Principal Investigator: Devyani Sharma

Co-investigators: Ben Rampton, Roxy Harris

Researchers: Lavanya Sankaran, Pam Knight

Funding: £ 412,000, ESRC, UK, 2008-2010

Description

Public discourse has frequently characterized immigrant or diasporic communities as linguistically divided across generations ('the schizophrenia which bedevils generational relationships', Blunkett 2002), with little empirical basis for such claims. Sociolinguistic theory also constructs a sharp boundary between non-native and native dialect acquisition, with little close examination of mutual influence and co-constructed styles across this boundary.

This project is the first sociolinguistic study of English dialect variation and change within families of Indian origin in London. The project aims to:

• examine how individuals develop multiple dialect proficiencies in contact situations and across generations
• document social change through the study of dialect change
• assess the balance among speaker agency, cognitive constraints, and social context, particularly in rapid change across generations.

The results of the project have implications for claims about dialect formation, family (vs. peer) influences in dialect change, repertoire analysis, adult dialect plasticity, transnationalism, and the native/non-native divide.

Methodology

One of the goals of this project is to investigate the role of discourse and agency in language change by exploring the boundary between quantitative variationist (VS) methods and interactional sociolinguistics (IS) methods.

Data for quantitative analysis include extensive audio speech recordings (semi-structured interviews), social network information, and additional personal information such as bilingual language use and attitudes. In order to ensure interactionally rich data for both components of the analysis, we also move beyond sociolinguistic interviews and additionally collect self-recordings from 10 individuals in 3-6 distinct everyday interactional settings, generating multi-faceted individual speech profiles. A total of 120 hours of recordings were collected from 75 participants networked across three familial generations.

As part of the VS analysis, interview speech and repertoires are analyzed using a new Network Diversity metric, a bilingualism index, and further attitude and social factor measures from participants networked across three generations. As part of the integrated VS/IS analysis, we devise a new discourse variation measure (Lectal Focusing in Interaction) to track the interactional and indexical meanings associated with ethnolectal and class variants in different generations and age groups. Qualitative methods are used to account for variation and change in terms of speakers' rhetorical purpose and interactional strategy.

This integration of methods allows the project to explore the interplay between structural and agentive processes in style acquisition and dialect shift. The unified analysis builds a practice-centred perspective on dialect acquisition as well as helping to enrich contemporary public understandings of the largest ethnic minority group in Britain.

Key findings

1. The quantitative analysis shows dramatic differences within the second generation over time, with a lag before a focused local variety of English develops. This gradual change corresponds to demographic and sociopolitical change rather than pure cognitive factors such as being born locally and being a native learner. Many older British Asians (i.e. the earliest second generation) retain native-like skill in both British and Indian English, negotiating multi-group membership bidialectally. By contrast, younger individuals lack this sharp differentiation of life worlds and employ a fused and innovative British Asian style. [Sharma and Sankaran 2011]
2. A new method for analysing speech repertoires reveals a previously unobserved transformation in British Asian cultural structures. It shows a gender reversal in style repertoires, such that older men and younger women in the second generation have the widest networks and correspondingly widest repertoires. This can be accounted for as a lag in shifting from a Punjabi-like gendered social arrangement (still in place among the earlier second generation) to typically British lower-middle class gendered network types (in the later second generation). [Sharma 2011]
3. Non-native parents and native children mutually accommodate their English styles, tempering claims of non-native fossilisation and sharp generational divides, and identifying the family (neglected under Western sociolinguistics) as a major conduit for new language use.
4. A new technique for tracing speech variation in interaction reveals that some individuals fine-tune dialect traits in interaction, endowing speech forms with fine ideological or stance values, while others do not. In the present case, we see a shift from fine ethnopolitical indexicality in older men's interactions to less strategic and more 'default' presence of forms in younger men's speech. This suggests that even if frequency of use of a form remains steady over time, its social indexical values can be changing. [Sharma and Rampton 2015]
5. New speech styles can develop in languages learned later in life, and second language speakers can develop sensitive awareness of new, local sociolinguistic meanings, finding strategic ways to signal these within the constraints of their developing linguistics system. This casts doubt on a reified division between native and non-native speech and an assumption of fossilization in adult language use. [Rampton 2013]
6. The 'multi-ethnic urban vernacular' originally identified among youth in the 1980s may not best be characterised as 'youth language'. Follow-up examination of these groups as middle-aged speakers show that these early styles can endure into later life as part of a set of registers or repertoire. [Rampton 2011]

These findings impact upon sociolinguistic theory (cognitive and social factors, agency, acquisition, change, bilingualism), sociolinguistic methodology (repertoires, networks, discourse analysis), models of second language speech, understandings of social change in British minority communities, and public perceptions of these communities.

Selected Outputs

'Scalar effects of social networks on language variation' (2017, Language Variation and Change) doi pdf

'The Language of London and Londoners' (2017, in Urban Sociolinguistics, Routledge; with Susan Fox) pdf

'Lectal focusing in interaction: A new methodology for the study of style variation' (2015, Journal of English Linguistics; with Ben Rampton) doi pdf

English in the Indian Diaspora (Hundt & Sharma, eds. 2014, John Benjamins) book

'Transnational flows, language variation, and ideology' (Sharma 2014, in Hundt & Sharma eds., see above) pdf

'Lectal focusing in interaction: A new methodology for the study of style variation' (Sharma & Rampton 2015, Journal of English Linguistics 43:1) doi pdf

'Styling in a language learned later in life' (Rampton 2013, Modern Language Journal 97:2) doi

'Stylistic activation in ethnolinguistic repertoires' doi (Sharma 2012, Penn Working Papers in Linguistics 18:2)

'Style repertoire and social change in British Asian English' doi pdf (Sharma 2011, Journal of Sociolinguistics 15:4)

'Cognitive and social factors in dialect shift: Gradual change in London Asian speech' doi pdf (Sharma & Sankaran 2011, Language Variation and Change 23:3)

'From 'multi-ethnic urban heteroglossia' to 'contemporary urban vernaculars'' doi (Rampton 2011, Language and Communication 31)

2-day workshop on dialect and social change in urban diasporic communities. pdf (programme)

'Return of the Native: Hindi in British English' pdf (preprint of Sharma 2011, in Chutnefying English, Kothari & Snell eds., Penguin)

Selected presentations

Plenary talk at IAWE, New Delhi, 2014. 'English in the Indian Diaspora: Implications for Sociolinguistic Theory.' (Sharma)

Plenary talk at i-mean 3, Bristol, 2013. 'Styling in a language learned later in life.' (Rampton)

2012-13 presentations at ICLaVE 7, ISLE Spring School, Cambridge, Hong Kong, Singapore, Stanford University (Sharma)

Workshop (with Lauren Hall-Lew) on 'Community histories, social change, and dialect variation', University of Sheffield, 2012. (Sharma)

NWAV 40 conference, Washington DC, October 2011: 'Stylistic activation in ethnolinguistic repertoires' (Sharma)

NWAV 40 conference, Washington DC, October 2011: 'Incremental change in substrate effects in London Asian English' Panel on: Substrate effects: Linguistic resources for indicating ethnic orientation. (Sharma)

Plenary talk on Ethnicity, Contact, and Change, Sociolinguistics Summer School, Glasgow (Sharma, July 2011)

'Gender, style, and social transformation: Generational change in British Asian style repertoires', International Gender and Language Conference (IGALA) 6, Tokyo, Japan (Sharma, Sept 2010)

Workshop for teachers in West London, Hounslow Language Centre, London, October 10. 'Changing uses of English across different generations of London Indian families.' Attendance: School teachers, ESL/EAL teachers.

Sociolinguistics Symposium conference, Southampton, September 2010: 'Post-adolescent urban heteroglossia' (Rampton)

Sociolinguistics Symposium conference, Southampton, September 2010: 'Beyond the sociolinguistic interview: Style repertoire and social change in a minority community' (Sharma/Sankaran)

'Randomness and purity in style variation' (Sharma/Rampton/Sankaran)

Workshop on Dialect and Social Change in Diasporic Communities, London, July 2010: 'Dialect repertoire and social change in London Asian English' (Sharma/Sankaran)

Workshop on Dialect and Social Change in Diasporic Communities, London, July 2010: 'Style purification in interaction' (Rampton/Sharma)

'Sounds of the Five Rivers: The Persistence of Punjabi Style in West London English', SLLF Annual Lecture, QMUL London (Sharma, Nov 2009)

'Inter-generational dialect change in a Punjabi London community', UCL English Department (Sharma, Nov 2009)

'Superdiversity and social class: The view from interaction', Tilburg University (Rampton, Oct 2009)

'Retroflexion in 1st and 2nd generation Punjabi London English.' UKLVC conference, Newcastle (Sharma/Sankaran, Sept 2009)

'Dialect and social change in a Punjabi London community': SOAS London; Lancaster University; Newcastle University; Middlesex University; Southampton University Applied Linguistics and Transnationalism joint seminar; University of Essex (Sharma, 2009-10)

'Sociolinguistic fieldwork at home.' Teaching field linguistics techniques workshop, SOAS London (Sharma, May 2009)

'Return of the Native: Hindi in British English.' Chutnefying English conference, Mumbai, India (Sharma, Jan 2009)