‘Cin u get aff my facebook hen?’: variation and identity marking in adolescent Glaswegian girls

Ryan, Sadie Durkacz (2014) ‘Cin u get aff my facebook hen?’: variation and identity marking in adolescent Glaswegian girls. MPhil(R) thesis, University of Glasgow.

Abstract

Chambers asserts that "adolescence requires a purposeful divergence from adult norms in favour of alternative norms instituted and reinforced by age-mates" (2009:184). Adolescents need to distinguish themselves from children and from adults. This manifests itself in language use which "differs from their parents in the frequency of certain variants" (ibid:187). I look for evidence of divergence from adult norms in the spontaneous spoken interactions of adolescent females in dance classes and youth club sessions; does this pattern of divergence emerge in the data observed? I also supplement my quantitative analysis of this spoken data with a qualitative analysis of the participants' writing on Facebook, in order to further investigate how variables are used in marking adolescent identity.

The literature shows evidence of the use of certain types of variable in identity marking (e.g. phonetic variables in Stuart-Smith et al. 2007), but there is also evidence that some types of variable do not participate (e.g. morphosyntactic variables in Macafee 1994). This may be because variables from different levels of the grammar exist at different levels of speaker awareness (Trudgill 1986, Cutler 1999, Kerswill and Williams 2002). To test this, I analyse a range of variables from different levels of the grammar. I find evidence that the adolescents are diverging from the adult norms of their speech community at the lexical level, at the morphophonological level and at the phonetic level. The morphosyntactic variable which I analyse does not appear to participate in this pattern of divergence. I suggest that this may be because it is below the level of consciousness for these speakers.

Although all of the speakers show a pattern of divergence from adult norms, their language use is not homogenous; there is evidence of individual stylistic choices being made both in the spoken data and the written data.

• Item Type: Thesis (MPhil(R))
• Qualification Level: Masters
• Keywords: sociolinguistics, variation, identity, adolescence, dialect, Glasgow, CMC, writing
• 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, Dr. Jennifer
• Date of Award: 2014
• Depositing User: Ms Sadie Durkacz Ryan
• Unique ID: glathesis:2014-5481
• Copyright: Copyright of this thesis is held by the author.
• Date Deposited: 09 Oct 2014 10:21
• Last Modified: 19 Aug 2016 13:54
• URI: https://theses.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/5481