Humanities Research Centre Monday 22 February 2016 The media engaging linguists: a two-way street? Paul Kerswill University of York Introduction: linguistics, sociolinguistics and the media • Scientific topi s – Language is a natural phenomenon which obeys its own laws • O igi s, a uisitio , ge eti s … – It can be observed, heard, even seen – Best left to e pe ts • Expertise is not questioned and experts are allowed to fight it out – Treated like nature, or meteorology, or astronomy 2 Language in context: sociolinguistics • What happens when journalists attempt to talk about language as it is used by human beings? • Language is closely tied in with human behaviour: – associated with different nations, classes, genders, ages, and religions. There is nothing neutral or nono tested a out a of those thi gs I e listed. • So how do sociolinguists get on? 3 BBC s The O e “ho • A series of short programmes on regional accents across the UK – High production standards – Featured a number of British sociolinguists – Touched mainly on history – Interviewed local people – Non-standard speech shown in a positive light 4 The O e “ho … • But not sociolinguistically accountable – Accents and dialects seen as changing naturally and perhaps through mixing – No discussion of relationship between accent and power, including fraught relations with Received Pronunciation – In London, no discussion of race or class 5 Kiezdeutsch and Multicultural London English: • a tale of two multiethnolects 6 Multiethnolect: what’s that? • Multiethnolect is a term often applied to the speech of young people living in multicultural and multilingual districts of large cities • It s a a iet of the majority language, formed in a community with a high proportion of 2nd language speakers • It contains many new features, often not found in the majority language or in the contributing languages • Stylistic uses are often more sensitive and variable than in the case of other types of accent or dialect: 7 Who speaks it and when? • Multiethnolects occupy a continuum: Vernacular variety Youth style • Vernacular speakers are usually working class and live in areas of very high recent migration – Large number of languages, high degree of multilingualism • Elements of multiethnolects, especially slang, available to other speakers, including middle class, 8 as style Labels • Pejorative terms (invented, or at least propagated by the media): – – – – Kanak Sprak Kebabnorsk Smurfentaal Jafaican (origin obscure) – – – – Kiezdeutsch (Wiese 2012) rinkebysvenska (Kotsinas 1989) straattaal (Cornips et al.) Multicultural London English (Kerswill/Cheshire) • A ade i s te s: 9 Heike Wiese and Kiezdeutsch • Wiese, Heike. 2014. The voices of linguistic outrage: standard language constructs and the discourse on new urban dialects. Working Papers in Urban Language & Literacies 120. • Wiese, Heike, in conversation with Louise Eley and Ben Rampton. 2014. Linguist in an ideological firestorm: Personal reflections on the Kiezdeutsch controversy. Working Papers in Urban Language & Literacies 141. 10 Heike Wiese and Kiezdeutsch • In 2009, Wiese gave an invited lecture at a meeting of the German Academies of Sciences • Her topic was Kiezdeutsch • In 2009 and 2012 after the publication of her book Kiezdeutsch, she received a large number of online comments and emails, many highly charged, and many personally threatening: 11 Heike Wiese and Kiezdeutsch 12 Heike Wiese and Kiezdeutsch Four themes: Example combining elements of all four themes: 13 Multicultural London English MLE) 14 What is MLE like? • Indefinite pronoun man: I do ’t really i d how y girl looks…..it’s her perso ality man’s looking at • This is + Speaker quotative: This is me I’ fro London east •Slang: bare, ends, mandem, brudda, feds, yute, blood, merked … Ja ai a a d Af i a A e i a o igi • Pronunciation: •Strikingly different diphthongs in e.g. goat, face, price, mouth •Use of h i e.g. go home, my house … 15 When did it start? • 1950s on: Anglos (white British) and AfricanCaribbeans (mainly from Jamaica) formed the most numerous groups • Their linguistic repertoires differed: – Both Anglos and African-Caribbeans: Cockney – African-Caribbeans: London Jamaican or Patois • No MLE yet 16 The view from academe, c. 1984 • Mark Sebba and Roger Hewitt recognised the existence of this repertoire – a kind of codeswitching • But oted a i te ediate Black Cockney or multiethnic/multiracial vernacular – Apparently for use in adolescent peer groups only – So not actually a native dialect, but more a style 17 A criminologist speaks John Pitts: • Start of a new youth language among young black people in the East End in the early 1980s, when their social position began deteriorating • Pitts argues that the new dialect reflects a esista e identity . • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gd3SJ6qakyY (29 minutes in) 18 Tracing Multicultural London English in British newspapers Kerswill, Paul. . The o je tifi atio of Jafaican : the discoursal embedding of Multicultural London English in the British media. In Androutsopoulos, Jannis (ed.) The Media and Sociolinguistic Change. Berlin: De Gruyter, pp. 428–455. 19 The multiethnolect in the papers • Nexis UK database • I searched for Jafaican (Jafaikan) and Multicultural London English in July 2012 – 62 articles contained at least one occurrence of Jafaican – 29 contained Multicultural London English, of which 20 also contained Jafaican. 20 Jafaican pushes out Cockney THE Cockney accent is being pushed out of its heartland by a new kind of speech. Playgrounds and housing estates of London are alive with the sound of an accent that sounds Jamaican with flavours from West Africa and India. The Standard can reveal that this new English variety is replacing Cockney in inner London, as more white children adopt the speech patterns and vocabulary of their black neighbours and classmates. Teachers have dubbed the phenomenon Jafaican and TV's Ali G would understand it perfectly. Evening Standard 10th April 2006 21 Jafaican as contemporary, classless, modern, stylish It's significant that the message-board of the new Englishness is MySpace, the social networking website that somehow flattens out the traditional nuances of class differentiation. It's there, too, in the magpie lexicon from which the lyrics are drawn, with many of them delivered in the fertile hybrid of Cockney, the Queen's English and pretend Jamaican what's it called? Jafaican? - that is the lingua franca of young southern England. Daily Telegraph 23rd December 2006 22 Jafai a a d people i the k o End-of-year quiz in the Evening Standard, 24th December 2010: Ho did Na g, Greezy and Butters triumph in 2010? a) They are the producers who work on the X Factor winner's recordings. b) They are the stars of a new CBeebies show. c) They are "street" or "Jafaican" expressions which have overtaken Cockney slang terms. d) They are ingredients popularised by Delia Smith in her last Wait ose p o otio . 23 Time Out, 2nd August 2012 • Welcome to The London Citizenship Test. ...... You have already demonstrated adequate speaking and listening skills in London's three key dialects (Estuarine, Mockney and Jafaican) and, having attained level two Posh, are able to buy shoes confidently in Knightsbridge ... ...... 24 Jafaican asso iated ith ad so ial practices • The Independent on Sunday on 5th June 2011: Although it [a sitcom for children] dealt with teenage sex - or the lack of it - drugs, and parental rebellion, steered clear of any real issues, so there was no "Jafaican" spoken, no stabbings or gun crime, no teenage abortion. 25 Jafaican and the far right Cockneys Have Become First British Group to be Ethnically Cleansed http://www.bnp.org.uk/news/cockneys-have-becomefirst-british-group-be-ethnically-cleansed The Cockney culture and language has been eth i all lea sed f o Lo do s East E d as ass Third World immigration has pushed white people into minority status and destroyed the world-famous accent. 26 Starkey, Jamaican and the riots: just how wrong could he be? TEDxEastEnd talk, “epte e : Who s an East Ender now? Migration and the transformation of the Cockney diale t https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAnFbJ65KYM 27 David Starkey comments on the London riots, Newsnight, 13 August 2011 28 David Starkey: • The hites ha e e o e la k. A pa ti ula sort of violent, destructive, nihilistic, gangster culture has become the fashion, and black and white, boy and girl, operate in this language together, this language which is wholly false, which is this Jamaican patois that has been intruded in England, and that is why so many of us have this sense of, literally, a foreign ou t . 29 Linguist Geoff Pullum on Starkey (THE, 18 August 2011) • Did “ta ke eall ea hat he said? Well, he ga e a additional clear indication of believing that the dangerous blacks are marked out by their patois, while safe ones such as the MP for Tottenham speak white E glish. Liste to Da id La , a a het pi al su essful la k a , he said i his defe e: if ou turned the screen off, so that you were listening to him o adio, ou'd thi k he as hite. ... 30 (Pullum) • It does 't see to ha e ee a misunderstanding: Starkey honestly appears to believe that the Jamaican linguistic patterns he (wrongly) imagines he is hearing from young white Londoners come with a cultural infection that will help induce them to burn do a a pet shop. 31 “ta ke s dou le istake • He is hea i g Ja ai a , he a tuall he s hea i g MLE – Wrong attribution of foreignness • He ascribes a violent disposition directly to the language 32 19 August 2014 • Ja es Fole s kille is hea d speaki g ith a British accent • Linguists (myself included) widely interviewed, and identified the jihadist in the video as a speaker of Multicultural London English • Multi ultu al Lo do E glish appea s doze s of times on the Internet closely associated with the jihadist 33 Consequences • Media exposure makes accents more recognisable • Media discourses strongly guide the way an accent is perceived socially • MLE has become negatively stereotyped, after a ief ho e oo a ki he the te was first used by the press • The riots and (especially) the explicit mention of MLE in the context of the Foley killing may well accelerate the negative stereotyping 34 January 2016 – E azi s epla e e t • Heard as having a broadly similar accent • It is again asserted that the accent is MLE • The accent is less obvious this time, and he seems to be more often stated as having a B itish a e t 35 The uestio ou e d i g to ask ? : • Did I get any hate mail? • O l o e, a d that as fo asti g ta pa e s money • Despite media appearances over several years, we have never received more than a couple of personal letters 36 Online comments on YouTube continue E.g. on How To Do South London Accent by Jade Joddle Speaking Skills: • I am from south london and she is not speaking south london she is speaking ghetto jamaican/chav. she should learn london speak. • Very inner city jafkan talk.. Annoying! • That is the ugly, uncultured youth accent. Proper south London accent is "cockney" and sadly it is nearly extinct • You're speaking like a ghetto wannabe black thug . Not representive of a south London accent I grew up in Stockwell and it sound similar to an east end accent not like fucking that. • No..it's - Multicultural London English... and it is, of course ... absolutley disgusting....you get me!.. ;D • I am from Manchester and I think that London accent is amazing 37 What are relations really like between sociolinguists and the media? • A model of media as mediator • An online questionnaire 38 The media as mediator Affordances Linguists e pe ts Media (radio, TV, phone, online) Public la Pool of ideologies 39 Online questionnaire • Sent to 44 UK-based sociolinguists 40 1. For the particular media story in this submission, please choose one of the following: • The media outlet initially contacted me • I initially contacted the media outlet 3. What was the story about? How did you get involved? 6. Please describe how, in the final piece, you were positioned in relation to the story and to the other people involved. Were you set up in an adversarial relationship? Were there conflicting ideologies expressed in the piece? 7. To what extent did you feel your views were fairly represented? 8. Did you receive contacts from members of the public, and what did they result in? 9. What kind of follow-up was there to the story, not necessarily involving you? 10. Do ou thi k ou e e a le to i flue e a od s a tio s o ie s, including those in authority as well as other people? 41 Regional dialect Youth language Location of northsouth boundary (undergrad project; radio, TV, newspapers) Rise of Whi h la guages Multicultural are worth London English lea i g? adio (One Show – TV) Death of Cromarty dialect (radio, newspapers) Article in The Sun on the emergence of Multicultural London English (newspaper) Interview iThe Sunday Times n about Multicultural London English (newspaper) Interview on London youth language and multiculturalism , tolerance of language variation (radio) Project on stigmatised urban dialect (newspaper) Multi-lingual-ism Research on Punjabi comm. of West London (radio, TV, newspapers) Benefits of multilingualism for Brits/ London-ers (radio, news-papers) Apostrophes Accommodation, social class, linguistic pejoration LADO (Language analysis for the determi-nation of origin) and forensics LADO scandal (radio) Other Birming-ham CC abandoning apostrophes (TV, radio) Apostro-phes on signage (TV) Beckhams reducing stigmatised forms (undergrad project; radio) British pop singers sounding American (One Show – TV) LADO scandal –same one as above, different respondent (newspapers, radio, TV) Language of internet trolls and child protection issues (radio, TV, newspapers) Radio programme on language and social class (radio, then news-papers) Research on acoustic effects of facewear (radio, news-papers) Contribution to article on how men can make themselves attractive to o e Me s Health Female voices used in computer apps etc. (newspaper) Racial demonyms pejo atio (radio, news-papers) ‘ea tio to fil o ga oi es a d la g a d sexuality (newspaper) Tour de France ban on Yorkshire terms of endearment (radio) Co e t o Cla kso s use of pike adio Reaction to voice on Jihadi Joh s ideos (radio, newspapers) Aberdeen dialect (One Show – TV) Article reflecting on Teesside p i a s hool s a o slang and dialect (newspaper) Fashion words losing plural marking (radio, newspapers) Use of Kent dialect in stage vn of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (radio) Death of Cromarty dialect (radio, TV, newspapers) Article in The Sun on the language in The Only Way is Essex (newspaper) Identification of Jihadi Joh s a e t as MLE TV, newspapers) 42 Summary of results • 33 stories submitted by 15 sociolinguists • Contacts instigated by the media outlet: 31 – Story in 1 or 2 media outlets: 17 – Story in 3 – 5 media outlets: 8 – Story in 6 or more media outlets: 8 43 Were you set up in an adversarial relationship? • Yes: 3 – LADO (Language Analysis for the Determination of Origin) case – Non-use of apostrophes – ‘adio dis ussio of Cla kso s use of the word pike 44 Were there conflicting ideologies expressed in the piece? • Yes: 2 – E.g. A newspaper report on a project on a stigmatised urban dialect was given a headline focusing on the cost of the project, giving rise to a large number of vituperative online comments, while the report itself was non-conflictual. • 30 of 33 stories were considered to be neither adversarial nor involving conflicting ideologies 45 How were you positioned in relation to the story? • E pe t o esea he : 9 46 To what extent were your views fairly represented? • Ve fai l : . Fai l : • O e si plified : • Many commented on the care with which the journalists had checked and double-checked quotes and points. • In two cases, respondents felt that they had been able to change the jou alist s ie o a topi , the e ha gi g the di e tio of the sto . • A ouple of espo de ts o e ted o a s e -up o si ila . • Overall there was no difference between the newspapers in their level of accuracy and the kind of praise expressed by my respondents. But: – The s e -up was in The Independent, while The Daily Mail did a g eat jo o the same story. – In my own experience, The Sun has treated language issues fully and seriously, while The Economist and The Guardian have been flippant and/or sensationalist. • There were two comments about inappropriate and sensationalist headlines not reflecting the tone of the article. 47 Did ou i flue e a od s a tio s o views? • Yes: 2 – Story on internet trolls and child protection led to many contacts, including briefings to Parliament – Story on multilingualism in London led to positive contacts from the public, including from a business studies teacher who had noticed the use of bilingual language practices, and another who was interested in the possible economic gain arising from bilingualism • A a e ess of the issue : • No: 21 48 Conclusions 1 / 4: a responsible media? • The results did t o fi my expectations at all. • However, they did match my own positive experiences, which up to now I thought were the exception. • Newspapers and radio and TV programmes take a great deal of care in getting the story right, and will check facts and listen and respond to the linguist. 49 • There is no tendency for tabloids to be more sensationalist. – In January this year, Peter Trudgill wrote a piece in the Eastern Daily Press explaining how 19th century author Arthur ‘a so e s Norfolk dialect was inaccurate, in spite of a claim to the contrary by an amateur linguist. – The Times got hold of this, and in its Editorial nonetheless found in favour of the amateur linguist – An example of sloppy writing 50 Conclusions 2 / 4: online comments A considerable difference in online responses: • “to ies hi h a e ge e al i te est o pe haps popula s ie e gi e ise to relatively small numbers of comments. In my sample, this type of story was in a majority • Stories which deal with social norms receive a much larger number of comments, usually from starkly opposing viewpoints, reflecting class-based attitudes and interests. Thus: – Insistence on linguistic correctness vs. celebrating local speech and diversity – Maki g fu of u edu ated la guage use s. a gui g agai st this as esse tiall classist – My suspicion of the presence of trolls, some perhaps belonging to or representing the views of right-wing parties • This is an instantiation of the different ideologies which become salient • Yet eade s o e ts a e so eti es ala ed very much in favour of the non-standard varieties, suggesting a groundswell of public opinion that can be harnessed 51 Conclusions 3 / 4: impact • My respondents were pretty sure they had very little impact • Impact is two-faced, however – Sociolinguists will probably go for a liberal agenda – But impact assessors might be subject to a Dept of Education steer which has the effect of downgrading non-standard varieties of language • What we can do, and what I have done, is, through our excellent relationships with the media, to sow liberal seeds in generally non-liberal environments 52 Conclusions 4 / 4: what next? • Focus our attention on areas where sociolinguistic and lay opinion is divided: – Non-standard varieties and languages other than English in educational and occupational contexts • Tolerance and promotion of these is a well-worn callto-arms dating from the 1970s • But the media landscape is quite different now, with new affordances – new ways of reaching the kinds of people we want to reach. 53 References • Johnstone, Barbara. 2011. Making Pittsburghese: Communication Technology, Expertise, and the Discursive Construction of a Regional Dialect. Language and Communication 31: 3–15. • Ke s ill, Paul. . The o je tifi atio of Jafai a : the discoursal embedding of Multicultural London English in the British media. In Androutsopoulos, Jannis (ed.) The Media and Sociolinguistic Change. Berlin: De Gruyter, pp. 428–455. • O Hallo a , Kie a . A. : C iti al eadi g of a te t th ough its ele t o i supplement. Digital Culture & Education 2:2, 210–229. • Wiese, Heike, in conversation with Louise Eley and Ben Rampton. 2014. Linguist in an ideological firestorm: Personal reflections on the Kiezdeutsch controversy. Working Papers in Urban Language & Literacies 141. 54 • Cheshire, Jenny, Kerswill, Paul, Fox, Susan & Torgersen, Eivind. 2011. Contact, the feature pool and the speech community: The emergence of Multicultural London English. Journal of Sociolinguistics 15/2: 151–196. • Kerswill, Paul. 2013. Identity, ethnicity and place: the construction of youth language in London. In P. Auer, M. Hilpert, A. Stukenbrock & B. Szmrecsanyi (eds). Space in language and linguistics: geographical, interactional, and cognitive perspectives. Berlin: de Gruyter, pp. 128-164. • Ke s ill, Paul. . The o je tifi atio of Jafaican : the discoursal embedding of Multicultural London English in the British media. In Androutsopoulos, Jannis (ed.) The Media and Sociolinguistic Change. Berlin: De Gruyter, pp. 428–455. • Green, Jonathon. 2014. Multicultural London English: the new youthspeak . In Coleman, Julie (ed.). Global English slang: methodologies and perspectives. London: Routledge, pp. 49–61. 55