London teenagers over twenty years

The study in a sentence

Research has shown that teenagers are a key group when it comes to the adoption and diffusion of new linguistic features and varieties. This study investigates whether teenagers in London are continuing to use a version of Multicultural London English which is similar to how it sounded 20 years ago.

If we see variation among MLE speakers, is that because MLE has started to diversify and fragment, or were these 'microlectal' patterns always present?

The question

The study compares how teenagers (aged 16-19) spoke in London in 2005 compared to 2024. It examines a range of different linguistic variables and focusses on both phonetic and grammatical features.

The key question is whether the rate of change in London English is steady or uneven. The study also 'zooms in' beyond the average patterns across whole groups. Do individual speakers vary their use of different registers or varieties of English? This might depend on the context or on who they are talkng to.

Key concept

The rate of change of language change is usually slow, but contact can accelerate the pace of change at certain points in time. The variation in an individual speaker's use of different parts of their linguistic repertoire can serve as a window on social change.

Is the rate of change in London English steady or uneven, based on data from London teenagers 20 years apart?

Do individual speakers display a different linguistic repertoire (i.e. use of different registers or varieties of English)?

Methods

Generations of London English is a real time study of accent change.

Sociolinguistic studies use different types of data samples:

apparent time data: different age groups at a single time point
real time data is of two types:
- trend data: groups with parallel characteristics, from multiple time points
- panel data: the same individuals re-sampled at multiple time points

Q: Which data types do you think are typically easiest versus hardest to obtain?

The answer

Here are the results for one feature: the vowel in the word GOAT. Early studies of Multicultural London English (MLE) speakers noted that they produced the GOAT vowel higher (with the tongue raised in their mouth) and further back (with the tongue further away from teeth). [See extension task for more details.]

The chart shows results for men in the top row and for women in the bottom row. Results from the 2000s are in the left column and results from the 2020s in the right column. The heights of the bars represent the proportion of words containing a GOAT vowel that were produced as the higher and more back type.

The main pattern is how similar the relative height of the bars is, in the left versus right columns. For GOAT, there is little change over time, and the same is true for a number of other variables. [See the talk video and slides for details.]