Читать книгу Levelling and diffusion in the Cumbrian city dialect of Carlisle - Sandra Jansen - Страница 8

One possible macro-linguistic outcome of dialect contact is levelling. In recent years, this geolinguistic process is a ubiquitous finding in European languages (cf. Foulkes and Docherty 1999b; Britain 2002; Kerswill 2003 for Britain; Boughton 2005 for France; Hinskens 1996 for the Netherlands). Even though many researchers had already stated that dialect features are lost, Trudgill (1986: 98) proposes a model of levelling as a process in which contact between speakers with different dialectal backgrounds leads to the levelling of local dialects. He defines levelling as “the reduction or attrition of marked1 variants” (emphasis in original).

Kerswill (2003: 224) unravels the terminological ambiguity of the term levelling in that he distinguishes between the two related concepts regional dialect levelling (= supralocalisation/diffusion) and levelling. He argues that the former concept is an outcome of geographical and social processes. The latter term should be used in the sense that Trudgill (see above) referred to it: the process of delimiting the linguistic variables of a variety.

Watt (2002) provides evidence that the local diphthongal variants of FACE and GOAT in Newcastle English are undergoing a levelling process and are replaced by the pan-northern monophthongal forms which young speakers associate with ‘modern northerners.’ They do so by adopting features which are perceived as non-local. Foulkes and Docherty (1999a: 14) point out that “it seems to be important, too, that the incoming features do not signal any other particularly well-defined variety, because of the potential signalling of disloyalty to local norms.”

Even though one can detect convergence of varieties in addition to the spread of innovative forms nationwide, these changes are locally determined and have to be analysed under this premise. “The specific attributes of any given locality are paramount in the explanation of the emergence of a supralocal variety” (Watts 2005: 19). On the surface geolinguistic processes might be accountable for variation within a variety but underlying patterns might indeed be the driving force for the variation. Thus, a detailed analysis of a change is necessary in order to detect and explain linguistic patterns.