Ascending tones as signifiers of cultural identity in northern England

¹ Moscow State Linguistic University, Department of English Phonetics, Moscow, Russia
² Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation, Department of Foreign Languages and Intercultural Communication, Moscow, Russia

^* Corresponding author: demina.malvina@gmail.com

Abstract

This study investigates prosodic patterns in dialects of Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle and Leeds that distinguish northern English pronunciation from other regional types. The authors argue that melodic cues can act as signifiers of northern English cultural identity. The empirical research included auditory and acoustic analyses of authentic speech recordings of four female and four male speakers from the listed above urban centres in northern England. The research primarily concerned intonational means and prosodic parameters of fundamental frequency (F0) and pitch range. The findings revealed both individual characteristics of each dialect and regional distinctive features common for northern speech in general with a special regard to intergender variation. The results of the research showed that the distribution of melodic patterns in northern English speech is different from the standard British pronunciation and is mainly characterized by the frequent use of rising contours in affirmative utterances. The detailed acoustic analysis of configuration and pitch range of such ascending tunes allowed the authors to describe four main variants of rising intonation in final sense-groups of declaratives. These specific melodic cues of oral speech make it possible to identify a northerner and take into account this sociocultural context, as well as other conventional implicatures in the process of cross-cultural verbal interaction.