Comparing variation in Glaswegian scripted and spontaneous speech: a sociolinguistic study

Drummond, Heather (2017) Comparing variation in Glaswegian scripted and spontaneous speech: a sociolinguistic study. MRes thesis, University of Glasgow.

Abstract

Previous research on the Glasgow dialect identifies two salient variables of Glaswegian speech: T-glottalling and non-standard negation. Research has shown that these are stratified by age, class and gender. In this thesis I contribute to the research on these variables through the comparison of spontaneous and scripted speech data: specifically, I aim to determine whether the patterns found in the spontaneous speech of elderly working-class Glaswegian males are replicated in scripted dialogue.
To answer this question I analyse the speech of four characters from the popular comedy series Still Game and sociolinguistic interview data from the socially-stratified real-time corpus, Sounds of the City. I employ methods from variationist sociolinguistics to uncover the quantitative patterns of variant use.
The findings show a high rate of T-glottalling in both the spontaneous and scripted speech, with spontaneous speech featuring slightly more T-glottalling than scripted. However, non-standard negative variants are shown to appear considerably more frequently in the scripted data than the spontaneous. In terms of patterns of use in both the scripted and spontaneous speech datasets and for both of the linguistic variables examined, the use of standard or non-standard variants is found to be clearly influenced by linguistic constraints such as phonetic context, sentence type and verb, although to different extents between the two sets of speakers.
Based on the levels of use of T-glottalling and non-standard negation in scripted and spontaneous speech, I argue that the scripted dialect spoken by characters in fictional television shows set in Glasgow, although similar to spontaneous speech in some regards, is not an entirely accurate representation of working-class Glaswegian speech.

• Item Type: Thesis (MRes)
• Qualification Level: Masters
• Keywords: Glaswegian speech, Glasgow dialect, Glasgow, fictional speech, scripted speech, elderly speech, working-class speech, elderly male speech, elderly Glaswegian speech, Still Game.
• Subjects: P Language and Literature > PE English
• Colleges/Schools: College of Arts & Humanities > School of Critical Studies > English Language and Linguistics
• Supervisor's Name: Smith, Professor Jennifer
• Date of Award: 2017
• Depositing User: Miss Heather Drummond
• Unique ID: glathesis:2017-8043
• Copyright: Copyright of this thesis is held by the author.
• Date Deposited: 04 May 2017 11:37
• Last Modified: 10 Jun 2017 12:23
• URI: https://theses.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/8043