Hostname: page-component-f554764f5-nwwvg Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-10T13:32:39.490Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Accommodation or political identity: Scottish members of the UK Parliament

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 November 2017

Lauren Hall-Lew ,
Ruth Friskney  and
James M. Scobbie
Lauren Hall-Lew
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
Ruth Friskney
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
James M. Scobbie
Affiliation:
Queen Margaret University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Phonetic variation among Scottish members of the UK Parliament may be influenced by convergence to Southern English norms (Carr & Brulard, 2006) or political identity (e.g., Hall-Lew, Coppock, & Starr, 2010). Drawing on a year's worth of political speeches (2011–2012) from 10 Scottish members of the UK Parliament (MPs), we find no acoustic evidence for the adoption of a Southern English low vowel system; rather, we find that vowel height is significantly correlated with political party: Scottish Labour Party MPs produce a higher cat vowel (Johnston, 1997) than do Scottish National Party MPs. The results contradict claims that Scottish MPs acquire Anglo-English features while serving in the UK Parliament. Rather, we suggest that the variation indexes political meaning, with a subset of individuals drawing on that indexicality in production.

Type
Research Article
Information
Language Variation and Change , Volume 29 , Issue 3 , October 2017 , pp. 341 - 363
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

REFERENCES

Abercrombie, David. (1979). The accents of Standard English in Scotland. In Aitken, A. & McArthur, T. (eds.), Languages of Scotland. Edinburgh: Chambers. 68–84.Google Scholar
Agha, Asif. (2003). The social life of cultural value. Language & Communication 23(3/4):231–273.Google Scholar
Aitken, Adam J. (1979). Scottish speech: A historical view with special reference to the Standard English of Scotland. In Aitken, A. & McArthur, T. (eds.), Languages of Scotland. Edinburgh: Chambers. 85–118.Google Scholar
Aitken, Adam J. (1981). The Scottish vowel length rule. In Benskin, M. & Samuels, M. (eds.), So meny people, longages & tonges: Philological essays in Scots & Mediaeval English presented to Angus McIntosh. Edinburgh: The Middle English Dialect Project. 131–157.Google Scholar
Baayen, R. Harald. (2008). Analyzing linguistic data: A practical introduction to statistics using R. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bell, Allan. (2016). Succeeding waves: Seeking sociolinguistic theory for the twenty-first century. In Coupland, N. (ed.), Sociolinguistics: Theoretical debates Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 391–416.Google Scholar
Berry, Richard. (2013). MPs are much less local than they would have us believe. Democratic Audit UK. Available at: http://www.democraticaudit.com/2013/07/16/mps-are-much-less-local-than-they-would-have-us-believe/. Accessed January 8, 2017.Google Scholar
Boberg, Charles. (1999). The attitudinal component of variation in American English foreign (a) nativization. Journal of Language & Social Psychology 18(1):49–61.Google Scholar
Boberg, Charles. (2009). The emergence of a new phoneme: Foreign (a) in Canadian English. Language Variation & Change 21(3):355–380.Google Scholar
Boersma, Paul, & Weenink, David. (2014). Praat: Doing phonetics by computer [Computer program]. Version 5.3.63. Available at: http://praat.org. Accessed May 19, 2015.Google Scholar
Boyd, Zachary. (2012). Phonetic variation of Scottish politicians in Holyrood. Masters Thesis, The University of Edinburgh.Google Scholar
Brulard, Inès, & Carr, Philip. (2013). Variability, unconscious accent adaptation and sense of identity: The case of RP influences on speakers of Standard Scottish English. Language Sciences 39:151–155.Google Scholar
Campbell-Kibler, Kathryn. (2010). The effect of speaker information on attitudes toward (ING). Journal of Language & Social Psychology 29(2):214–223.Google Scholar
Carr, Philip, & Brulard, Inés. (2006). Anglo-English influences on Scottish Standard English speakers: TRAP / BATH / PALM / START & LOT / CLOTH / THOUGHT / NORTH / FORCE. Scottish Language 25:31–45.Google Scholar
Chirrey, Deborah. (1999). Edinburgh: Descriptive material. In Foulkes, P. & Docherty, G. (eds.), Urban voices: Accent studies in the British Isles. London: Arnold. 223–229.Google Scholar
Collins, Ray. (2014). Building a one nation Labour Party: The Collins review into Labour Party reform. London: The Labour Party.Google Scholar
Converse, Philip E. (2006). The nature of belief systems in mass publics (1964). Critical Review, A Journal of Politics & Society 18(1–3):1–74.Google Scholar
Curtice, John. (2014) So who voted yes and who voted no? What Scotland Thinks. Available at: http://blog.whatscotlandthinks.org/2014/09/voted-yes-voted/. Accessed June 7, 2015.Google Scholar
Eckert, Penelope. (2008). Variation and the indexical field. Journal of Sociolinguistics 12(4):453–476.Google Scholar
Eckert, Penelope. (2012). Three waves of variation study: The emergence of meaning in the study of sociolinguistic variation. Annual Review of Anthropology 41:87–100.Google Scholar
Fabricius, Anne H. (2007). Variation and change in the trap and strut vowels of RP: A real time comparison of five acoustic data sets. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 37(3):293–320.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fabricius, Anne H., Watt, Dominic J. L., & Johnson, Daniel E. (2009). A comparison of three speaker-intrinsic vowel formant frequency normalisation algorithms for sociophonetics. Language Variation & Change 21(3):413–435.Google Scholar
Feldman, Stanley. (2003). Values, ideology and the structure of political ideology. In Sears, D., Huddy, L., & Jervis, R. (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Political Psychology. New York: Oxford University Press. 477–508.Google Scholar
Ferragne, Emmanuel, & Pellegrino, François. (2010). Formant frequencies of vowels in 13 accents of the British Isles. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 40(1):1–33.Google Scholar
Fowler, James H., & Kam, Cindy D. (2007). Beyond the self: Social identity, altruism, and political participation. Journal of Politics 69(3):813–827.Google Scholar
Grant, William. (1914). The Pronunciation of English in Scotland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Guy, Gregory, & Hinskens, Frans. (2016). Linguistic coherence: Systems, repertoires and speech communities. Lingua 172–173:1–9.Google Scholar
Hall-Lew, Lauren. (2010). Improved representation of variance in measures of vowel merger. Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics (POMA) 9(1):doi: 10.1121/1.3460625.Google Scholar
Hall-Lew, Lauren, Coppock, Elizabeth, & Starr, Rebecca,. (2010). Indexing political persuasion: Variation in the Iraq vowels. American Speech 85(1):91–102.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hall-Lew, Lauren, Starr, Rebecca, & Coppock, Elizabeth. (2012). Style-shifting in the U.S. Congress: The vowels of “Iraq(i)”. In Hernández-Campoy, J. & Cutillas-Espinosa, J. (eds.), Style-shifting in public: New perspectives on stylistic variation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 45–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harrell, Frank E. (2001). Regression modeling strategies. Berlin: Springer.Google Scholar
Harrington, Jonathan, Palethorpe, Sallyanne, & Watson, Catherine. (2000). Monophthongal vowel changes in Received Pronunciation: An acoustic analysis of the Queen's Christmas broadcasts. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 30:63–78.Google Scholar
Hassan, Gerry (ed.). (2009). The modern SNP: From protest to power. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Hassan, Gerry, & Shaw, Eric. (2012). The strange death of Labour Scotland. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Hay, Jennifer, Warren, Paul, & Drager, Katie. (2006). Factors influencing speech perception in the context of a merger-in-progress. Journal of Phonetics 34:458–484.Google Scholar
Huddy, Leonie. (2013) From group identity to political cohesion and commitment. In Huddy, L., Sears, D. O., & Levy, J. (eds.), Oxford handbook of political psychology. New York: Oxford University Press. 737–773.Google Scholar
Irvine, Judith T., & Gal, Susan. (2000). Language ideology & linguistic differentiation. In Kroskrity, P. (ed.), Regimes of language: Ideologies, polities, & identities. Sante Fe: School of American Research Press. 35–83.Google Scholar
Jaggers, Zachary. (2016). Practicing what the party preaches: Loanword variation, language contact, and politics. Talk presented at New Ways of Analyzing Variation (NWAV) 45. Simon Frazer University, Vancouver, BC. November 3–6.Google Scholar
Janda, Kenneth, Harmel, Robert, Edens, Christine, & Goff, Patricia. (1995). Changes in party identity: Evidence from party manifestos. Party Politics 1(2):171–196.Google Scholar
Johnston, Paul. (1984). Variation in the Standard Scottish English of Morningside. English World-Wide 4(2):133–185.Google Scholar
Johnston, Paul. (1997). Regional variation. In Jones, C. (ed.), The Edinburgh history of the Scots language. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. 378–432.Google Scholar
Johnston, Paul. (2007). Scottish English and Scots. In Britain, D. (ed.), Language in the British Isles. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 75–104.Google Scholar
Kauhanen, Henri. (2017). Neutral change. Journal of Linguistics 53(2):327–358.Google Scholar
Kementchedjhieva, Yova. (2016). Code-switching as strategically employed in political discourse. Lifespans & Styles: Undergraduate Working Papers on Intraspeaker Variation 2(1):3–9.Google Scholar
Kirkham, Sam, & Moore, Emma. (2016). Constructing social meaning in political discourse: Phonetic variation and verb processes in Ed Miliband's speeches. Language in Society 45:87–111.Google Scholar
Knoblock, Natalia. (2014). Dialect as a marker of political orientation. Paper presented at the LSA Annual Meeting. Minneapolis., January 2–5.Google Scholar
Kuperman, Victor, & Bresnan, Joan. (2012). The effects of construction probability on word durations during spontaneous incremental sentence production. Journal of Memory & Language 66:588–611.Google Scholar
Kuznetsova, Alexandra, Brockholf, Per Bruun, & Christensen, Rune Haubo Bojesen. (2014). Package `lmerTest'. CRAN. Available at: http://cran.rproject.org/web/packages/lmerTest/lmerTest.pdf. Accessed November 25, 2016.Google Scholar
Labov, William. (2010). Principles of linguistic change. Vol 3. Cognitive and cultural factors. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Labov, William, Yaeger, Malcah, & Steiner, Richard. (1972). A quantitative study of sound change in progress. Report on National Science Foundation Contract NSF-GS-3287. Philadelphia: The U.S. Regional Survey.Google Scholar
Lawson, Robert. (2011). Patterns of linguistic variation among Glaswegian adolescent males. Journal of Sociolinguistics 15(2):226–255.Google Scholar
Lawson, Robert. (ed). (2014). Sociolinguistics in Scotland. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.Google Scholar
Leech, Geoffrey N., Rayson, Paul, & Wilson, Andrew. (2001). Word frequencies in written and spoken English. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Lei, Xinyun, & Liu, Siqi. (2016). Has Barack Obama changed his language in later life? A case study of -ing/-in variation and the mouth vowel. Lifespans and Styles: Undergraduate Working Papers on Intraspeaker Variation 2(2):2–9.Google Scholar
Leith, Murray Stewart, & Soule, Daniel P.J. (2011). Political discourse and national identity in Scotland. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Lenneberg, Eric H., Chomsky, Noam, & Marx, Otto. (1967). Biological foundations of language. Vol. 68. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Library of Congress. (2014). ISO 639.2—Registration authority: Codes for the representation of names of languages. Available at: http://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/php/code_list.php. Accessed August 15, 2017.Google Scholar
Lindblom, B. (1963). Spectrographic study of vowel reduction. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 35(11):1773–1781.Google Scholar
Llamas, Carmen, Watt, Dominic, & Johnson, Daniel Ezra. (2009). Linguistic accommodation and the salience of national identity markers in a border town. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 28(4):381–407.Google Scholar
Macafee, Caroline. (2004). Scots and Scottish English. In Hickey, R. (ed.), Legacies of Colonial English: Studies in transported dialects. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 59–81.Google Scholar
Macaulay, Ronald K. S. (1977). Language, social class, and education: A Glasgow study. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
McGraw, Kathleen M. (2003). Political impressions: Formation and management. In Sears, D. O., Huddy, L., & Jervis, R. (eds.), Oxford handbook of political psychology. New York: Oxford University Press. 394–432.Google Scholar
Moon, Seung-Jae, & Lindblom, Björn. (1994). Interaction between duration, context, and speaking style in English stressed vowels. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 96(1):40–55.Google Scholar
Mugglestone, Lynda. (2007). Talking proper: The rise of accent as social symbol. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Nycz, Jennifer, & Hall-Lew, Lauren. (2014). Best practices in measuring vowel merger. Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics (POMA) 20:doi: 10.1121/1.4894063.Google Scholar
Plichta, Bartłomiej. (2006/2012). Akustyk. Available at: https://github.com/akustyk. Accessed June 9, 2015.Google Scholar
Podesva, Robert J., Reynolds, Jermay, Callier, Patrick, & Baptiste, Jessica. (2015) Constraints on the social meaning of released /t/: A production and perception study of U.S. politicians. Language Variation and Change 27:59–87.Google Scholar
R Core Team. (2014). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria.Google Scholar
Reid, Alastair J., & Pelling, Henry. (2005) A short history of the Labour Party. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Romaine, Suzanne. (1980). Stylistic variation and evaluative reactions to speech: Problems in the investigation of linguistic attitudes in Scotland. Language and Speech 23(3):213–232.Google Scholar
Romaine, Suzanne. (1985). The problem of short /a/ in Scotland. English World-Wide 6(2):165–197.Google Scholar
Schützler, Ole. (2011). Charting vowel spaces in Edinburgh middle-class speech. English World-Wide 32:1, 24–45.Google Scholar
Scobbie, Jim M., Hewlett, Nigel, & Turk, Alice E. (1999). Standard English in Edinburgh and Glasgow: The Scottish Vowel Length Rule revealed. In Foulkes, P. & Docherty, G. (eds.), Urban voices: Accent studies in the British Isles. London: Arnold. 230–245.Google Scholar
Shuken, Cynthia. (1984). Highland and Island English. In Trudgill, P. ,(ed.), Language in the British Isles. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 152–166.Google Scholar
Silva, David J., Peters, Sharon A., Duhaish, Fahad Ben, Kim, Sok-Hun, Koo, Yilmin, Marji, Lana, & Park, Junsuk. (2011). Variation in the Iraq vowels outside the public forum: The indexing of political persuasion reconsidered. American Speech 86(2):179–191.Google Scholar
Stuart-Smith, Jane. (2004). Scottish English: Phonology. In Schneider, E., Burridge, K., Kortmann, B., Mesthrie, R., & Upton, C. (eds.), A handbook of the varieties of English. Vol 1. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 47–67.Google Scholar
Stuart-Smith, Jane, Smith, Rachel, Rathcke, Tamara, Santi, Francesco Li, & Holmes, Sophie. (2011). Responding to accents after experiencing interactive or mediated speech. In Lee, W. & Zee, E. (eds.), Proceedings of the XVIIth International Congress of Phonetic Sciences. Hong Kong. 1914–1917.Google Scholar
Sutton Trust, The. (2010). The educational backgrounds of members of Parliament in 2010. Available at: https://www.suttontrust.com/research-paper/educational-backgrounds-members-parliament-2010/. Accessed August 15, 2017.Google Scholar
Wells, John C. (1982). Accents of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: File

Hall-Lew et al supplementary material 1

Hall-Lew et al supplementary material

Download Hall-Lew et al supplementary material 1(File)
File 39.8 KB