You’ve changed your tune: intonational variation and change in Middlesbrough (and York)

Posted on 7 June 2021

York Festival of Ideas webinar on intonation patterns and regional accents

On 9 Jun 2021 Dr Sam Hellmuth (Department of Language and Linguistic Science) will give a talk hosted jointly by the Yorkshire Philosophical Society’s Café Scientifique and the York Festival of Ideas: ‘You’ve changed your tune: intonational variation and change in Middlesbrough (and York)’.

Intonation patterns form a large part of how we characterise regional accents and dialects; it is not hard to think of dialects that meet the description of having ‘sing song’ intonation, for example. However, the description and documentation of variation in intonation patterns across English dialects lags far behind our understanding of other accent features such as vowels and consonants.

The talk ‘You’ve changed your tune: intonational variation and change in Middlesbrough (and York)’ will offer a first description of Middlesbrough English intonation patterns and show that there is a stark difference in the intonation patterns used by younger and older speakers. Variation by age group is a common indicator of dialectal change, and in this case the intonational change closely matches previously documented change in Middlesbrough consonants.

The older Middlesbrough speakers use an intonation pattern which matches the stereotype of ‘a Yorkshire accent’ but there are no detailed descriptions of intonation in any North Yorkshire dialect. The presentation will close with analysis of an initial set of recordings from York speakers which shows that older York speakers do indeed use the same rise-fall intonation pattern as the older Middlesbrough speakers, but that younger speakers (recorded so far) do not, suggesting potential change in York also.

“Intonation patterns are often a key part of the impression we have about what makes a particular regional accent stand out. We also know that accent features can change from one generation to another, or when people come into contact with speakers of other accents. There has been much less study of how intonation patterns change over time but this talk reports some initial findings about intonational change in Middlesbrough, and maps out new work to investigate intonation in the city of York.” - Dr Sam Hellmuth, Dept. Language and Linguistic Science

This is joint work by Dr Sam Hellmuth and Prof. Carmen Llamas, with initial data collection funded by the International Association for Forensic Phonetics and Acoustics (IAFPA).

The event will be online via a Zoom webinar on 9 Jun 2021 at 7:30pm

For further information and to join the event: You’ve changed your tune: intonational variation and change in Middlesbrough (and York)