Historically, there has been less research carried out on earwitness than eyewitness testimony. However, in some cases, earwitness evidence might play an important role in securing a conviction. This ...paper focuses on accent which is a central characteristic of voices in a forensic linguistic context. The paper focuses on two experiments (Experiment 1,
= 41; Experiment 2,
= 57) carried out with participants from a wide range of various locations around the United Kingdom to rate the accuracy and confidence in recognizing accents from voices from England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, and Ireland as well as looking at specificity of answers given and how this varies for these regions. Our findings show that accuracy is variable and that participants are more likely to be accurate when using vaguer descriptions (such as "Scottish") than being more specific. Furthermore, although participants lack the meta-linguistic ability to describe the features of accents, they are able to name particular words and pronunciations which helped them make their decision.
The Dialects of English series provides concise, accessible, authoritative, and up-to-date documentation for varieties of English, including English-based pidgins and creoles, from all over the ...English-speaking world. Written by experts who have conducted first-hand research, the volumes are the most obvious starting point for readers who would like to know more about a particular regional, urban or ethnic variety. The volumes follow a common structure, covering the context in which one clearly defined variety of English (or a number of closely related varieties) has been established as well as their phonetics and phonology, morphosyntax, lexis and social history. Each volume concludes with an annotated bibliography and some sample texts.
This article applies a historical linguistic approach to compare specific word choice before, during and after the First World War in a sample of UK newspapers and two Nottingham papers. It finds ...that language use in Nottingham newspapers was similar to UK papers but at the same time showed marked differences, possibly as a result of local characteristics, circumstances, events and developments, which suggests that people's experience of war in this city did not always follow an overall UK pattern.
This article investigates the status of the foot–strut split in the counties of Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire in the East Midlands of England. The East Midlands area is a linguistic ...transition zone between northern English varieties with a phoneme inventory of five short vowels, where foot and strut are represented by the same phoneme, and southern English varieties which have the foot–strut split and therefore six short vowels. However, a lack of research on the distribution of the foot and strut vowels in the East Midlands exists and to fill that gap, this article examines the possible diffusion of the split northwards as predicted by Trudgill (1986). Reading-passage data, stratified by age group, sex and location is used to provide an apparent time, multilocal view on the distribution of the two vowel categories. Surprisingly, the changes that we notice do not concern the increasing distance between foot and strut but mainly foot-fronting in Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire and strut-retraction in Derbyshire which leads to an increase in overlap between foot and strut in all three counties.
The UK currently lacks a national framework for safeguarding intangible cultural heritage (ICH). ICH represents 'living cultural expressions and practices, which are recognised by communities as ...distinct aspects of identity' (Alivizatou-Barakou et al. 2017, 129). We argue that language, including dialects, accents and lexicons of UK communities, must be included within approaches which aim to safeguard ICH. As a 'repository'(Bialostocka 2017) of community practices, language is central to individual and shared identities and feelings of 'belonging'(Sarma 2015). This paper challenges perceptions that the UK has no ICH (see Waterton and Smith 2009) through a case study of 'pit talk' in the East Midlands. It draws on approaches being taken on local or regional levels to preserve and revitalise language heritage (e.g. Howell 2013; ICH Scotland n.d.). We explore the potential benefits, disadvantages and limitations of the UK ratifying UNESCO's Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage 2003. Although we argue that this would be a positive step towards protecting ICH in the UK, we propose that a UK-wide framework, which places community needs at its heart, is key to safeguarding language heritage for future generations.
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