TY - JOUR
T1 - Regional diversity in social perceptions of (ing)
AU - Schleef, Erik
AU - Flynn, Nicholas
AU - Barras, William
N1 - This research was funded by the Leverhulme Trust (grant RPG-215, Erik Schleef PI). We are grateful to all participants in our perception surveys and those students who kindly let us use their voice samples in our experiments. We thank Maciej Baranowski, Miriam Meyerhoff, and Danielle Turton for their expert advice and Ann Houston who kindly granted permission to reproduce her wonderfully illuminating map on the relation of the modern [ɪŋ] ∼ [ɪn] alternation to the distribution of -ing in the 15th century. Michael Ramsammy was involved in the sociolinguistic interview recordings, stimuli and survey creation for Manchester and London. Audiences at the Sixth Northern Englishes Workshop in Lancaster in April 2014 and at the Third Conference of the International Society for the Linguistics of English in Zurich in August 2014 have provided helpful formative feedback. We alone are responsible for any failings in this paper.
PY - 2017/3
Y1 - 2017/3
N2 - This article examines the perception of the (ing) variants, [ɪŋ] and [ɪn], in three regionally distinct localities in Britain: London in the South of England; Manchester in the North; and Edinburgh in Scotland. Data was gathered in perceptual tests in which respondents from each location rated stimuli doublets, each containing only one of the variants of (ing), on multiple social attribute scales. In London and Manchester, the perception of [ɪŋ] and [ɪn] broadly matches findings made for the United States in that speakers using [ɪŋ] are considered more articulate and hardworking, and less casual than speakers using [ɪn]. In Edinburgh, results are markedly different. We argue that these differences are due to a combination of factors that include the historical development of (ing) in a particular locale, which led to differences in production, variations in language ideology and, as a result, class-specific evaluations that appear to be regionally dependent.
AB - This article examines the perception of the (ing) variants, [ɪŋ] and [ɪn], in three regionally distinct localities in Britain: London in the South of England; Manchester in the North; and Edinburgh in Scotland. Data was gathered in perceptual tests in which respondents from each location rated stimuli doublets, each containing only one of the variants of (ing), on multiple social attribute scales. In London and Manchester, the perception of [ɪŋ] and [ɪn] broadly matches findings made for the United States in that speakers using [ɪŋ] are considered more articulate and hardworking, and less casual than speakers using [ɪn]. In Edinburgh, results are markedly different. We argue that these differences are due to a combination of factors that include the historical development of (ing) in a particular locale, which led to differences in production, variations in language ideology and, as a result, class-specific evaluations that appear to be regionally dependent.
U2 - 10.1017/S0954394517000047
DO - 10.1017/S0954394517000047
M3 - Article
SN - 0954-3945
VL - 29
SP - 29
EP - 56
JO - Language Variation and Change
JF - Language Variation and Change
IS - 1
ER -
