Maybe it's a grime [t]ing:th-stopping among urban British youth

Rob Drummond

doi:10.1017/s0047404517000999

Abstract

AbstractThis article examines how voicelessth-stopping (e.g.tingforthing) is used by a group of adolescents in Manchester, UK. The data come from an ethnographic project into the speech of fourteen to sixteen year olds who have been excluded from mainstream education. Althoughth-stopping is often strongly associated with black varieties of English, multiple regression analysis finds ethnicity not to be a statistically significant factor in its production. Instead, conversational context and involvement in aspects of particular social practices—grime (rap) and dancehall music—emerge as potentially more relevant. Subsequent interactional analysis adds support to this interpretation, illustrating how the feature is being used more or less strategically (and more or less successfully) by individuals in this context in order to adopt particular stances, thereby enacting particular identities that are only tangentially related to ethnicity. I argue that use ofth-stopping in this context indexes a particular street identity that is made more available through participation in grime especially. (th-stopping, youth language, identity, ethnography, grime, hip hop)*

Highlights

Adolescence is a life-stage like no other in terms of the ‘unequalled efflorescence of symbolic activity in all spheres’ (Eckert 2000:5), not least the sphere of linguistic variation
This article reports on a project that focuses on a particular group of young people from the outset—those who have been excluded from mainstream education for behavioural/disciplinary issues or because they find it difficult to adapt to the requirements of a mainstream school environment
The data presented here represent a mixture of recording contexts; where possible, each speaker’s total includes at least some data from a ‘research meeting’—a conversation/interview with one of the two researchers in which the young people were either alone or in pairs

Summary

Introduction

Adolescence is a life-stage like no other in terms of the ‘unequalled efflorescence of symbolic activity in all spheres’ (Eckert 2000:5), not least the sphere of linguistic variation. Often, such research is carried out in mainstream high schools (e.g. Eckert 2000; Moore 2003; Mendoza-Denton 2008; Lawson 2009; Bucholtz 2011; Kirkham 2013), tracking and comparing the linguistic and social behaviour of different groups of students. This article reports on a project that focuses on a particular group of young people from the outset—those who have been excluded from mainstream education for behavioural/disciplinary issues or because they find it difficult to adapt to the requirements of a mainstream school environment. The research took place in two learning centres in Manchester, UK, each catering for.

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Conclusion