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

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.