Jenny Cheshire
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SOCIOLINGUISTICS
especially language variation and change; language contact; conversational narrative
SPOKEN LANGUAGE
especially syntactic and discourse structures
CURRENT RESEARCH PROJECTS
Linguistic Innovators: The English of adolescents in London (ESRC RES 000 23 0680; 2004-2007)
see http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fss/projects/linguistics/innovators/output.htm
Jenny Cheshire, QMUL
Paul Kerswill, Lancaster University
Sue Fox, QMUL
Eivind Torgersen, Lancaster University
This project was the first large-scale sociolinguistic study of English in London. It tests the view that long-standing migration patterns make London the origin of language changes in the UK (and beyond). We analysed over 100 hours of conversation from adolescent and elderly speakers in a multilingual inner London area and a less diverse outer London area. In Outer London, dialect levelling was well underway, mainly following patterns affecting the south-east of England generally. For most language features, the assumption that London is the origin of these changes was not supported. Instead, there were innovations in inner London adolescent speech in phonetics, morphosyntax and discourse, as well as vocabulary. We identified the social and personality types of the adolescent leaders of change, finding that one important factor was the ethnic mix of their friendship groups. This has implications for current sociolinguistic theories about speech communities and about how language changes originate and spread.
Multicultural London English: the emergence, acquisition and diffusion of a new variety (ESRC RES 062 23 0814, 2007-2010)
see http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fss/projects/linguistics/multicultural/index.htm
Jenny Cheshire, QMUL
Paul Kerswill, Lancaster University
Sue Fox, QMUL
Arfaan Khan, QMUL
Eivind Torgersen, Lancaster University
This project builds on the results of our previous one, examining the role of ethnic minority English in driving forward linguistic innovation in London in phonetic, grammar and discourse features. The key to this is to understand the nature of what we call 'Multicultural London English', the (potentially) ethnically neutral way of speaking that nevertheless contains many features attributable to different ethnic groups. We attempt to demarcate this variety and also to discover how and when children acquire it, as well as whether people continue to use it into adulthood. The project explores 'ethnicity' as an aspect of identity and investigates experimentally how adolescents evaluate some specific phonetic features. The project builds on Fox's and Khan's PhD research and integrates ethnicity explicitly into the study of language change in progress, with implications for our understanding of mechanisms of linguistic innovation and change in a highly multiethnic and multilingual metropolis.