7. Scouse NURSE and northern happy: vowel change in Liverpool English
-
Marten Juskan
Abstract
This chapter investigates change in the NURSE and happy vowels in Liverpool English (Scouse) across 3 generations of speakers and discusses if and how the results might be connected to questions of salience, local identity, and Liverpool’s changing fortunes in the 20th and the 21st century. Based on a sample of 20 sociolinguistic interviews, this study finds that younger speakers use more local variants of the NURSE-SQUARE merger, a highly salient variable (Honeybone and Watson 2013, Watson and Clark 2013), than their parents’ or grandparents’ generation. Realisations of happy, on the other hand, become laxer, which is a change away from the (tense) traditional local norm, and towards the majority of the other varieties spoken in northern England (Trudgill 1999). These changes in production are linked up with qualitative data from the interviews, which indicate that younger Liverpudlians not only readily express pride in their city and its accent, but that they also feel a strong connection to the north of England more generally. Phonetic change in the two vowels under scrutiny is interpreted as being governed by a combination of salience and questions of identity: younger speakers use Scouse variants of the socially salient NURSE vowel to express their ‘primary’ identity as Liverpudlians, and laxer realisations of less-salient happy to also associate themselves with other towns and cities in the North - a strategy which allows them to simultaneously express both their local, and their regional identity linguistically.
Abstract
This chapter investigates change in the NURSE and happy vowels in Liverpool English (Scouse) across 3 generations of speakers and discusses if and how the results might be connected to questions of salience, local identity, and Liverpool’s changing fortunes in the 20th and the 21st century. Based on a sample of 20 sociolinguistic interviews, this study finds that younger speakers use more local variants of the NURSE-SQUARE merger, a highly salient variable (Honeybone and Watson 2013, Watson and Clark 2013), than their parents’ or grandparents’ generation. Realisations of happy, on the other hand, become laxer, which is a change away from the (tense) traditional local norm, and towards the majority of the other varieties spoken in northern England (Trudgill 1999). These changes in production are linked up with qualitative data from the interviews, which indicate that younger Liverpudlians not only readily express pride in their city and its accent, but that they also feel a strong connection to the north of England more generally. Phonetic change in the two vowels under scrutiny is interpreted as being governed by a combination of salience and questions of identity: younger speakers use Scouse variants of the socially salient NURSE vowel to express their ‘primary’ identity as Liverpudlians, and laxer realisations of less-salient happy to also associate themselves with other towns and cities in the North - a strategy which allows them to simultaneously express both their local, and their regional identity linguistically.
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter i
- Table of contents v
- List of contributors vii
- List of figures and tables ix
- 1. Introduction 1
-
I. Enregisterment
- 2. Northern English and enregisterment 17
- 3. Dickens and northern English: stereotyping and ‘authenticity’ reconsidered 41
- 4. The linguistic landscape of north-east England 61
- 5. Lenition and T-to-R are differently salient: the representation of competing realisations of /t/ in Liverpool English dialect literature 83
-
II. Phonology
- 6. External and internal factors in a levelling process: Prevocalic (r) in Carlisle English 111
- 7. Scouse NURSE and northern happy: vowel change in Liverpool English 135
-
III. Syntax and discourse features
- 8. Are Scottish national identities reflected in the syntax of Scottish newspapers? 169
- 9. Final but in northern Englishes 191
-
IV. Sociolinguistics
- 10. Education, class and vernacular awareness on Tyneside 215
- 11. Changing domains of dialect use: A real-time study of Shetland schoolchildren 245
-
V. Language and corpus
- 12. New perspectives on Scottish Standard English: Introducing the Scottish component of the International Corpus of English 273
- Index 303
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter i
- Table of contents v
- List of contributors vii
- List of figures and tables ix
- 1. Introduction 1
-
I. Enregisterment
- 2. Northern English and enregisterment 17
- 3. Dickens and northern English: stereotyping and ‘authenticity’ reconsidered 41
- 4. The linguistic landscape of north-east England 61
- 5. Lenition and T-to-R are differently salient: the representation of competing realisations of /t/ in Liverpool English dialect literature 83
-
II. Phonology
- 6. External and internal factors in a levelling process: Prevocalic (r) in Carlisle English 111
- 7. Scouse NURSE and northern happy: vowel change in Liverpool English 135
-
III. Syntax and discourse features
- 8. Are Scottish national identities reflected in the syntax of Scottish newspapers? 169
- 9. Final but in northern Englishes 191
-
IV. Sociolinguistics
- 10. Education, class and vernacular awareness on Tyneside 215
- 11. Changing domains of dialect use: A real-time study of Shetland schoolchildren 245
-
V. Language and corpus
- 12. New perspectives on Scottish Standard English: Introducing the Scottish component of the International Corpus of English 273
- Index 303
