Provisional Title: Investigating how mobility, ethnicity, and ideology shape language change in the West Midlands of England.

This project will examine how phonological change is shaped by the interaction of geographical mobility, ethnic identity, and language ideology in the West Midlands of England. Combining acoustic analysis and survey data, it will explore how linguistic variation across an urban-rural divide is mediated by ethnic identities and place-based metalinguistic associations. This offers the first region-wide account of linguistic variation in the West Midlands integrating demographic, social, and ideological dimensions of change.

Variationist research identifies dialect contact as a “causal factor" of phonological change (Trudgill 1986; Britain, 2010, p.16), yet geographical mobility is a key prerequisite for such contact to occur (Britain, 2010). Post-industrial Great Britain has experienced widespread patterns of counterurbanisation – population shifts out of urban centres into rural surroundings (Champion, 2001). This disrupts the previously tight-knit, stable social networks, thereby creating social conditions conducive to dialect levelling (Britain & Grossenbacher, 2021, p.93). However, despite rural areas providing rich sites for sociolinguistic inquiry, an “urbanist agenda” prevails in variationist research (Britain, 2012), leaving rural dialects and the linguistic effects of counterurbanisation relatively underexplored.

The West Midlands (WM) offers an apt setting for addressing this research gap. The region hosts a large urban conglomeration, the West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA), that is surrounded by increasingly rural localities. This rural-urban divide enables examination of how intraregional mobility may incite shifts in rural linguistic varieties. Moreover, the WM hosts dense pockets of ethnic diversity, with substantial Pakistani and Indian populations in Birmingham and Wolverhampton, respectively (Office for National Statistics, 2022). As Fox’s (2010) study of Bangladeshi boys in London has demonstrated the empirical value of an intersectional approach towards studies of language variation, the current study will operationalise ethnic identity as a primary factor, to assess the effects of dialect contact in these diverse areas.

Alongside mobility and ethnicity, this project will also examine the role of the enduring language ideologies associated with the WM’s iconic (urban) linguistic varieties, Birmingham English and Black Country English (see Giles (1970) and Coupland & Bishop (2007)). As marked or stigmatised variants are most vulnerable to attrition (Kerswill, 2002; Britain, 2010), the low-status varieties of the WM present strong candidates for observing processes of dialect levelling.

By integrating factors of language ideology and ethnic identity, the current study will build on Khan’s doctoral research on multi-ethnic groups in the West Midlands (2006). However, adding mobility as a key factor engages with Johnstone’s (2004) suggestion that mobility-induced contact heightens dialect levelling and dialect awareness with equal measure. This enables examination of the strongest influences on the trajectory of language change in a diverse context where metalinguistic ideologies are already well-established.

To facilitate analysis across these three key dimensions – mobility, ethnicity, and ideology – this project will collect speech data to construct an apparent-time model, as well as survey responses that capture the participants’ mobility level (e.g. daily travel, migration history, community involvement), and place-based attitudes (e.g. orientation to the locality, the region, and their dialect, see Llamas, 2007). The participant sample (N=72) will include a targeted ethnic sub-sample (N=16) from South Asian backgrounds, to broadly reflect the demographic composition of the WM region. The sample will otherwise be balanced for urban/rural setting, age, and gender (see Mathisen (1999) for indications of women-led change in Sandwell near Birmingham).

In Praat, acoustic analysis will focus on variant distribution for eight phonetic variables, targeting local, regional, and supralocal forms, as well as features associated with South Asian heritage varieties. The apparent-time data will inform which local variants are undergoing attrition and which incoming forms appear to be driving the change. Comparing these analyses for each locality will reveal any patterning along the urban-rural divide. Then, logistic regression models will examine linguistic patterns alongside social and attitudinal data, exposing any interactions between language use and mobility, ethnicity, or ideology. Such findings will develop understanding of language change in mobile, post-industrial, diverse societies, while contributing to a reorientation of sociolinguistic research beyond the prevailing urban focus.

References:

Britain, D. (2010). Supralocal Regional Dialect Levelling. In: C. Llamas & D. Watts (Eds.), Language and Identities (pp. 193–204). Edinburgh University Press.

Britain, D. (2012). Countering the urbanist agenda in variationist sociolinguistics: Dialect contact, demographic change and the rural-urban dichotomy. In: S. Hansen, C. Schwarz, P. Stoeckle, & T. Streck (Eds.), Dialectological and Folk Dialectological Concepts of Space (pp. 12–30). De Gruyter. doi.org/10.1515/9783110229127.12

Britain, D., & Grossenbacher, S. (2021). Counterurbanisation, dialect contact and the levelling of non-salient traditional dialect variants: The case of the front short vowels in Eastern England. In: A. Ziegler, S. Edler, & G. Oberdorfer (Eds.), Studies in Language Variation (Vol. 27, pp. 89–118). John Benjamins Publishing Company. doi.org/10.1075/silv.27.04bri

Champion, T. (2001). Urbanisation, surburbanisation, counterurbanisation and reurbanisation. In: R. Paddison & W. Lever (Eds.), Handbook of Urban Studies (pp. 143–161). SAGE Publications Ltd.

Coupland, N., & Bishop, H. (2007). Ideologised values for British accents1. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 11(1), 74–93. doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9841.2007.00311.x

Fox, S. (2010). Ethnicity, religion and practices: Adolescents in the East End of London. In: C. Llamas & D. Watt (Eds.), Language and Identities (pp. 144–156). Edinburgh University Press. doi.org/10.1515/9780748635788

Giles, H. (1970). Evaluative reactions to accents. Educational Review, (22), 211–227.

Office for National Statistics. (2022). Regional Ethnic Diversity. www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/uk-population-by-ethnicity/national-and-regional-populations/regional-ethnic-diversity/latest/.

Kerswill, P. (2002). Models of linguistic change and diffusion: New evidence from dialect levelling in British English. Reading Working Papers in Linguistics, 6, 187–216.

Khan, A. (2006). A Sociolinguistic Study of Birmingham English: Language Variation and Change in a Multi-Ethnic British Community [Unpublished PhD Thesis]. Lancaster University.

Mathisen, A. (1999). Sandwell, West Midlands: Ambiguous perspectives on gender patterns and models of change. In: P. Foulkes & G. Docherty (Eds.), Urban Voices: Accent Studies in the British Isles (pp. 107–123). Routledge.

Trudgill, P. (1986). Dialects in contact. Blackwell.