Chapter 3. Derhoticisation in Scottish English: A sociophonetic journey 67
The Glasgow Media Project constituted the first comprehensive systematic
sociolinguistic investigation of the influence of the broadcast media on language
change, by focusing on the possible role of exposure to, and psychological engage-
ment with, London-based TV dramas on Glaswegian vernacular phonology. Three
groups of linguistic variables were considered:
- consonant innovations: e.g. TH-fronting. Three rapid changes in Glaswegian
look like instances of diffusion from Southern varieties of English English,
which took off in the 1990s, though they are sporadically reported in Scottish
English much earlier (Macafee 1983; Anthony et al. 1971); - ongoing vernacular changes: e.g. derhoticisation of postvocalic /r/. As noted
before, this change appears to be system-internal, though the final outcome
(e.g. non-rhoticity) can coincide phonetically with English English norms; - more stable sociolinguistic variation: e.g. realization of the vowels /a/, /u/ and /ɪ/.^2
Only the consonant innovations have been explicitly linked with exposure to
London English on the television. However to test the hypothesis that television
might be a contributory factor in the innovative changes, we needed also to test
those variables for which media influence has never been mooted, and so vowels
and derhoticisation were included in the study.
The auditory variants for the consonant innovations (e.g. [f ], [v]), and der-
hoticisation (/Vr/ sequences realized as a plain vowel with no velar or pharyngeal
quality), and F1 and F2 of /a u ɪ/, for read (wordlists) and spontaneous (conversa-
tional) speech were the dependent variables in a series of regression models con-
structed for the 36 adolescent informants. The independent variables consisted of
representative linguistic factors (e.g. position in the word, adjacent phonetic con-
text), and a large array of extralinguistic factors: opportunities for dialect contact
with speakers of other English dialects; attitudes to dialects elicited from responses
to audio recordings and paper surveys; engagement and participation in a range
of social practices; preferences for music and radio, film (cinema, DVD, video);
activity on the internet and engagement with computer games and computer-
mediated communication; and exposure to, and psychological engagement with,
the television. The variables were drawn from a structured questionnaire com-
pleted by each informant, an informal interview with the fieldworker, their own
spontaneous speech recordings with their friends, and participant observation by
the fieldworker during the period of data collection. Full details and results of the
regression study can be found in Stuart-Smith et al. (2013).
- That was our hypothesis at the time. In fact the new Glasgow Real-Time Project is demon-
strating real-time change in /u/ (e.g. Rathcke et al. 2012).