Authenticity in the Hood

Whether it’s in friends, designer handbags, or website security, one quality people always want is authenticity. Their fake counterparts are shoddy at best and damaging at worst, whether that be for your emotional health, your belongings, or the contents of your bank account.

The music is real, even if the wool on the collar is not.

In a recent paper, Pia Pichler and Nathanael Williams look specifically at the way identity is authenticated by four young men from South London. Nathanael was one of these four men, and he recorded over five hours of conversation between him and the three others. The conversation covered a range of topics, including class, race, language, fatherhood, and the US; however, the focus of this research specifically covered their discussion of hip-hop.

In order to investigate the links between identity and authenticity, Pichler and Williams draw on Silverstein’s “cultural concepts”, which describe people’s use of linguistic elements that do not have a straightforward interpretation. In order to access the meaning of those elements, you need to be part of a shared cultural sphere with the person who is using them. One example they give is that of a wine connoisseur, who uses certain terms to describe wine which might otherwise mean something different. Using these terms to convey these cultural meanings is therefore a way to indicate your affiliation with that sphere, and make it a part of your identity.

In the conversation that Nathaniel analysed, the four men frequently positioned authentic aspects of hip-hop culture against inauthentic intruders. One example is during a discussion of World Star Hip Hop, a website which features regular content about the genre, from both contributors and users. One of the men, Les, was complaining about some girls fighting on the website, specifically referring to them as “white girls from The Hills”. “The Hills” was a series that focused on the lives of white, upper-middle class women in Los Angeles; by referencing them, Les positions them against the working class and non-white culture of the website. The men also reference cultural concepts within the UK to position things. For example, Les also complains about white kids from Oxford or Cambridge proffering extended opinions on hip-hop. Given the reputation of Oxford and Cambridge as wealthy university towns, this indexes the white person he is complaining about to a middle-class background that is at odds with his supposed knowledge about a predominantly black and working-class genre. This therefore renders the person and their opinions on the best hip-hop artists as inauthentic.

Pichler and Williams also note linguistic features used by the men that are just as important to the construction of their identities. For example, when discussing his brother’s membership in a South London gang, Les says dey and dem as opposed to they and them – a feature known as DH-stopping. He also uses yout and bruv; while the use of such lexical items is not specific to the Englishes typically spoken in hip-hop, they still index an authentic background, as they are features of MLE, or Multicultural London English. As a dialect usually spoken by working class people, often of colour, in inner-city London, it is not at odds with hip-hop culture, which often draws on local dialects.

These are just some of the ways in which the participants authenticated themselves. Now consider the conversations that you have – how do you position things against one another, and what features do you use if and when you do so? You may be doing the exact same thing.

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Pichler, P., & Williams, N. (2016). Hipsters in the hood: Authenticating indexicalities in young men's hip-hop talk. Language in Society 45(4): 557-581.

This summary was written by Marina Merryweather

"The ting goes skrrra pap pap"

If you had turned on the radio even for a couple of seconds in 2017, it's highly likely that you would be familiar with Big Shaq's ironic Grime song, 'Man's Not Hot' and the now ubiquitous line 'the ting goes skrrra pap pap'. Big Shaq's pronunciation of thing as 'ting' in this line is an example of what linguists call TH-stopping - simply put, where the 'th' sound is pronounced as a 't' - and it's this variation that Rob Drummond decided to look at in the speech of adolescents in Manchester.

Drummond studied a group of adolescents at a Pupil Referral Unit (PRU) and looked at the variable pronunciation of 'th' in their speech. You may have heard 'th' pronounced as 'f' as in 'fing' or 'fink'. This is an extremely common pronunciation, particularly among young people. Drummond finds that the majority of word initial 'th' words (e.g., thing, think, thought) are pronounced with an 'f'. This is often referred to as 'TH-fronting'. However, he also finds evidence of 'th' being pronounced as 't' - often referred to as 'TH-stopping' - a somewhat unexpected finding.

Although TH-stopping occurs in some varieties of British English (e.g., Irish), 't' for 'th' isn't generally heard in the speech of English speakers living in mainland England. So it seems that 't' for 'th' is newly emerging in the speech of adolescents. 

To explain why 'th' words may be pronounced as 't', Drummond looks at the types of activities that the adolescents participate in. He finds that those who often rap and have strong identifications with 'urban' culture, such as listening to Grime music, use 't' (e.g., ting) more than their peers. This finding is interesting as TH-stopping has typically been associated with the ethnicity of the speaker. In fact, Drummond does not find any evidence to link the pronunciation of 'th' to ethnicity. 

Looking at the speech contexts where 'th' is pronounced as 't', Drummond shows that 't' is often deployed in contexts where the speaker is attempting to present themselves as 'tough' or to identify as part of a like-minded community who are interested in urban culture. 

So it seems that Roadman Shaq's 'Man's not Hot' was on to something or should that be someting?

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Drummond, Rob. 2018. Maybe it’s a grime [t]ing: TH-stopping among urban British youth. Language in Society. 1-26.

• https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404517000999
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• This summary was written by Christian Ilbury

It's her personality man's looking at

I don't mind how my girl looks.. it's her personality man's looking at 

London English has a new pronoun. Young people living in multicultural areas of the inner city use man as an alternative to I. Sometimes the meaning could be indefinite: in the caption to the picture Alex’ man pronoun could perhaps be replaced by you (in its general sense of ‘anyone’) or even one; but in other examples, like (1) below, man refers quite unambiguously to the speaker. Here Alex is telling his friend what he’d said to his girlfriend, who had annoyed him by bringing along her friends when he had arranged to meet her.

(1) didn’t I tell you man wanna come see you  . I don’t date your friends I date you (Alex)

How has this new pronoun developed? One relevant factor is that young people in multicultural areas of London now use man as a plural noun as well as a singular noun. Look, for example, at (2) and (3), where the number thirty-six and the adjective bare, ‘many’, show clearly that the noun is plural.

(2) what am I doing with over thirty-six man chasing me blud (Alex)

(3) and I ended up hanging around with bare bare man (Roshan)

Man is not the only new plural form of the noun: mens, mans and mandem are also heard in London, as well as the expected men. Mandem seems a straightforward borrowing from Jamaican Creole. The other forms result from the way that children acquire English in linguistically diverse inner city areas – in an unguided, informal fashion, in their friendship groups.  Many different varieties of English are used in these groups, resulting in much linguistic variation and linguistic flexibility (click on ‘Multicultural London English’ in the list of terms on the left to see our other posts on this new variety of English).

As a plural noun, man always refers to a group of individuals: either to people who are there with the speaker (e.g. you man are all batty boys, said by a young speaker to his friends) or to a group of people that the speaker has just been talking about. This paves the way for the development of the pronoun, since this is exactly how pronouns are used: I refers to a person who is there (the speaker), while he or she refer either to another person who is there or to a person the speaker has just mentioned. Since the plural noun man refers to a group of people, speakers can present themselves as symbolically belonging to that group. So when Alex uses man to refer to himself, as in the caption to the picture, he presents himself as a member of the group of people who think that personality is more important than looks. This gives his opinion more authority, by implying that there are others who feel the same way he does. In the same way, in (1), above, Alex refers to himself as man and by doing so portrays himself as one of a group of like-minded people who would also feel this way.

Another factor that helps explain the emergence of man as a pronoun is that the discourse-pragmatic form man is very frequent indeed in multicultural inner city London. Like other discourse markers, man has many functions, but the chief one seems to be to express emotion (as in (4)) and to construct solidarity between speakers.

(4) aah man that’s long that’s kind of long (Roshan)

Because man is used so often this way, the connotations of solidarity may spread over into its other uses – including the new use as a pronoun. So, in (5), below, Dexter is telling his friends how upset he was at not being able to use the plane ticket he had bought, because the police had arrested him. He uses you know to involve the other speakers, reinforces the fact that he had paid for the ticket himself by saying paid for my own ticket (rather than simply I’d bought a ticket), highlights the amount of money (a big three hundred and fifty pounds) and says explicitly that he was so upset. Here, using man to refer to himself is just one of many ways to emphasise the experience and look for solidarity and support from the listeners.

(5) before I got arrested man paid for my own ticket to go Jamaica you know . but I’ve never paid to go on no holiday before this time  I paid... a big three hundred and fifty pound .. I was so upset (Dexter)

In the data analysed in this paper it is almost exclusively male speakers who use the new pronoun, suggesting that it retains the meaning of the noun man. It has not yet, then, become a fully-fledged pronoun like I: only when both male and females refer to themselves as man will this have happened.

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Cheshire, Jenny (2013) Grammaticalisation in social context: The emergence of a new English pronoun. Journal of Sociolinguistics 17 (5): 608-633.

doi. 10.1111/josl.12053

This summary was written by Jenny Cheshire

Multicultural London English - part 4

A apple, a orange and a change of rule

Researchers Jenny Cheshire, Paul Kerswill, Sue Fox and Eivind Torgersen report on the use of the indefinite article (a/an) and the definite article (the) before words beginning with a vowel. In standard English the forms are roughly a and thuh before a consonant e.g. a pear, ‘thuh’ pear, and an and thee before a vowel e.g. an apple, ‘thee’ apple. Older speakers in London conform to this standard English pattern. However, some recent studies have shown that young people in London are not varying their use of the article forms but are using the pre-consonant forms in both contexts i.e. a pear but also a apple and ‘thuh’ pear but also ‘thuh’ apple.

The results from the Multicultural London English study confirm this trend. There are, however, interesting differences between the ‘Anglo’ speakers (the term used for speakers of British origin whose families had lived in the area for two or more generations and roughly equivalent to ‘white British’) and ‘non-Anglo’ speakers (speakers whose families were of more recent immigrant background). For the Anglos there is a decrease in frequency of the new forms as they get older and the researchers say that this is due to them being exposed to more competition from the input they receive – the newer forms used by their non-Anglo peers against the standard forms of their caregivers (the Anglo caregivers hardly ever used the new forms). On the other hand, the non-Anglos of all ages have very high frequency rates for the new forms and this is consistent with other studies of contact varieties of English around the world, e.g. South African English, Singapore English and African American Vernacular English.

The researchers state that this is another feature of language change which has probably come about due to the language contact situation in London. The clear patterns shown by the results of this study suggest that the dominant variants in the ‘feature pool’ (see previous post Multicultural London English - part 1) are a and thuh which are used by the majority of the non-Anglo speakers. The evidence that these forms are influencing the speech of the Anglos is shown in the fact that  the young Anglos use the new forms much more than their caregivers.

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Cheshire, J., Kerswill, P., Fox, S. and Torgersen, E. 2011. Contact, the feature pool and the speech community: the Emergence of Multicultural London English. Journal of Sociolinguistics 15/2: 151-196.

DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9841.2011.00478.x

This summary was written by Sue Fox

Multicultural London English - part 3

I was, you was, they was, we was .…….. wasn’t we?

Researchers Jenny Cheshire, Paul Kerswill, Sue Fox and Eivind Torgersen report on the use of past BE forms (i.e. was/were) in London. Although the standard English forms are was with first and third singular subjects (I was, he/she was, negative wasn’t) and were with all other subjects (you were, we were, they were, negative weren’t), it is well known that the pattern varies considerably around the English-speaking world. There are predominantly two patterns which involve non-standard forms. These patterns are both variable i.e. the non-standard forms occur alongside the standard forms:

1. Variable use of was with all subjects in positive contexts (e.g. I was but also we was, you was) and wasn’t with all subjects in negative contexts (e.g. I wasn’t but also they wasn’t, you wasn’t)

2. Variable use of was with all subjects in positive contexts (e.g. I was but also we was, you was) but weren’t with all subjects in negative contexts (e.g. we weren’t but also I weren’t, she/he weren’t)

Although the first pattern is the most common throughout the English-speaking world, it is the second pattern (i.e. was/weren’t) which is the most common in Britain (note, though, another pattern in north-west England) so that many people in Britain today will say things like we was busy; she weren’t at home; he was angry, weren’t he? (You might remember the FT article on Lord Alan Sugar’s use of you was)

In their first study of London English Linguistic Innovators: the English of Adolescents in London the researchers found that adolescents in outer London (the borough of Havering) conformed to the expected non-standard British was/weren’t pattern but in inner London (the borough of Hackney) they found that the use of was in positive contexts was increasing but that there was competition between the two non-standard negative forms of wasn’t and weren’t. The researchers give the language contact situation in London as a likely explanation for this competition. Many speakers in London come from linguistic backgrounds where the dominant pattern is was/wasn’t e.g. English Creole-influenced varieties, second-language varieties such as African and Indian English as well as interlanguage (or learner) varieties and this competes with the local vernacular variety which tended to favour a was/weren’t pattern. In the second study Multicultural London English: the emergence, acquisition and diffusion of a new variety the researchers looked to see whether one of these patterns was winning out among younger children but it seems that, for the time being at least, the two patterns exist alongside each other.

The researchers focus on a newcomer to London to try to predict future trends in the use of this feature. They examine the speech of a 12 year-old Albanian girl who lived in London between the ages of 4 and 7, then returned to Albania until she was 11, after which she returned to live permanently in London.  She uses non-standard was in positive contexts almost all of the time and her few instances of negative past tense forms are all non-standard wasn’t. Perhaps this suggests that the trend is moving towards a was/wasn’t pattern in the multiethnic areas of inner London but we will have to wait and see.

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Cheshire, J., Kerswill, P., Fox, S. and Torgersen, E. 2011. Contact, the feature pool and the speech community: the Emergence of Multicultural London English. Journal of Sociolinguistics 15/2: 151-196.

DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9841.2011.00478.x

This summary was written by Sue Fox

Multicultural London English - part 2

This is me ‘I’m from Hackney’

Researchers Jenny Cheshire, Paul Kerswill, Sue Fox and Eivind Torgersen report the use of a new quotative expression to introduce reported speech in spoken discourse. Of course, speakers use a variety of forms to introduce dialogue; the verbs SAY (e.g. she said ‘let’s go to the cinema’), GO (e.g. he went ‘let’s go to the cinema’) and THINK (e.g. I thought ‘Oh no, not the cinema again’) are among the most common introducers. In recent years there has also been an explosion in English varieties around the world in the use of BE LIKE (e.g. they were like ‘Oh, we love the cinema’). However, in inner London, the researchers have also discovered the use of the expression this is + speaker such as those given in the examples below.

this is them ‘what area are you from?’ this is me ‘I’m from Hackney’

this is my mum ‘what are you doing?’

Although the new form only accounts for a small number of the quotatives found in the London data it is nevertheless used frequently enough in young people’s speech generally for it to have been noticed by non-linguists. For example, you can hear it being used in this comedy sketch from the Armstrong and Miller show. The researchers found that the expression this is + speaker is used by adolescents and also by children as young as eight years old but none of the adults in their study used it. This points to the feature as being a fairly recent innovation but in fact there is some evidence to suggest that it has existed in the ‘feature pool’ (see our previous post) for some time; Mark Sebba found three examples in his recordings of London Jamaicans made in the 1980s and there are also examples in the Corpus of London Teenage Speech (COLT) recorded in the 1990s. The researchers say that in language contact situations such as that which exists in London, features which have been in existence for some time (but have perhaps been used infrequently) may get picked up from the feature pool causing the frequency of its use to increase. This seems to be a possibility for the increase in the use of this is + speaker.

Another interesting finding is that there is a difference in the way that the different age groups use this feature. The 12-13 year-olds and the 16-19 year-olds use this is + speaker almost exclusively to introduce reported direct speech (e.g. this is her ‘that was my sister’). However, the 8-9 year-olds use it to introduce both direct speech and non-lexicalised sound and gesture (e.g. this is me <followed by an action>). This function allows the young children to ‘perform’ the actions in the way in which they actually occurred. Furthermore, the 8-9 year-olds also use this is + speaker with non-quotative functions (e.g. he’s sitting on a chair this is him like he’s drunk or something) to describe someone’s state, feeling, action, gesture or expression.

The researchers state that the use of this is + speaker is in its early stages and that, so far, it is confined to inner London. Whether it is a short-lived phenomenon or whether it will continue to increase in frequency and spread to other regions remains to be seen. Comments welcome on the use of or further development of this fascinating language feature!

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Cheshire, J., Kerswill, P., Fox, S. and Torgersen, E. 2011. Contact, the feature pool and the speech community: the Emergence of Multicultural London English. Journal of Sociolinguistics 15/2: 151-196.

DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9841.2011.00478.x

This summary was written by Sue Fox

Multicultural London English – part 1

The term Multicultural London English (MLE) has emerged in recent years and is used to describe the distinctive range of language features used in multiethnic areas of London. Researchers Jenny Cheshire, Paul Kerswill, Sue Fox and Eivind Torgersen link the emergence of MLE with large-scale post-war immigration from developing countries. In this situation children of immigrants often shift rapidly to the majority language (in this case London English). However, majority-language speakers may be in the minority (for example, many inner London Cockney speakers moved to outer London areas in the post-war period) or there may not be much social integration between immigrant and indigenous populations (also the case in London during the first waves of immigration) and so the availability of local, native models of the majority language to the second-language learners is weakened. This means that the majority language may be acquired from other second-language speakers in what is known as a ‘group second language acquisition’ setting. In London, the researchers argue that many immigrants and subsequently their children may have acquired their London English in an unguided and informal way, mainly through friendship or kinship groups of other second-language learners.

The researchers therefore see language contact (where two or more languages come together) as an important determining factor in the emergence of MLE. They do not claim that there is direct transfer from any one language in particular but rather that it is the language contact situation itself that has led to linguistic innovations. The way that they conceptualise this is by reference to a language ‘feature pool’ which is produced from the range of different input varieties and from which speakers select different combinations of features, sometimes modifying them into new structures in the process. In the inner London area investigated in the MLE studies the input varieties consist (among others) of African Englishes, Afro-Caribbean English, Indian English and a range of interlanguage varieties which are spoken alongside traditional London English. The range of features in the pool therefore allows a great deal of scope for innovation and restructuring in inner London.

The researchers draw on two large-scale sociolinguistic studies in their report. In the first project Linguistic Innovators: the English of Adolescents in London an area of inner London (the borough of Hackney) was compared to an area of outer London (the borough of Havering) and focused primarily on adolescents aged 17-19, although elderly speakers aged 70-86 were also recorded. The second project Multicultural London English: the emergence, acquisition and diffusion of a new variety focused on Hackney again but also areas close by in the boroughs of Islington and Haringey (collectively referred to as ‘north London’). The age range for this study was much wider and consisted of recordings from speakers aged 4-5, 8-9, 12-13, 16-19, c.25 as well as some of the children’s caregivers. Each project recorded approximately between 120 -130 individuals. The adolescents (16-19 year-olds) were recorded in the Further Education colleges that they attended while the younger children were recorded in their schools or youth clubs (and sometimes at home). The caregivers and the elderly participants were mainly recorded in their homes.

Keep an eye on the next few postings – we’ll be taking a look at some of the main findings of these projects!

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Cheshire, J., Kerswill, P., Fox, S. and Torgersen, E. 2011. Contact, the feature pool and the speech community: the Emergence of Multicultural London English. Journal of Sociolinguistics 15/2: 151-196.

DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9841.2011.00478.x

This summary was written by Sue Fox