27.3338, Disc: Review of 'Researching Northern English'

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LINGUIST List: Vol-27-3338. Fri Aug 19 2016. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 27.3338, Disc: Review of 'Researching Northern English'

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Date: Fri, 19 Aug 2016 14:03:35
From: Patrick Honeybone [patrick.honeybone at ed.ac.uk]
Subject: Review of 'Researching Northern English'

 
Read Review: http://linguistlist.org/issues/27/27-2947.html 

Geoffrey Sampson's review of the volume 'Researching Northern English'
(http://linguistlist.org/issues/27/27-2947.html), published in the Linguist
List on 13th July, does not meet academic standards and cannot be allowed to
stand unchallenged.

Sampson admits that he is not really qualified to review work on Northern
English (''I should warn readers that I have not myself engaged in systematic
empirical research on it'') and this is unfortunately clear from his comments.
For example, Sampson writes: ''Contrast the absence of STRUT with the use of
'tret' (rather than 'treated') as the past tense of 'treat'. My impression is
that 'tret' may be restricted to the North-East, but there it is absolutely
normal, and those who use it do not appear to think of it as non-standard.''
This shows the problems with the review. Firstly, Sampson’s claim about the
data is wrong: 'tret' is by no means restricted to the North-East (Petyt 1985
- a volume which is something of a classic for those who study Northern
English - shows it to be found in West Yorkshire as well, for example), and
secondly, professional linguists will not be interested in Sampson’s anecdotal
'impressions' about the geographical distribution of linguistic features or
about people's perceptions of them.

Another example: in discussing cases where Sampson ''would take issue with
factual assertions'' in the book, he addresses Definite Article Reduction, and
writes that ''Barras says that an interdental fricative also occurs, but he
transcribes this with the symbol for the voiceless fricative – I wonder
whether it is ever voiceless.'' This betrays ignorance about the linguistic
patterning of the phenomenon. While voiceless dental fricative realisations of
the definite article may not be the most common, Jones (2002) - another
well-known piece among those who research Northern English - shows that such
forms are widely attested, including in the Survey of English Dialects
materials. Unsystematic personal experience of linguistic features should not
outweigh expert linguistic study, and has no place in an academic review.

The most ill-considered aspect of Sampson's review is the fact that he
dismisses a whole branch of linguistic study out of hand. Apparently
unfamiliar with perceptual dialectology, he singles out two chapters in the
volume which engage with perceptual dialectological issues as
''misconceived''. Beal & Cooper's chapter describes how perceptions of English
in the north of England (and in Yorkshire in particular) have developed during
the history of the language, and Montgomery's chapter investigates
non-linguists' perceptions of a linguistic north-south divide in England.
These are important issues for those of us who are academically interested in
English from the north of England.

Sampson, however, dismisses Beal & Cooper's chapter, writing that ''[i]t is
not as though 'Yorkshire English' were a linguistic reality''. But this is not
for Sampson to say! The political reorganisation that he mentions obviously
occurred and - equally obviously - ''isoglosses do not necessarily coincide
with administrative boundaries'', but speakers' perceptions of linguistic
systems are psychologically real and are legitimate objects of linguistic
investigation.Those working in the paradigm of perceptual dialectology have
been developing subtle tools to investigate this aspect of speakers' knowledge
about language for decades (one important survey is Preston 1999). Sampson
discusses ''what the average Briton understands by the phrase 'North of
England''', as if he knows what that is, and as if what (he believes) people
think about language should substitute for academic study of those opinions.
Perceptual dialectology allows us to actually investigate and understand what
those opinions are.

I write as someone with an academic interest in English from the north of
England (full disclosure: I know many of the authors in the book, although I
am not one myself). I do not write to protest that 'Researching Northern
English' is perfect - how could any edited collection be that? - but I do
protest that Sampson's review of the volume has obvious and fundamental flaws.

REFERENCES

Jones, Mark. 2002. The origin of Definite Article Reduction in northern
English dialects: evidence from dialect allomorphy. _English Language and
Linguistics_ 6. 325-345.

Petyt, K. M. 1985. _Dialect and accent in industrial West Yorkshire_.
Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Preston, Dennis (ed.). 1999. _The handbook of Perceptual Dialectology_. Volume
I. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.



Linguistic Field(s): Historical Linguistics
                     Sociolinguistics

Subject Language(s): English (eng)



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