Talkin' Jockney in Aberdeen
In Scotland is it "nae bother" or "nae bovver"? Do you "fink" or "hink" you know the answer?* The University of Aberdeen will tomorrow (Tuesday 9th March, Humanity Manse Seminar Room, at 1pm) welcome guest speaker Dr Jane Stuart-Smith, of Glasgow University's English Department, to deliver a talk called: "Talkin' Jockney: Variation and Change in Glaswegian". The talk is part of the seminar series run by the Centre for Linguistic Research at the School of Language and Literature.
Dr Stuart-Smith will explain to an Aberdeen audience her research into the effects of TV viewing on the speech of children and adolescents in Glasgow. The research challenges the theory that language changes can only be spread through face-to-face conversation, with the transmission and adoption of changes increasing as people move around the country. Instead, Dr Stuart-Smith's research shows that tendencies to adopt language habits from other areas of the UK are just as prevalent in typically non-mobile working-class adolescents who have had little or no personal contact with people from beyond Glasgow. This led Dr Stuart-Smith and her colleagues to speculate that the media, and in particular soaps, might be responsible. Dr Stuart-Smith's is the first detailed and systematic study to look at the effects of television viewing on how we pronounce language.