SLIDE 1 Observing Spoken British English
- f the past 20 years through
apparent and real-time evidence
“It doesn't stop, it never, never stops, er, it doesn't stop evolving”
The research has been supported by the ESRC grant no. EP/P001559/1.
Susan Reichelt @susanreichelt1
SLIDE 2
Data Theory Application
SLIDE 3
Data
SLIDE 4
Projec ject: : The British National Corpus (BNC) as a sociolinguistic dataset: Exploring individual and social variation Fu Fundi ding ng: ESRC grant no. EP/P001559/1. Team: m: Vaclav Brezina (PI), Dana Gablasova (Co-I), Tony McEnery (Co-I), Miriam Meyerhoff (Co-I), Susan Reichelt (RA)
SLIDE 5
- Focus on teaching SLX and CL
- Focus on new research investigating social factor age and
language change
- Focus on methodology and new ways of analysing variation
SLIDE 6
- Focus on new research investigating social factor age and
language change
SLIDE 7
BNC SDA 500 speakers ~9 million words BNC spoken/demographic: 1901 speakers ~15 million words BNC 2014: 668 speakers ~11 million words BNC 1994: 1233 speakers ~4 million words subsets for the SDA project subset of the subset “BNception”
SLIDE 8 “(…)for most speakers we do not have combined information about sex, age and social class (…). This should not mean that we cannot use the BNC to investigate sociolinguistic variation, but we should be clear about any shortfalls in terms
- f representativeness, particularly when we start
splitting the corpus up into finer slices.” Baker 2010: 40
SLIDE 9
1994 2014
1233 speakers 3’942’768 words speaker with highest word count: ~ 70’000 speaker with lowest word count: 1 668 speakers 10’982’869 words speaker with highest word count: ~ 351’000 speaker with lowest word count: 18
SLIDE 10
1994 2014
region: 27 regional codes without clear geographical boundaries or detail on what regional background entails for the individual speaker. region: Distinctions between birthplace, current location (and duration of stay) and perceived accent. Coding follows four levels, from broad (UK, non-UK) to narrow (town)
SLIDE 11
1994 2014
we follow system by Gerwin (2014), who adjusted the region system in the old BNC to compare to other data sets
SLIDE 12 1994 2014
Social grades: AB (upper) middle class C1 lower middle class C2 skilled working class D working class E not working (unknown)
National Statistics Socio-economic Classification, or ‘NS-SEC’: 1.1 Employers in large organisations, higher managerial occupations 1.2 Higher professional occupations 2 Lower professional and higher technical
- ccupations, higher supervisory
- ccupations
3 Intermediate occupations 4 Employers in small organisations 5 Lower supervisory occupations, lower technical occupations 6 Semi-routine occupations 7 Routine occupations 8 Never worked and long-term unemployed N/C Full-time students
SLIDE 13
1994 2014
Age distribution across 6 groups: 0-14 15-24 25-34 35-44 45-59 60+ Age distribution across 10 10 groups: 0-10 11-18 19-29 30-39 40-49 50-59 60-69 70-79 80-89 90-99
SLIDE 14
Th Theo eory
SLIDE 15
Trac acking king lan angua guage ge ch change ange as as it t happen appens s is, s, according to Chambers (1995:147), “the most st striking king si single ngle ac acco complishment mplishment of contemporary linguistics”.
SLIDE 16 “(….) giving th the an e analysis alysis of var ariation iation th the sta e statu tus s of an an in vivo
study dy of historical change” (Eckert 2012: 89)
SLIDE 17
ap appar paren ent t time& r rea eal l time
SLIDE 18 Time … it's s mor
e like ke a bi a big g bal all l of wibbly bbly wob
bly... ... timey ey wimey ey... ... st stuff. (Do Docto ctor r Who,
ink, , 2007) 7)
SLIDE 19 15 30 45 60
ap appar paren ent t time e an and d pos
sible ble interpr terpret etations ations st stabl able e fea eatur ure
SLIDE 20 15 30 45 60
ap appar parent ent ti time e an and d po poss ssible ible interpr terpret etations ations
going ng fea eatur ure
SLIDE 21 15 30 45 60
ap appar paren ent t time e an and d pos
sible ble interpr terpret etations ations incoming coming fea eatur ure
SLIDE 22 15 30 45 60
ap appar paren ent t time e an and d pos
sible ble interpr terpret etations ations … or maybe ag age e gr grading? ading?
SLIDE 23 past present
rea eal l time e an and d pos
sible ble interpr erpret etations ations stabl able e fea eatur ure
SLIDE 24 past present
rea eal l time e an and d pos
sible ble interpr erpret etations ations
going ng fea eatur ure
SLIDE 25 past present
rea eal l time e an and d pos
sible ble interpr erpret etations ations incoming coming fea eatur ure
SLIDE 26 15 30 45 60
Co Combin bination ation of ap appar arent ent an and d rea eal time
change ange
15 30 45 60
SLIDE 27 Co Combin bination ation of ap appar arent ent an and d rea eal time
change ange
15 30 45 60
SLIDE 28 rea eal l time e an and d pos
sible ble interpr erpret etations ations
change ange
15 30 45 60
SLIDE 29 15 30 45 60
Co Combin bination ation of ap appar arent ent an and d rea eal time ag age e grading ading
15 30 45 60
SLIDE 30 rea eal l time e an and d pos
sible ble interpr erpret etations ations ag age e grading ading
15 30 45 60
SLIDE 31 What can time tell us, then?
“In the best of circumstances, of course, researchers will be able e to to comb mbine ine appar arent ent-time time data ta with th real-time time evidence, idence, with th th the e relat ative ive str trengths engths of one e approach
setting th the e weaknesses of the other” (Bailey, 2008:330)
SLIDE 32
application
SLIDE 33
Adjective intensification in Spoken British English: the past 20 years
SLIDE 34
They’revery nice. She’s so thoughtless. That’sreally cheap. Included: all items that amplified a following adjective The variable set includes a great number of variants with the most common intensifiers (very, really, so) representing approx. 90% of the results.
SLIDE 35
Data extraction & coding
SLIDE 36
SLIDE 37
SLIDE 38
What does the BNC subset study offer in terms of new insights? A side-by-side investigation of apparent time and real time (trend) which adds detail to our interpretations of language change and who is involved in what type of change.
SLIDE 39
SLIDE 40
SLIDE 41
SLIDE 42
Th Thank nk you
SLIDE 43 Refer erences ences:
Bailey G. (2008) Real and Apparent Time. In: Chambers JK, Trudgill P and Schilling-Estes N (eds) The Handbook of Language Variation and Change.Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 312-332. Barnfield K and Buchstaller I. (2010) Intensifiers in Tyneside: Longitudinal developments and new trends. English World- Wide31: 252-287. Chambers JK. (1995) Sociolinguistic Theory, Oxford, Cambridge: Blackwell. Ito Rand T agliamonte S. (2003) Well weird, right dodgy, very strange, really cool: Layering and recycling in English intensifiers. Language in Society32: 257-279. Labov W. (1963) The Social Motivation of a Sound Change. Word19: 273-309.
- -(1966) The Social Stratification of English in New York City, Washington, D.C.: Center for Applied Linguistics.
Macaulay R. (2006) Pure grammaticalization: The development of a teenage intensifier. Language Variation and Change18: 267-283. Rickford JR, Wasow T, Zwicky A,et al. (2007) Intensive and Quotative all: Something Old, Something New. American Speech82: 3-31. Stenström A-B, Andersen G and Hasund IK. (2002) Trends in T eenage T alk ˗ Corpus Compilation, Analysis and Findings., Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. T agliamonte S. (2008) So different and pretty cool! Recycling intensifiers in T
- ronto, Canada. English Language and
Linguistics12: 361-394. T agliamonte S and Roberts C. (2005) So weird; so cool; so innovative: The use of intensifiers in the television series Friends. American Speech80: 280-300.
