One speaker, two dialects: bidialectalism across the generations in a Scottish community

Socio-economic changes over the past 100 years in the British Isles are said to have led to 'dialect levelling', where local dialect forms are replaced by more standard or 'supra-local' forms. For example, in a Scottish dialect, forms such as 'hoose', 'ken' and 'aye' may be replaced by 'house', 'know' and 'yes' over time. One result of this process is gradual loss of traditional dialects spoken in rural areas, and eventual 'dialect death' across these hitherto distinctive varieties. While such dialect attrition is well documented, a largely neglected scenario in this changing dialect landscape is the increase in 'bidialectalism', where instead of dialect loss, the indigenous variety is maintained alongside a more standard variety in a community of speakers. This scenario is said to have increased so much that monolectal traditional dialect speakers are the exception in modern day life, especially amongst younger speakers. However, very few studies have directly addressed this parallel use of local and standard, thus a number of important questions on bidialectalism remain unanswered, including:

1) can all speakers use two varieties - local and supralocal - in their linguistic repertoire?
2) are younger speakers more bidialectal than older speakers?
3) does the bidialectal speaker demonstrate fluent switching between local and supralocal varieties or there mixing between the two?
4) are particular linguistic forms (e.g. lexical vs grammatical) 'easier' to switch than others?
5) what part does bidialectalism play in dialect levelling, dialect attrition and language change more generally?

In the proposed research, I will attempt to answer these questions through a sociolinguistic study of a small community of speakers in Buckie, north east Scotland, who are noted to employ both local dialect and more standardised variety in their repertoire. In this community, the local dialect is used the majority of the time, with a variety approximating Standard Scottish English (SSE) mostly circumscribed to school and talking to outsiders. However, our previous research in this community lead us to conclude that the use of the two varieties may be age- and form-dependent. The older generations appear to have little ability in the standard variety, with switching restricted to a handful of words; the middle-aged speakers can switch across a wider range of forms; the younger speakers are much more flexible in utilising both local and standard varieties in particular contexts of use. However, even in this younger generation, speakers systematically switch between local and standard with lexical and phonetic forms, but not with grammatical forms. In other words, bidialectalism may only be partial.

This research will investigate these observations further through an quantitative sociolinguistic analysis of bidialectalism across the generations in Buckie. I will collect a corpus of data from 64 speakers, divided by age and gender. The speakers will be recorded in conversation with 1) a community 'insider' and 2) an 'outsider'. This will test for possible bidialectalism as the speakers will be expected to switch to a more standard variety with an outsider as interlocutor. From these recordings, I will create a text to sound synchronized searchable database of speech. I will then conduct a series of quantitative analyses of the forms - lexical, phonetic, grammatical - known to vary between standard and dialect in this community and compare these across the two recordings. This will allow me to identify if, where and when speakers switch forms. This, in turn, will contribute to questions surrounding bidialectalism and language change more generally in the 21st century British Isles.

Who will benefit from this research?
The research will benefit educational policy makers, teachers, pupils and the general public.

How will they benefit?
Benefits will accrue from educational policies on language in the classroom being based on a scientific analysis of local dialect use in tandem with the standard variety.

Despite nearly 60 years of sociolinguistic research which show that local varieties are rule-governed just as standard English is, stereotypes about these dialects persist today, and are used in the formation of educational policy and practice. Discrimination arises from the fact that policy makers and teachers may not know which features are part of the child's local dialect or simply 'mistakes' which need to be eradicated from speech and/or writing. The speakers themselves may also not know that forms they use are part of rule-governed variation in their speech, not random mistakes.

This lack of knowledge may have far-reaching effects on speakers of vernacular dialects in the school context. The Department for Education's National Curriculum for English (Key stages 1-4, 11-16 years old, https://www.education.gov.uk/publications/eOrderingDownload/QCA-99-459.pdf) states that 'English can play a part in promoting citizenship and thinking skills through...becoming competent users of spoken and written standard English to enable pupils to participate fully in the wider world beyond school, in public life, and in decision making'. This has direct implications for children who speak a nonstandard dialect: it suggests that they are unlikely be able to fully participate in public life without full competence in standard English. Thus they are at an educational disadvantage from the start.

This prejudice may also affect the teaching staff, as reported in a number of newspapers in October 2010: Offsted had criticized a number of teaching assistants for their 'heavy local accents and grammatical inaccuracy...which were setting a bad example to pupils (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/8039833/Teaching-staff-rapped-over-use-of-local-dialect.html).

In Scotland, there is a different policy: teachers are encouraged to help students to become competent in Standard English while at the same time facilitating the retention of their indigenous dialect. This is demonstrated in the Scottish Parliament's ongoing debates on the implementation of Scots in the curriculum (http://www.scotslanguage.com/articles/view/1301) and the General Teaching Council for Scotland's Professional Recognition Award for the teaching of Scots (http://www.gtcs.org.uk/news-events/news/scots-language-teaching-recognised.aspx). Although these intentions are good, the dialect materials used often represent an older form of the vernacular, with words and phrases which are alien to 21st century teacher and pupil.

The results from this research can provide teachers and policy makers with information on the dialect forms used in present day and whether pupils are aware of, and can use, the standard equivalent in speech and writing. This, in turn, can have fundamental implications for how a pupil is assessed in the classroom context and following, their success or failure to 'participate fully in the wider world beyond school' in later life.

It can also impact on community level initiatives through exchange with the excellent local dialect group which exists in the community. Within this dialect group and more generally, the perception exists that young speakers no longer use dialect forms. This research can inform on which features are indeed still in use, which may be changing and how the dialect group and community more widely may wish to respond to these results at the grass roots level.

Please see the Pathways to Impact document for further details on how impact will be maximised.