Ladies, gentlemen, boys and girls and anyone I may have forgotten. Do not fret, stop your rioting, calm down, the Queen of Linguistics is back.
I do apologise for my absence. I’ve been working on a new project, surprisingly, it’s language based. It’s also the topic of my new post.
Before I go into the main topic of the post I just want to point out that the results/trends/tendencies which I may discuss are based upon my own empirical research and if I make generalisation it’s because I have been toiling away at this project for nearly six months and I bloody well deserve to make generalisations about my own results. Oh and also, it’s quite interesting.
So, I’m presuming you’ve heard about the recent riots across England. Now I’m not here to comment on why or why not people were rioting, I’m not ever here to give you my personal views towards the riots. However, certain issues surrounding the riots feed beautifully into my recent project.
People have been saying it’s copycat violence and due to the gang culture and the youths of today. People were violent in London, therefore certain people in other major cities, for example Birmingham and Manchester, took it upon themselves to copy this violence and create their own copycat riots.
It seems to me that this implies there is a “brotherhood” of people, who feel a connection to one another, even though they may never have met before or even visited each other’s cities. Do they feel part of the same pack? Can they relate to one another? Did this connection between these individuals mean that they felt obliged to copy the violence of those similar to them in other towns? Or was it a fight for masculinity? “If those kids in London can do it, so can we, and we can do it better”.
You see, my project is on the accent of these exact individuals. The youth culture, those individuals born and raised in cities and surrounding areas, the people who seem to be creating an “urban norm”. What they do in London, we shall do everywhere else.
London is our capital and not only is it our economic centre, home to our government and aristocracy, it’s where it all comes from. Someone does something in London and eventually someone in Manchester will be doing the same. It can be as small as the skinny jean or as large as the way we educate our children.
Over recent years a “London youth speak” has come into it’s own. “tt” in the middle of a word is no longer pronounced, therefore butter is spoken without a “t” sound. Similarly, “th” now sounds like “f” or “v” depending on its phonetic properties, which I won’t go into here.
These two features, along with many more, were born in London but what is interesting is they are being raised across the country. Basically, kids are starting to sound the same, wherever they may be from.
You know the accent I’m writing about, the accent that comes in a grey tracksuit and calls its friend “bruv”.
My recent research shows that this accent, the one we’d attribute to London, can be found as far as Glasgow. But why is this? Is this copycat like the rioting? Is this because London is where it all comes from and the youths from cities feel they need to relate to those in the capital?
We may hear these kids speak and call them “chavs” or something to the same effect and we may notice these accent features and attribute them to hoody wearing yobs but something very interesting is going on here. They’re creating a nationwide “crew” based upon their accent, they can now relate to one another and they no longer feel segregated from other urban areas.
Now here’s the really interesting bit. The spreading of the LDN accent may be apparent in the speech of white and black people, but the Asians are not following the same trend.
I have spent the summer analysing the speech of Pakistani individuals and reading so many articles that my reference list is longer than my kitchen table. It appears that, quite surprisingly, white and black individuals are starting to share an accent and a youth norm of speech but those individuals whose parents are from Pakistan or India, are avoiding these changes and creating their own “Asian norm”.
You may have noticed it before, someone is sitting behind you on the bus and you know their parents are Asian even before you see them and yet they themselves were born and raised in England.
Now I have several ideas about why the Asian speakers, of the same age, living in the same area and having the same upbringing, may sound different to their white and black counterparts. But I am not Asian, neither are my parents and so I am just an outsider trying to understand this phenomenon. It could be identity based, it could be influence from a mother language such as Urdu, or it could be something they are completely unaware of.
What seems to be the case is that white and black individuals are sharing a youth norm of speech across the nation and so are the Asian individuals, but they happen to be very different.
Why aren’t the Asian speakers following the same trends? Why are they creating their own “youth norm”? Why were the majority of rioters and looters white and black? Why were the Asian kids in Birmingham trying to stop the looting and protect our shops and homes?
Are we seeing start of a major segregation between Asian youths and white and black youths? I honestly don’t know. I am unsure as to whether this is a product of our segregated past or an innovation of modern day society. Maybe it’s nothing and maybe their accents are completely subconscious and they don’t notice a difference, I doubt this though.
Just a little something to think about.
