Investigating (in)coherence in Tyneside English(es): sociophonetic variation spectrums of face, goat, price and mouth in the DECTE corpus

Abstract

The present study investigates the co-occurrence of face, goat, price and mouth vocalic variants in the Tyneside Linguistic Survey (TLS, Strang, 1968). The analysis is based on the original fine-grained transcriptions of the TLS sociolinguistic interviews across a sample of 44 predominantly working-class speakers (men/women, older, middle-aged and teenagers). Multiple Factorial Analysis and cluster analysis were combined to identify sub-groupings in the variety based on the entirety of the transcriptions (consonants, stressed and reduced vowels), and to investigate coherence across these vocalic variants. The results point towards major gender and class effects with four clusters of speakers characterised by varying degrees of accentedness. Overall, lower-status women and slightly higher-status women distinguish themselves through distinct variant choices. Differences amongst men of either status can best be measured through the extent to which they use the traditional variants.