy Small Grants Award |
| Amount | £6,930 (GBP) |
| Organisation | The British Academy |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 09/2009 |
| End | 12/2010 |
| Title | Shetland generational corpus |
| Description | A 300,000 word text to sound aligned corpus of vernacular speech from three generations of speakers in Lerwick, Shetland. |
| Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
| Provided To Others? | No |
| Impact | The quantitative analysis of the recorded speech from this database was used in a follow up qualitative study by the RA on the project, Mercedes Durham, a questionnaire based study of dialect attitudes of high school children in Shetland. |
| Title | The Shetland bidialectal corpus |
| Description | A 70,000 word speech to sound aligned corpus of spoken data. This complements the Shetland generational corpus by providing recordings of speakers 1) in conversation with a community insider and 2) in conversation with a community outsider in order to test the details of bidialectalism beyond local norms. |
| Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
| Provided To Others? | No |
| Impact | This supplementary database has allowed us to establish the linguistic details of the bidialectal speaker: namely, in the move from local to standard varieties, rates of dialect use decrease, but the constraints on use remain the same. |
| Description | "Da Shetland Times". Th- stopping across three generations of speakers in Lerwick, Shetland. UKLVC 7, University of Newcastle |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Scientific meeting (conference/symposium etc.) |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Type Of Presentation | paper presentation |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Participants in your research and patient groups |
| Results and Impact | Talk sparked questions Impacts: interest from PhD student in pursuing similar research. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2009 |
| Description | "Supralocal and Subregional features in Language Change". Thirteenth International Conference on Methods in Dialectology. University of Leeds |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Scientific meeting (conference/symposium etc.) |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Type Of Presentation | paper presentation |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Participants in your research and patient groups |
| Results and Impact | Talked sparked questions on local vs supra local in language change. Interest in using data from other researchers. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2008 |
| Description | "The complexities of obsolescence: dialect use in present-day Lerwick, Shetland". International Conference on Historical Language and Literacy in the North Sea Area. University of Stavanger, Norway. |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Scientific meeting (conference/symposium etc.) |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Type Of Presentation | paper presentation |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Participants in your research and patient groups |
| Results and Impact | Lengthy discussion of dialect obsolescence. As above. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2009 |
| Description | "The dialect doesna seem to be very cool": Language Attitudes in young Shetland speakers. Sociolinguistics Symposium 17. Vrije Universiteit |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Scientific meeting (conference/symposium etc.) |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Type Of Presentation | paper presentation |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Participants in your research and patient groups |
| Results and Impact | Sparked discussion. Lead to invite to workshop in Germany on the bidialectal speaker. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2008 |
| Description | New Shetlander article |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | This was a short article in the local magazine, New Shetlander, which has a good distribution both on Shetland and beyond. We were contacted by several members of the public after the article appeared in print, asking for clarification of certain points. We were contacted by several members of the public after the article appeared in print, asking for clarification of certain points. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2009 |
| URL | http://www.shetland-communities.org.uk/subsites/vas/the-new-shetlander.htm |
| Description | Shetland Times headline |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Newspaper article sparked debate on loss of dialect. Contacted by locals on Shetland for further information on what might be done. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2009 |
| Description | Shetland dialect presentation |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | This was a talk to a large audience of local community members in Lerwick, Shetland, in order to disseminate our results at the grass roots level. Article in local press. Invited to speak on local radio. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2009 |