“Really this girl ought to be going to something better”: rhoticity and social meaning in oral history data

Ryan, Sadie, Dann, Holly and Drummond, Robert ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5212-5337 (2023) “Really this girl ought to be going to something better”: rhoticity and social meaning in oral history data. Language in Society, 52 (3). pp. 459-483. ISSN 0047-4045

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Abstract

This paper explores the shift to non-rhoticity in Oldham (UK), using oral history interviews recorded in the 1980s, with speakers born between 1893 and 1929. We first account for the linguistic constraints on /r/ use and explore macro-level social patterns, where the women were more advanced in the change. We investigate this finding further using a modified version of the Lectal Focusing in Interaction method (Sharma & Rampton 2015), tracking two speakers’ variation through the course of an interaction, and providing insight into the social meaning of rhoticity for these speakers. We suggest that, for them, rhoticity may be ideologically linked to tradition and older ways of life, and non-rhoticity may be ideologically linked to modernity and mobility, and the gender split may partly reflect the men and women’s differing orientations to these concepts. We also evaluate the effectiveness of applying modern methods, such as LFI analysis, to archival data.