Ascending tones as signifiers of cultural identity in northern England

Malvina Aleksandrovna Demina,Polina Kirillovna Shishova,I Klimova,M Konurbaev

doi:10.1051/shsconf/202112702019

Malvina Aleksandrovna Demina, Polina Kirillovna Shishova + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1051/shsconf/202112702019

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Abstract

This study investigates prosodic patterns in dialects of Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle and Leeds that distinguish northern English pronunciation from other regional types. The authors argue that melodic cues can act as signifiers of northern English cultural identity. The empirical research included auditory and acoustic analyses of authentic speech recordings of four female and four male speakers from the listed above urban centres in northern England. The research primarily concerned intonational means and prosodic parameters of fundamental frequency (F0) and pitch range. The findings revealed both individual characteristics of each dialect and regional distinctive features common for northern speech in general with a special regard to intergender variation. The results of the research showed that the distribution of melodic patterns in northern English speech is different from the standard British pronunciation and is mainly characterized by the frequent use of rising contours in affirmative utterances. The detailed acoustic analysis of configuration and pitch range of such ascending tunes allowed the authors to describe four main variants of rising intonation in final sense-groups of declaratives. These specific melodic cues of oral speech make it possible to identify a northerner and take into account this sociocultural context, as well as other conventional implicatures in the process of cross-cultural verbal interaction.

Highlights

Recent years have seen a flourishing of sociolinguistic research on the language variation and linguistic expressions of identity accounting for numerous pitfalls and misunderstandings of cross-cultural communication [1,2,3]
The results of the auditory analysis conducted at the first stage of the investigation revealed that northern speech is characteristic of rather frequent use of ascending terminal contours in affirmative utterances (Table 1), which clearly distinguishes Northern English dialects from the standard pronunciation in which rising tones mainly perform their referring function [18] and are normally used in non-final sense-groups or in interrogative utterances
This article reports the results of a phonetic study of distinctive melodic features of northern English speech in four main urban centers (Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds and Newcastle)

Summary

Introduction

Recent years have seen a flourishing of sociolinguistic research on the language variation and linguistic expressions of identity accounting for numerous pitfalls and misunderstandings of cross-cultural communication [1,2,3]. It is well established that language is central to how people portray themselves and perceive their interlocutors [6, 7] In this respect, the speaker’s prosodic aspects of speech behaviour, recognized as the most difficult features to control in the process of communication, might be taken by the listener to be a more foolproof indicator of the speaker’s cultural background than are other verbal and behavioral cues. The term reflects a sort of historically established cultural division still present in the country into two major groups or rather socio-cultural communities traditionally living in the north and the south of England and refers to a kind of ‘friendly rivalry’ between the two regions, rather than anything else

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