Sociophonetic Variation and Change in a Post-Industrial, South Yorkshire Speech Community

This thesis presents an analysis of the relationship between phonological variation and perceptions of local identity in the dialect of Royston, an ex-mining community located on the border between the Metropolitan Borough of Barnsley in South Yorkshire, and the Metropolitan District of Wakefield in West Yorkshire. Previous studies of Yorkshire varieties (cf. Petyt 1985; Stoddart et al. 1999, Haddican et al. 2013) have established that long monophthongal forms of FACE and GOAT constitute a pan-Yorkshire phonological norm. Furthermore, there is also evidence to suggest that long monophthongal FACE and GOAT production represents a ‘principal northern shibboleth’ (Haddican et al. 2013: 373). However, metalinguistic commentary surrounding the dialect of Royston (cf. Burland 2017) claims that speakers in the township produce distinctive diphthongal variants of both FACE and GOAT (see Chapter 8, Section 8.3.4).
This study analyses FACE and GOAT data from wordlist recordings collected from Royston, Barnsley and Wakefield speakers. Auditory and acoustic analysis supports metalinguistic claims providing evidence of dominant diphthongal Royston forms which differ from the majority monophthongal Barnsley and Wakefield variants, and from pan-Yorkshire monophthongal FACE and GOAT norms. The Royston wordlist data is then considered alongside ideological commentary, collected from ethnographic interviews with older and younger Royston speakers, in order to evaluate the social meanings which underpin this regionally distinctive FACE and GOAT production.
The data is interpreted using dialect contact and language ideology frameworks, and the results question the inevitability of mutual convergence in situations of dialect contact by demonstrating how, and why, three successive generations of Royston speakers have resisted the widespread diffusion of pan-regional phonological norms.