Hostname: page-component-7dd5485656-2pp2p Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-10-31T06:54:11.390Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Reversing “drift”: Innovation and diffusion in the London diphthong system

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 November 2008

Paul Kerswill ,
Eivind Nessa Torgersen  and
Susan Fox
Paul Kerswill
Affiliation:
Lancaster University
Eivind Nessa Torgersen
Affiliation:
Lancaster University
Susan Fox
Affiliation:
Queen Mary, University of London
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This study contributes to innovation and diffusion models by examining phonetic changes in London English. It evaluates Sapir's notion of “drift,” which involves “natural,” unconscious change, in relation to these changes. Investigating parallel developments in two related varieties of English enables drift to be tested in terms of the effect of extralinguistic factors. The diphthongs of price, mouth, face, and goat in both London and New Zealand English are characterized by “Diphthong Shift,” a process that continued unabated in New Zealand. A new, large data set of London speech shows Diphthong Shift reversal, providing counterevidence for drift. We discuss Diphthong Shift and its “reversal” in relation to innovation, diffusion, leveling, and supralocalization, arguing that sociolinguistic factors and dialect contact override natural Diphthong Shift. Studying dialect change in a metropolis, with its large and linguistically innovative minority ethnic population, is of the utmost importance in understanding the dynamics of change.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language Variation and Change , Volume 20 , Issue 3 , October 2008 , pp. 451 - 491
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Beaken, Michael. (1971). A study of phonological development in a primary school population of East London. Ph.D. dissertation, University College London.Google Scholar
Britain, David. (2001). If A changes to B, make sure that A exists: A case study on the dialect origins of New Zealand English. Essex Research Reports in Linguistics 38:39–79.Google Scholar
Britain, David (2002). Space and spatial diffusion. In Chambers, J. K., Trudgill, P., & Schilling-Estes, N. (eds.), The handbook of language variation and change. Oxford: Blackwell. 603–637.Google Scholar
Britain, David (2005). Where did New Zealand English come from? In Bell, A., Harlow, R., & Starks, D. (eds.), Languages of New Zealand. Wellington: Victoria University Press. 156–193.Google Scholar
Britain, David, & Sudbury, Andrea. (2002). There's sheep and there's penguins: Convergence, “drift” and “slant” in New Zealand and Falkland Island English. In Jones, M. C. & Esch, E. (eds.), Language change: The interplay of internal, external and extra-linguistic factors. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 209–240.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cheshire, Jenny, & Fox, Susan. (2007). Contact-induced change? Variation in the use of the English relative clause among adolescents in London. Paper presented at the International Workshop on Morphosyntactic Variation and Change in Contact SettingsParis.Google Scholar
Cheshire, Jenny, Gillett, Ann, Kerswill, Paul, & Williams, Ann. (1999). The role of adolescents in dialect levelling. Final report submitted to the Economic and Social Research Council, June 1999.Google Scholar
Cornips, Leonie. (2002). Etnisch Nederlands in Lombok. In Bennis, H., Extra, G., Muysken, P., & Nortier, J. (eds.), Een buurt in beweging. Talen en culturen in het Utrechtse Lombok en Transvaal. Amsterdam: Aksant. 285–302.Google Scholar
Cox, Felicity. (1999). Vowel change in Australian English. Phonetica 56:1–27.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ellis, Alexander. (1889). On early English pronunciation: Part V. London: Truebner and Co.Google Scholar
Flege, James E., Schirru, Carlo, & MacKay, Ian R. A. (2003). Interaction between the native and second language phonetic subsystems. Speech Communication 40:467–491.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fortescue, Michael. (2006). Drift and the grammaticalization divide between northern and southern Wakashan. International Journal of American Linguistics 72:295–324.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foulkes, Paul, & Docherty, Gerard. (eds.) (1999). Urban voices. Accent studies in the British Isles. London: Arnold.Google Scholar
Fox, Susan. (2007). The demise of Cockneys? Language change in London's ‘traditional’ East End. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Essex.Google Scholar
Gordon, Elizabeth, Campbell, Lyle, Hay, Jen, Maclagan, Margaret, Sudbury, Andrea, & Trudgill, Peter. (2004). New Zealand English. Its origins and evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hansen, Anita Berit. (2001). Lexical diffusion as a factor of phonetic change: The case of Modern French nasal vowels. Language Variation and Change 13:209–252.Google Scholar
Hock, Hans Henrich. (1986). Principles of historical linguistics. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Horvath, Barbara M. (1985). Variation in Australian English: The sociolects of Sydney. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hudson, Richard, & Holloway, Anne. (1977). Variation in London English. Final report submitted to the Social Science Research Council, August 1977.Google Scholar
Hurford, James. (1967). The speech of one family: A phonetic comparison of the speech of three generations in a family in East London. Ph.D. dissertation, University College London.Google Scholar
Kachru, Braj B. (1986). The power and politics of English. World Englishes 5:121–140.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kerswill, Paul. (2003). Dialect levelling and geographical diffusion in British English. In Britain, D. & Cheshire, J. (eds.), Social dialectology. In honour of Peter Trudgill. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 223–243.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kerswill, Paul, & Williams, Ann. (2000). Creating a new town koine: Children and language change in Milton Keynes. Language in Society 29:65–115.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kerswill, Paul, & Williams, Ann (2005). New towns and koineization: Linguistic and social correlates. Linguistics 43:1023–1048.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Khan, Arfaan. (2006). A sociolinguistic study of Birmingham English: Language variation and change in a multi-ethnic British community. Ph.D. dissertation, Lancaster University.Google Scholar
Kotsinas, Ulla-Britt. (1998). Language contact in Rinkeby—an immigrant suburb. In Androutsopoulos, J. K. & Scholz, A. (eds.), Jugendsprache—langue des jeunes—youth language. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. 125–148.Google Scholar
Labov, William. (1994). Principles of linguistic change, Volume 1: Internal factors. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Labov, William, Ash, Sharon, & Boberg, Charles. (2005). The atlas of North American English. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Le Page, Robert B., & Tabouret-Keller, Andrée. (1985). Acts of identity: Creole-based approaches to language and ethnicity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Lennig, Matthew. (1978). Acoustic measurement of linguistic change: The modern Paris vowel system. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
Lennig, Matthew (1979). Une étude quantitative du changement linguistique dans le système vocalique Parisien. In Thibault, P. (ed.), Le Français parlé: Etudes sociolinguistiques. Edmonton: Linguistic Research. 29–40.Google Scholar
Lindblom, Björn. (1986). Phonetic universals in vowel systems. In Ohala, J. & Jaeger, J. (eds.), Experimental phonology. Orlando: Academic Press. 13–44.Google Scholar
Lobanov, B. M. (1971). Classification of Russian vowels spoken by different speakers. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 49:606–608.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maguire, Warren. (2007). What is dialect levelling? Paper presented at the Sixth UK Language Variation and Change conference, Lancaster University.Google Scholar
Malkiel, Yakov. (1981). Drift, slope, and slant: Background of, and variations upon, a Sapirian theme. Language 57:535–570.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Matthews, William. (1938). Cockney past and present. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Meillet, Antoine. (1967). The comparative method in historical linguistics. Paris: Champion.Google Scholar
Milroy, James, Milroy, Lesley, & Hartley, Sue. (1994). Local and supra-local change in British English: The case of glottalisation. English World-Wide 15:1–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Milroy, Lesley. (2002). Introduction: Mobility, contact and language change—Working with contemporary speech communities. Journal of Sociolinguistics 6:3–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Orton, Harold, & Tilling, Philip M. (1970). The survey of English dialects, Volume 3: The East Midland counties and East Anglia. Leeds: Arnold.Google Scholar
Orton, Harold, & Wakelin, Martyn F. (1967). The survey of English dialects, Volume 4: The southern counties. Leeds: Arnold.Google Scholar
Quist, Pia. (forthcoming). Multietnolekt—del af stilistiske praksisser i storbyen. In Arnfast, J. S. (ed.), Tungen lige i munden. Københavnerstudier i tosprogethed. Copenhagen: University of Copenhagen.Google Scholar
Sapir, Edward. (1921). Language: An introduction to the study of speech. New York: Harcourt Brace & World.Google Scholar
Sivertsen, Eva. (1960). Cockney phonology. Oslo: Oslo University Press.Google Scholar
Stampe, David. (1979). A dissertation on natural phonology. New York: Garland.Google Scholar
Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt, & Kortmann, Bernd. (forthcoming). Vernacular universals and angloversals in a typological perspective. In Filppula, M., Klemola, J., & Paulasto, H. (eds.), Vernacular Universals and Language Contacts: Evidence from Varieties of English and Beyond. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Tollfree, Laura. (1999). South East London English: Discrete versus continuous modelling of consonantal reduction. In Foulkes, P. & Docherty, G. (eds.), Urban voices. Accent Studies in the British Isles. London: Arnold. 163–184.Google Scholar
Torgersen, Eivind, & Kerswill, Paul. (2004). Internal and external motivation in phonetic change: Dialect levelling outcomes for an English vowel shift. Journal of Sociolinguistics 8:23–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Torgersen, Eivind, Kerswill, Paul, & Fox, Susan. (2006). Ethnicity as a source of changes in the London vowel system. In Hinskens, F. (ed.), Language variation—European perspectives. Selected papers from the third international conference on language variation in Europe (ICLaVE3), Amsterdam June 2005. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 249–263.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Trudgill, Peter. (1999). Norwich: Endogenous and exogenous linguistic change. In Foulkes, P. & Docherty, G. (eds.), Urban voices. Accent studies in the British Isles. London: Arnold. 124–140.Google Scholar
Trudgill, Peter (2004). New-dialect formation: The inevitability of colonial Englishes. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Trudgill, Peter, Gordon, Elizabeth, Lewis, Gillian, & Maclagan, Margaret. (2000). The role of drift in the formation of native-speaker southern hemisphere Englishes: Some New Zealand evidence. Diachronica 17:111–138.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Watt, Dominic. (2002). ‘I don't speak with a Geordie accent, I speak, like, the Northern accent’: Contact induced levelling in the Tyneside vowel system. Journal of Sociolinguistics 6:44–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wells, John C. (1982). Accents of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williams, Ann, & Kerswill, Paul. (1999). Dialect levelling: Change and continuity in Milton Keynes, Reading and Hull. In Foulkes, P. & Docherty, G. (eds.), Urban voices. Accent studies in the British Isles. London: Arnold. 141–162.Google Scholar