Standards and Variation in Urban Speech: Examples from Lowland Scots: G20 (Varieties of English Around the World) - Hardcover

Macaulay, Ronald K.S.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 9027248788 ISBN 13: 9789027248787

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 1997

Synopsis

Standards and Variation in Urban Speech is an examination and exploration of the aims and methods of sociolinguistic investigation, based on studies of Scottish urban speech. It criticially examines the implications of the notions ‘vernacular’, ‘standard language’, ‘Received Pronunciation’, ‘social class’, and ‘linguistic insecurity’. Through a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods using examples from comedians’ jokes, dialect poetry, formal and informal interviews, and personal narratives, the work illustrates the actual norms that speakers exemplify in various ways.

About this title

Review

Macaulay has assembled an interesting collection of chapters that represent his long term commitment to delineating the varieties in the Lowland Scots speech community. Additionally, he has worked to apply this information to illuminate the larger issues of standards and variation in the global community. -- Jan Bernsten, University of Michigan - Flint in Studies in Second Language Acquisition 22

Synopsis

Exploring variations in spoken English around the world, this volume looks particularly at variation in urban speech within communities of the lowlands of Scotland.

Edition details

• Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 9027248788
• ISBN 13: 9789027248787
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 211