Researching Urban Youth Language and Identity 331973461X, 9783319734613

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RESEARCHING Urban Youth Language and Identity

Rob Drummond

Researching Urban Youth Language and Identity

Rob Drummond

Researching Urban Youth Language and Identity

Rob Drummond Department of Languages, Information and Communication Manchester Metropolitan University Manchester, UK

ISBN 978-3-319-73461-3    ISBN 978-3-319-73462-0 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73462-0 Library of Congress Control Number: 2018933608 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

To Lynda, Maya, Cassia, and Isaac This is what I’ve been doing in the shed.

Preface

This book, although limited to an academic year of ethnographic observation, represents the culmination of a number of years of thought and research into urban youth language. It also represents a period of serious reflection on the process of carrying out sociolinguistic research. My belief is that it will be of value to two core groups of people. Firstly, those who work within, or have an interest in, sociolinguistics at any level or in any area. Secondly, those who work with, or who have an interest in the lives of, young people. My hope is that it will also be of interest more widely to anyone who has any connection to the study of language, or with the process of linguistic, ethnographic, or youth-oriented research. Numerous people have helped in the creation of this book. For insightful comments on various drafts (as well as general and invaluable support), I would like to thank Manchester Metropolitan colleagues Huw Bell, Erin Carrie, and Sam Larner. I would also like to thank colleagues from other institutions who kindly agreed to read and comment on the full text: Mark Brenchley, Sam Kirkham, Kenny Richardson, Sarah Spencer, and Kevin Watson. Their combined feedback was extremely useful in reframing some fundamental aspects of the writing. Thanks also to my eldest daughter Maya, who read an early draft and said, ‘It’s good. Better than I thought it was going to be.’ For financial support and research leave time in relation to the writing of the book, I am very grateful to the faculty of Arts and Humanities and vii

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the Department of Languages, Information and Communications at Manchester Met, particularly Berthold Schoene and Derek Bousfield. Thanks especially to Derek and the Department for paying for the services of the wonderful illustrator that is Andrew Chiu (see Chap. 8). For taking the burden of our shared teaching and other responsibilities at various times throughout this process, I am additionally grateful to my Manchester Voices partner, colleague, and friend, Erin Carrie. For help with transcription, I thank Emma Cieslar, Josh Dray-Reid, Oscar Greco, Agata Juszczyk, Grace Thompson, and Annie Wainwright. Thanks to the Leverhulme Trust, for providing the funding that made the research possible in the first place. Thanks to the Manchester Centre for Youth Studies for supporting the project into the future.  Special thanks to Susan Dray, my research partner. Her involvement made the whole project immeasurably stronger right from the beginning, and I learned an incredible amount from working with her. She taught me to look more critically and question some of the assumptions that surround us as sociolinguists, and that has made me a better researcher. I am lucky enough to have a very supportive family. Thanks to my wife Lynda, and my children Maya, Cassia, and Isaac, for helping me keep everything in perspective. Usually. Most of all, I am grateful to the staff and students at the Manchester Secondary Pupil Referral Unit. Without their continued support and enthusiasm, the project simply wouldn’t have happened. Thanks to Helen McAndrew, Tricia Egan, and Andy Vaughton for helping us get the project up and running at the beginning. Every single member of staff in the centres, without exception, was friendly and welcoming, but I do want to express particular thanks to Roger, Kirsty, Paul, Phil, Fran, Andy, Liz, Lara, and Russell, who went out of their way to help make the project a success. Manchester, UK

Rob Drummond

Contents

1 Introduction   1 1.1 What This Book Is About   1 1.2 Setting the Scene   3 1.3 Aims and Research Questions   9 1.4 Why Manchester?  13 1.5 Why Is This Kind of Study Important?  14 1.6 Beginning the Project  14 References  17 2 The Research Context  21 2.1 The PRU  21 2.2 ‘Our’ Centres  23 2.3 PRU Identities  34 2.4 Summary  42 References  44 3 Our Roles and Identities  47 3.1 Rob  48 3.2 Susan  49 3.3 Our Roles and Identities in the Centres  50 ix

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3.4 How We Were Perceived  56 References  58 4 Methods  59 4.1 Rob and a Variationist Approach  60 4.2 Susan and an Ethnographic/Interactional Approach  65 4.3 A Clash of Cultures  66 4.4 Our Combined Approach  76 4.5 Practicalities  81 4.6 What We Learned  94 4.7 Conclusion  95 References  97 5 A Year in the Life of the PRU 103 5.1 About the Chapter 103 5.2 Meadow Cross 105 5.3 Ashbourne 149 5.4 Comment 183 References 188 6 Manchester Youth Language 191 6.1 About the Chapter 191 6.2 Orientations 194 6.3 Vowels and Consonants 198 6.4 Quotatives 209 6.5 Lexis 215 6.6 Summary and the Elephants in the Room 221 References 225 7 TH-Stopping, Ethnicity, and Grime 229 7.1 TH-Stopping and DH-Stopping 229 7.2 Ethnicity 231 7.3 Data and Analysis 233 References 251

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8 Giving Back 255 8.1 Just Being There 257 8.2 Mock Interviews 259 8.3 Raising Awareness of the Value of Non-­standard Language260 8.4 Comic Art Scenarios 261 8.5 Update 268 References 268 9 Final Thoughts 269 9.1 The Project 269 9.2 The Book 271 9.3 Final Reflection 271 References 272 Author Index 273 Subject Index 277

Transcription Conventions

[ ] (.) (sec) ((laughter)) (unclear) : underline < >

overlapping speech pause of less than one second pause times in seconds contextual or paralinguistic information unintelligible speech lengthening emphatic stress transcriber comment phonetic transcription

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List of Figures

Fig. 6.1 The urban/street-style orientation scale Fig. 6.2 Mean values for each vowel across all 11 speakers. Normalised using the modified Watt and Fabricius method Fig. 6.3 Boxplot of F2–F1 for 11 speakers in the production of happy, showing context of the tokens. Speakers ordered according to their position on the urban/street-style orientation scale Fig. 6.4 Boxplot of F2–F1 for 11 speakers in the production of letter, showing context of the tokens. Speakers ordered according to their position on the urban/street-style orientation scale Fig. 6.5 Mean values for each vowel across all 11 speakers, with the inclusion of two additional variants of letter and happy. Normalised using the modified Watt and Fabricius method Fig. 6.6 Quotative use in the PRU, separated by speaker sex and compared with MLE and a sample from the NECTE2 corpus Fig. 6.7 The range of quotatives used by each individual, arranged by use of say. Total number of tokens for each speaker in brackets Fig. 7.1 Distribution of the 819 [θ, f, t] (TH) tokens, ordered from the right by frequency of [t]. Twenty-five speakers Fig. 8.1 The Cage Fig. 8.2 The Purple Pen

198 200 202 206 207 212 214 235 263 264

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List of Tables

Table 2.1 Key centre staff 26 Table 2.2 The young people. Pseudonym, sex, year group, appearance, and personality 31 Table 2.3 Labels given to particular individuals indicating possible social groupings 40 Table 5.1 Staff and students at Meadow Cross 105 Table 5.2 Staff and students at Ashbourne 149 Table 7.1 Self-reported ethnicities for each individual 232 Table 7.2 Overall results of the auditory analysis for (TH) 234 Table 7.3 Independent variables for the regression analysis 236 Table 7.4 Regression analysis (Rbrul) of the effect of linguistic and social factors on the realisation of voiceless ‘th’ – 22 speakers with > 10 tokens 237 Table 7.5 Use of [t] and other ‘th’ variants divided by speaker ethnicity. Percentages show proportion of total tokens for that group 238 Table 7.6 Regression analysis (Rbrul) of the effect of linguistic and social factors on the realisation of voiceless ‘th’ – nine speakers who produced [t] 240 Table 7.7 Regression analysis (Rbrul) of the effect of linguistic and social factors on the realisation of voiceless ‘th’ – only ‘thing’ words241

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1 Introduction

1.1 What This Book Is About This book is fundamentally a description of an ethnographic research project carried out among urban adolescents in Manchester, UK, between July 2014 and July 2016 by Rob Drummond and Susan Dray, two academics from different research backgrounds within the broad field of sociolinguistics. It is a deeply personal account of the process of research, with all the highs and lows, successes and failures, practical and theoretical challenges laid bare. It contains some linguistic description and analysis, particularly in Chaps. 6 and 7, but the overall focus of the book is on the context of the research and the process of carrying it out, from initial idea to the writing of this book. I mention the fact that Susan and I came from different research backgrounds only because (a) this was a central and conscious decision in the setting up of the project—to use two contrasting yet hopefully complementary approaches, and (b) these different ways of doing things (and different ways of even seeing the world) are responsible for much of the discussion and many of the insights in the following chapters. Within a month of starting the project, we knew that we should capitalise on the process of confronting our differing approaches to sociolinguistic © The Author(s) 2018 R. Drummond, Researching Urban Youth Language and Identity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73462-0_1

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research, as these differences generated such fruitful discussions between us and made us reflect on our own disciplines as much as on what we were learning about each other’s. Very early on we decided that these challenges should be a key theme of the book, hopefully helping others to find their own way through a collaborative piece of research. The fact that there is only one obvious author of this book might suggest that this collaborative experiment ultimately failed, but this is true only in a very limited sense. The project as it is presented here is immeasurably better, stronger, and more insightful than it would have been had we not been through the collaborative process. The fact that it is my voice which remains is simply due to the idiosyncrasies of academic life and the fact that as the instigator of the project, there is a sense in which it will always be ‘mine’ primarily. I can’t help thinking that the book is more focused, accessible, and readable as a result of there being only one author (the different disciplines tend to write as well as conduct research in different ways), but this author could just as well have been Susan as me. Susan’s personal voice remains, especially in Chap. 5 which uses extensive extracts directly from her field notes, and Chap. 4, which is in part based on something we wrote together for another publication (Dray and Drummond 2018), but the themes and arguments are mine or are my interpretations of the many discussions we had. I say this not to take credit, but more to let Susan off the hook, as she might not agree with the direction or focus of some of the analysis. The book is structured as follows. The rest of this chapter sets the scene for the research, explaining the purpose behind it and describing the journey towards getting it started. Chapter 2 provides the context—it describes the research sites (two learning centres within the Manchester Secondary Pupil Referral Unit [PRU]), the staff, and, most importantly, the young people. Chapter 3 outlines our roles and identities within the research project; it looks at the different ways we were perceived by the young people, as well as how we perceived ourselves in each of the centres we were working in. Chapter 4 provides the methodology for the research and discusses the ways in which mine and Susan’s approaches often differed, sometimes clashed, and frequently enlightened one another, both theoretically and practically. In doing so, it offers insights into how one might approach such collaborative research in the future. Chapter 5

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offers a unique view of life in the two centres, made up almost entirely of extracts from our research diaries written at the time. The narrative is interspersed with reflective comments on either methodological or linguistic points of interest, as they emerge. Chapter 6 is a descriptive linguistic illustration, offering a detailed overview of three aspects of the language of the young people: vowels, quotatives, and lexis. Chapter 7 provides, in many ways, a self-contained study of one particular linguistic feature—TH-stopping—and its relationship with ethnicity by combining variationist and interactional analysis. Chapter 8 describes the impact of the project, highlighting the importance of ensuring our research has meaningful benefits to society, however defined. And finally, Chapter. 9 serves as a conclusion, bringing together the main themes and findings of the book.

1.2 Setting the Scene Although the project itself officially began on 21 July 2014, the real beginning is much earlier. July 21st marks Susan’s first day at work, the first entries in our new fieldwork diaries, and the day on which we started discussing the practicalities of entering the research sites in the following September. But getting to that point was a small adventure all of its own. I’m not talking about the ins and outs of securing research funding (although aspects of this will be covered in due course), but rather the process of getting to the stage whereby we were to be welcomed into two PRU learning centres with pretty much unlimited access. In some ways I’d like to say that the journey to this point was a well-thought-out, well-­ organised, and entirely pre-planned series of events. I’d like to say that I had identified an interesting sociolinguistic context, and, driven by some realistic and entirely appropriate research questions, had gone about ensuring the most effective and straightforward route towards a practical and timely investigation. In other ways, I look back with relish at the haphazard and incident-filled reality that had led me to where I was. Although the final project was indeed well planned, the underlying sense of unpredictability so evident at the beginning is much more in keeping with the tone of the project in general.

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The ‘Pre-pilot’ September–October 2012 What I now call the ‘pre-pilot’ study began in September 2012, when I received a small amount of money from Manchester Met to carry out some exploratory work into what I was calling ‘Multicultural Manchester English’—basically seeing if there was any potential in looking for a Manchester equivalent of the Multicultural London English (MLE)1 identified by Cheshire et al. (2011). My inclination was that there would indeed be a comparable variety, as I had, for quite a long time, been aware of hearing young people use something that could be described along these lines. For the purposes of the pre-pilot, I was interested in analysing the speech of a few young people in Manchester, with a view to using the findings to inform a possible larger project. I wasn’t aiming to be representative—I simply wanted to find some likely users of an ‘urban’ variety of language to see if there was something worth pursuing. Having asked some colleagues for suggestions, I was given vague details of some kind of unofficial youth club, which was apparently based at a run-down cinema in a fairly deprived area of Manchester. I didn’t know much more than the location of the cinema, and the fact that there were people there most evenings. Keen to make a start on the project, I soon found myself standing outside a boarded-up cinema in a not-sodesirable area of Manchester, in the rain, in the dark, on a September evening. After about half an hour of waiting, and not really knowing what to do, the fire door opened and two young men in their late teens asked what I wanted. I explained as best I could and was invited inside, up some stairs, to a forlorn-looking space, damp and badly lit, from which I could see the old cinema auditorium. To my left there was a small group of men of various ages gathered around an electric heater in a kind of side room. Again I explained who I was and what I was doing, constantly dropping in the name of the colleague who had given me the information, albeit to no recognition and a fair bit of bewilderment. After a while, it was suggested that it was ‘Terry’ I needed, and I was given a phone number, as he wasn’t around today. I thanked everyone, said my goodbyes, and left, taking with me all my white middle-class

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awkwardness and already entering Terry’s number into the burner phone bought specifically for this project (yes, I had been watching The Wire, and no, it wasn’t necessary). Fast forward a few weeks and I find myself driving Terry in my car through the streets of Moss Side2 on a dark October evening, listening to The Specials in a naïve bid to take the edge off my fish-out-of-water status. This was our second meeting and somehow I had graduated to being Terry’s personal driver, as there were some ‘things he needed to take care of ’. In return, he would introduce me to a few people who ‘owed him favours’ and would therefore be happy to take part in my project. We did indeed meet some people, on the street, in their houses, in other people’s houses, and it gradually became clear that Terry was well known, well liked, well respected, and perhaps slightly feared. The various meetings were short, but I was gathering contacts all the same, making a mental note of who might be good to approach at a later date, in a perhaps slightly less bizarre context. We ended the evening at a youth club. As usual, Terry was welcomed with open arms by the staff, and I was well treated by association. I got speaking to one of the organisers, who seemed genuinely interested in what I was trying to do and said she’d be happy to help if she could. The problem, however, was that the kids there were younger than I wanted—I was aiming at the time for 16- to 18-year-olds and these were 10 to 14. She then suggested that I come along during the day, as the building was used for an organisation that caters for kids who have been excluded from mainstream school and they were a bit older. This, although I didn’t know it at the time, was to be my first introduction to the Manchester Secondary PRU.3 Well, kind of. I did go back during the day, and I met the staff, all of whom seemed interested and supportive. The place itself was quite unusual; what had seemed fine for a youth club the previous evening now looked wrong as a ‘school’. There were no real classrooms as such, just a number of small rooms of varying suitability dotted around the building, with a large open space in the middle. One of the teachers was putting some kind of a display along one of the walls, although he told me later that such displays don’t tend to stay up and in one piece for long. Then the young

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people started arriving. I was vaguely introduced where necessary, before attempting to melt into the background as the day unfolded. I didn’t know what to expect, but I don’t think it was this. Firstly, there were very few pupils, around eight or nine at most. But there seemed to be plenty of staff milling around, including one whose main job seemed to be to patrol the various rooms, steering people towards class and then making sure they stayed there, but all the time on the alert for an incident in another part of the building. Once in class, there was an attempt at getting the young people to do something approaching work, but it was mostly a fruitless endeavour. Members of staff encouraged and cajoled with various levels of insistence and commitment, but in return were largely ignored or sworn at. Attention was fleeting, engagement was almost non-existent, and actual productive ‘work’ was entirely absent, at least to my untrained eye. Students were literally rounded up and contained for ‘lessons’, and then let loose again at the frequent break times to play pool, walk outside, and smoke. In between, I had permission to approach some of the young people and ask if they’d mind talking to me, and perhaps be recorded at a later date. Every now and then I’d get lucky and one would sit down with me for five minutes. I’ll be honest, we rarely got past the description of the project and the fact that I needed signed consent. Staff members were generally happy to talk to me, and I started to get a better sense of the situation they found themselves in. It was a situation in which they took whatever flack was necessary in order to make the occasional breakthroughs that might just give the young people a chance in at least some of their looming exams. I did have some useful conversations while I was there, and one in particular sticks in my mind. I was talking to two boys in a seating area near the pool table, telling them about the project. Things were going fine until a third boy appeared, holding a chair, looking like he was going to throw it at the other two. One of the seated boys egged him on, saying he wouldn’t dare. He was wrong. As the chair clattered into them, both boys sprang to their feet and chased the thrower, who sprinted away and took refuge in a classroom and closed the door. I then watched, not quite knowing what to do, as the two boys started kicking and punching the

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door, determined to get in. A member of staff arrived before they managed it, but I genuinely didn’t know what would have happened if he hadn’t. These were 15- or 16-year-old boys with a lot of strength, a lot of aggression, and a lot of determination. Maybe they were just playing, I don’t know. I like to assume I would have stepped in at some point if things had got really out of hand (although to what effect I can’t be sure), but I know that even then I was very conscious of my conflicting roles as an observer, a researcher, yet as an adult. This was to be a conflict that would emerge frequently in the coming years. I referred to that incident, among others, in a couple of conference talks I gave at that time, to serve as a bit of background to the research environment I found myself in. Looking back, I’m quite uncomfortable with the fact that I used them in this way—a way that, with hindsight, seems to be some kind of an attempt to make my research sound edgy and even a little bit dangerous. There is no doubt that the events sounded very dramatic. In my defence, the incident did happen as I described it, and it was, albeit in my limited experience, a fair representation of life in that learning centre. Such outbursts were common, and I just happened to be right on the spot when one occurred. However, what I would later learn is that while the incident was representative of that learning centre, that particular centre was not at all representative of the PRU in general, run as it was by an organisation outside the official PRU system. Similar incidents do happen in all PRU learning centres, certainly in the two we were at, but they don’t happen nearly as often as they did in that one. Tempers flare daily, and fights occur occasionally, but they are dealt with swiftly and effectively, with staff on hand far more quickly. So having been introduced to both the concept of a PRU learning centre and indirectly to the PRU itself, I was now in a position to make the necessary contacts, gain the necessary permissions, and leave behind the ad hoc ethical approval adjustments and applications, enabling me to begin a proper pilot study. The journey to this security had been eventful, frustrating, but not to be missed. I kept in touch with Terry for a while and let him know how grateful I was for leading me inadvertently to one of the most rewarding environments in which I have ever worked.

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The Pilot September–December 2013 In September 2013 I began a properly organised and fully supported pilot study in two learning centres within Manchester Secondary PRU. The two centres had been identified in discussions with PRU senior management as ones which were, by and large, representative of their overall provision, and which were run by staff who, it was felt, would be supportive and interested in the project. I spent two months visiting the two centres, engaging in the day-to-day activities in both as far as I was able. I began to appreciate the hard work and emotional commitment that is involved in running a safe and effective learning centre, and watched in admiration as staff dealt with issues at every level of severity on a daily or weekly basis. I also got to spend a lot of time with the young people, whose acceptance of me ranged from complete (good-humoured ongoing table tennis battles and an interest in the project), to partial (happy to talk to me but refusing to be recorded ‘in case I was Fed4’), to non-existent (‘Who is that bald guy, and why is he still here?’). I learnt a huge amount during my time at the centres, and I was genuinely sad when the project came to an end. At one of the centres, I was presented with a card with messages of thanks and good luck, signed by the young people as well as the staff. I’m not naïve enough to think that the card was instigated by the young people, and I can picture the scene of one of the staff members chasing down reluctant individuals, presenting them with a pen, and forcing them to write their names alongside semidictated messages. However, having seen for myself how hard it can be to get some of them to focus on anything at all, the fact that the signed card existed in the first place was something special. It also made me start to realise that the relationship I had with the centres was not completely onesided. Whereas I was constantly aware that I was intruding in their world and that they were doing me a favour, I hadn’t appreciated that some of the young people, and several of the staff, actually enjoyed me being there. I was someone different; I was a link to a world with which the young people especially were unlikely to have had any previous contact. Moreover, I was someone from ‘the outside’ who was taking a genuine interest in a group of people who are so often ignored or forgotten.

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I’m not going to describe the pilot study in any detail here due to the fact that the learning centres, and some of the people in them, are the same ones that feature in the main study—the focus of this book. As the pilot study took place before I had been introduced to the benefits of proper ethnographic observational note-taking, I would not be doing the people justice and would therefore prefer the relevant characters to emerge more fully as the story unfolds. I will, however, refer back to some of the data and experiences as and when they inform those of the main study. Suffice to say that there was not a day without incident, and the process was a vital part of allowing us to hit the ground running when the main project began. Crucially, I was able to use the experiences of the pilot study to directly inform the final stages of the funding application which, if successful, would enable me to carry out the full study. In March 2014 I received a letter from the Leverhulme Trust to say that they were willing to fund my research project entitled Expressing Inner-City Youth Identity Through Multicultural Urban British English. The funding application had been made with the full support of the staff both in the centres and higher up in PRU management, and the process itself had been helped enormously by particular Research and Knowledge Exchange staff at Manchester Met. As this represents the point at which the project became very much real and very much formalised, it seems a good time to look at its aims and research questions.

1.3 Aims and Research Questions The primary aim of the whole project is to explore the ways in which young people enact identities through linguistic (and non-linguistic) practices, and how these identities are perceived differently by the young people themselves, by the adults who come into contact with them, and by wider society. At the time of the pilot study, and when I was applying for funding in order to carry out the project, there were frequent stories in the mainstream media concerning the language of young people. These stories would almost always be negative, stigmatising groups of young people as ‘uneducated’ or ‘unemployable’ because of the way they speak. Commentators would refer to the ‘ghetto grammar’ (Johns 2011, 2013,

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2014) or ‘black street patois’ (Delingpole 2011) of young people, who were ‘literally talking their way into unemployment’ (Harding 2013). This underlying negativity and possible prejudice made it all the more important that the actual language of young people be explored and examined properly. What these various stories always fail to acknowledge is that we are all capable of adapting our language according to the context we find ourselves in. Admittedly, some people are more adept at this than others, due to factors such as our previous exposure to different ways of speaking and our experience in different social and linguistic contexts. But for some reason there seems to be a belief that young people, at least the ones the media stories are referring to, are not able to do this. While I wasn’t particularly interested in setting up any kind of experiment whereby we ‘test’ participants’ abilities in contextual language adaptation (although we did end up doing something along these lines in a limited way later on), I did feel that any kind of increased awareness into the way young people use language could only help in challenging some of these negative ideas, as there was likely to be a greater degree of linguistic sophistication than people on the outside might think. Linguists, on the whole, recognise that there is such a thing as a ‘standard’ variety of English, a variety whose precise nature varies between societies, but whose roots are invariably intertwined with those individuals bestowed with power and prestige. Such standard varieties are not intrinsically more sophisticated or ­linguistically ‘better’ than all the other ‘non-standard’ varieties—they are simply different. They maintain their elevated status by their continued association with instruments of authority (government, education, journalism) rather than by any actual linguistic superiority. I said that linguists recognise this, and they do, alongside many teachers, youth workers, and many others who routinely work with young people. Unfortunately, many other people put the notion of ‘standard English’ on a pedestal, seeing it as something for young people to aspire to at the expense of whatever their natural variety may be. Much of the negative media attention surrounding the language of young people in the years prior to the project centred around the use of ‘Jafaican’—a media-friendly term which suggests both the Jamaicanness

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and the fakeness of a particular way of speaking (see Kerswill 2014 for a description of how the term has been used in the media). In many of the newspaper reports, and even more so in the online reader comments, there was a sense that young people were indeed using a way of speaking that did not ‘belong’ to them, and which was influenced by Jamaican patois (e.g. Harding 2013). Within the UK there are, arguably, two perspectives on this issue of young (especially white) people using a language variety which seems ‘put on’ or fake: one relatively harmless and the other rather more sinister. On the one hand, there are television characters such as Ali G, Lee Nelson, and the staff in Channel 4’s Phone Shop, who use an exaggerated, if variably accurate, version of the language used by the people they are satirising. On the other hand, there are people such as the historian David Starkey, who, in an infamous BBC Newsnight interview (13 August 2011), said: The whites have become black. A particular sort of violent destructive, nihilistic gangster culture has become the fashion; and black and white, boy and girl operate in this language together. This language which is wholly false, which is this Jamaican patois that has been intruded in England and this is why so many of us have this sense of literally a foreign country.

It should be said that Starkey’s words are not completely unambiguous, and they are open to various interpretations. However, I think any reading will see that he is suggesting a link between black culture, criminality, and language, and that he describes this language as being a ‘wholly false … Jamaican patois’. Certainly, the other guest on the programme, columnist and political activist Owen Jones, thinks along similar lines, as can be seen in his account of the conversation in his book about the demonisation of the working class, in which he talks of Starkey ‘equating black with criminality and white with respectability’ (Jones 2011: xix). Clearly, a thorough analysis of the narratives surrounding the perception and representation of the language of young people is beyond the scope of this project, which is unashamedly limited to a particular context. However, I’ve outlined the information above in order to provide

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the backdrop for the aims of the research, as this was the environment from which the project emerged. The first research question can therefore be stated as: How do urban adolescents attending a non-mainstream learning centre in the UK use language and other semiotic practices to enact identities in their day-today lives?

The second research question emerged from the linguists’ views on the language being described in those newspaper stories. Central to these views is the work carried out by Jenny Cheshire, Paul Kerswill, Sue Fox, and Eivind Torgersen on MLE (e.g. Cheshire et al. 2011). In their work they describe how traditional East End London speech is changing, largely as a result of the various and numerous influences from the languages and cultures that make up the modern multicultural city. Rather than a language variety as such, they conceptualise MLE as ‘a repertoire of features’ in which speakers select linguistic items from a ‘feature pool’ (Cheshire et al. 2011: 176) consisting of elements from the various input languages. The selection of features in any individual’s (or group’s) repertoire is determined by factors such as frequency and salience, the latter being affected by cultural influences. Friendship networks of the speakers were also found to be important, especially in terms of their ethnic diversity. MLE, along with similar emerging varieties of language around northern Europe (e.g. Germany (Wiese 2009), Denmark (Quist 2008), Norway (Svendsen and Røyneland 2008)), is seen as an example of a multiethnolect, a variety/repertoire of language borne out of interaction within a multilingual/cultural/ethnic context, yet which remains itself ethnically neutral and available to be used by anyone (Cheshire et  al. 2011: 2). It was clear to me that something similar was happening in Manchester. But rather than simply trying to identify a possible Multicultural Manchester English (as I had tentatively begun to do in the pre-pilot study), I decided that it might be more useful to start thinking along the lines of a possible Multicultural Urban British English (MUBE)—some kind of overarching variety or repertoire of shared features, with each urban centre then having its own local version or sub-variety. Clearly,

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a lot more work would need to be done beyond this particular study in order to begin to ascertain the validity of such an idea, and I hope it is a challenge which researchers in other UK cities will take up in the future. For now, the concept of MUBE must remain underspecified and untheorised; however, we have to start somewhere. I made some tentative comparisons between MLE and the speech data I had gathered in the pilot study (Drummond 2018), and this book continues with that comparison. The second research question is, therefore: To what extent is current Manchester English as spoken by urban adolescents beginning to incorporate features associated with a possible Multicultural Urban British English?

1.4 Why Manchester? For non-UK readers who may not be aware, Manchester is a city in the northwest of England. It has a population of 530,000 (Office for National Statistics 2015), and lies within the city region of Greater Manchester (population 2,800,000). Although Birmingham is technically the UK’s second city on the basis of its population, Manchester plays an important role in the country’s culture and consciousness, and there is ongoing debate as to whether Manchester is perceived as being more important than Birmingham due to its influence and power in areas such as sport,5 music,6 and media.7 Manchester’s status within the UK makes it a potentially interesting area for a study of this kind, especially with regard to the comparison with MLE.  In addition, it is a relatively under-researched region of the UK in terms of its language. Baranowski and Turton (2015) provide a detailed description of the variation found in certain aspects of the Manchester accent in relation to macro social factors, and Hughes et al. (2013) give a more general overview of local accent and dialect features. There are also a few sociolinguistic studies looking at specific communities or groups of people within the city, such as Polish migrants (Drummond 2011, 2012, 2013, 2015) and Roma school children (Howley 2015). Perhaps the most relevant previous study is that reported in Dray and Sebba (2011) and Sebba and Dray (2013), which took an

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ethnographically informed interactional approach to youth language in a particular location in the city.

1.5 Why Is This Kind of Study Important? This kind of study enables us to better appreciate the communicative practices of young people, some of whom have problematic or unsuccessful interactions with adults, especially those in authority. Too often, urban young people are seen as existing as a homogenous group who all speak a particular variety of English. One of the key themes of this study is the fact that there is so much inter- and intra-variation in the speech of young people that it is unhelpful to view them in this way. By bringing this particular context into sharp focus, we have the opportunity to raise awareness of an educational situation that most people know little about. By doing this, I hope to be able to at least provide a platform from which to challenge some of the prejudice surrounding certain groups of young people and the language they use. In addition, a study such as this helps us to better understand the processes behind a particular type of language change. The language of young people in urban centres around Europe appears to be undergoing a significant development right now, and we are in perfect position from which to document what is happening in a UK city.

1.6 Beginning the Project April 2014 By April 2014 two vital things had happened: the pilot project had gone exceptionally well, and the funding from the Leverhulme Trust was officially secured, allowing the search for a full-time research associate to be employed for the two-year duration of the project. This was a crucial appointment. Not only did the two of us have to get on, but this person would actually spend more time than me in the centres, so it was vital that he/she was accepted there at least as much as I had been. Adverts went out, and we began the selection process.

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Friday 27 June 2014 Interviews for the research associate post took place at the end of June. I invited PRU staff to attend as observers so that they could at least have a sense of who we were looking at and be on-hand with any information. On the day, Tim, one of the centre coordinators, attended. It was a difficult process, but by the end of the day, we had all agreed, and we asked Susan if she would like to be part of the project. She was to start on 21 July 2014. Susan is an experienced ethnographer who was clearly going to bring a wealth of prior experience with her. More than this, she had spent time on a project not dissimilar to this one ten years ago in the same general location, so she had at least some idea of the kinds of people and data we would be dealing with. The idea had always been for there to be a balance between a variationist approach to the research and an ethnographic/ interactional approach,8 but how this played out in practice depended on the appointment of this post. If the new appointment happened to be more variationist, then I was going to attempt to fill the interactional gap myself.9 However, appointing Susan meant that we were each able to stick to our specialisms. Little did we know at the time how difficult this was to become. Monday 21 July 2014 On Monday July 21st, the project officially began. Although we had discussed certain things in advance, this was Susan’s first day on the project and at the University. Looking at my diary entry for that day, I can see that I was optimistic, but also very anxious. My anxiety came both from the fact that somebody other than me was now dependent on the project being a success and that I was now very dependent on somebody else for that success. It was imperative that Susan be accepted into both PRU learning centres, as without that relationship, there would be no project. Moreover, it was vital that I be re-accepted into the centres; the goodwill I had generated in the pilot study would mean little if the new cohort of young people decided not to participate. It was always clear that the young people’s welfare was everybody’s primary concern.

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August 2014 By late August, I was already struggling to balance the demands of the project with those of everyday university work. This was to be an ongoing issue and one that is faced by anyone who runs a project while continuing with other university roles. It is simply the nature of externally funded research that the person in charge of that research actually spends less time on the project than the employed researchers. It’s very hard to find the appropriate balance between the various demands on your time, as you basically have two entirely separate jobs. I can’t help feeling that the situation is even more acute with this type of project, as the ethnography element requires, as far as possible, that you be immersed in the research environment, and this does not sit well with having to suddenly attend exam board meetings at the University or cover a class for an absent colleague. But overall, as September approached, and with it, the new term in the learning centres, everything was looking pretty good.

Notes 1. Multicultural London English (MLE) is a variety or repertoire of English that has emerged as a result of the ethnic, linguistic, and cultural mix of London. It is in many ways ‘ethnically neutral’—available to be used by anybody, but it is heavily influenced by features from various other languages and varieties of English. It is primarily associated with young people. MLE will be discussed in more detail later in the chapter. 2. An area of Manchester. Moss Side has had a bad reputation in the past, especially in the 1990s, when it was known for its relatively high rate of gun crime. Since then, it has been redeveloped and substantially cleaned up. 3. Pupil Referral Units exist to cater for children who have been temporarily or permanently excluded from mainstream school. I will explain the system in more detail in Chap. 2. 4. Police. 5. Manchester boasts two top-flight football (soccer) teams—Manchester United and Manchester City. Manchester United is regularly cited as one of the most well-known clubs globally and is currently the richest (Ozanian 2017).

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6. Manchester has a rich musical heritage in well-known bands such as New Order, The Smiths, The Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, and Oasis. It is also famous for its 1990s nightclub scene, with venues such as the Hacienda. 7. Manchester (technically Salford, a neighbouring borough within Greater Manchester) is home to MediaCityUK—a media hub which houses a variety of media companies, including the BBC.  The 2011 move to MediaCityUK represented a major decentralisation process for the BBC from London. 8. See Chap. 4 for a full description of these approaches. For the unfamiliar reader, it is enough for now to know that they represent two different ways of approaching the socially oriented analysis of language. 9. With hindsight, this was a very naïve idea. At this stage, I simply wasn’t aware how much I didn’t know about ethnography and interactional sociolinguistics.

References Baranowski, Maciej and Danielle Turton. 2015. Manchester English. In Raymond Hickey (ed.), Researching Northern Englishes, 293–316. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Cheshire, Jenny, Paul Kerswill, Sue Fox, and Eivind Torgersen. 2011. “Contact, the feature pool and the speech community: The emergence of Multicultural London English”. Journal of Sociolinguistics 15, 2: 151–196. Delingpole, James. 2011. “If David Starkey is racist then so is everybody”. The Telegraph. 14th August. http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/ 100100911/if-david-starkey-is-racist-then-so-is-everybody/ Dray, Susan and Mark Sebba. 2011. Practices, ethnicity and authenticity: ‘Creole’ and youth language in a British inner city community. In L. Hinrichs & J. Farquharson (eds.), Variation in the Caribbean: From creole continua to individual agency. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Dray, Susan and Rob Drummond. 2018. Language variation-in practice: Variationist and ethnographic research methods in collaboration. In Karin Tustin (ed.), The Routledge handbook of linguistic ethnography. London: Routledge. Drummond, Rob. 2011. “Glottal variation in /t/ in non-native English speech: Patterns of acquisition.” English Worldwide 32, 3: 280–308.

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Drummond, Rob. 2012. “Aspects of identity in a second language: ING variation in the speech of Polish migrants living in Manchester, UK.” Language Variation and Change 24:107–133. Drummond, Rob. 2013. “The Manchester Polish STRUT: Dialect acquisition in a second language”. Journal of English Linguistics 41, 1: 65–93. Drummond, Rob. 2015. Non-native Northern English. In R.  Hickey (ed.), Researching Northern Englishes. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Drummond, Rob. 2018. The changing language of urban youth. In Braber, Natalie & Sandra Jansen (eds.), Sociolinguistics in England. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Harding, Nick. 2013. “Why are so many middle-class children speaking in Jamaican patois? A father of an 11-year-old girl laments a baffling trend”. Daily Mail. 11th October. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2453613/Why-middle-class-children-speaking-Jamaican-patois-Afather-11-year-old-girl-laments-baffling-trend.html Howley, Gerry. 2015. The acquisition of Manchester dialect variants by adolescent Roma migrants. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Salford. Hughes, Arthur, Peter Trudgill, and Dominic Watt. 2013. English accents and dialects: An introduction to social and regional varieties of English in the British Isles. London: Routledge. Johns, Lindsay. 2011. “Ghetto grammar robs the young of a proper voice”. London Evening Standard. 16th August. http://www.standard.co.uk/news/ ghetto-grammar-robs-the-young-of-a-proper-voice-6433284.html Johns, Lindsay. 2013. “Language is power”. Four Thought. BBC Radio 4, 2nd October. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03brt2x Johns, Lindsay. 2014. “D’ya get me? Does proper English matter?” Battle of Ideas 10. 18th October. http://www.battleofideas.org.uk/2014/session_detail/9001 Jones, Owen. 2011. Chavs: The demonization of the working class. London: Verso. Kerswill, Paul. 2014. The objectification of ‘Jafaican’: The discoursal embedding of Multicultural London English in the British media. In Androutsopoulos, Jannis (ed.), Mediatization and sociolinguistic change, 428–455. Berlin: De Gruyter. Office for National Statistics. 2015. A01 Manchester factsheet. Available at http:// www.manchester.gov.uk/downloads/download/4220/public_intelligence_ population_publications [Accessed Oct 2017]. Ozanian, Mike. 2017. “The World’s most valuable soccer teams 2017”. Forbes. Available at ­https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikeozanian/2017/06/06/theworlds-most-valuable-soccer-teams-2017/#56c922b577ea [Accessed Sep 2017].

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Quist, Pia. 2008. “Sociolinguistic approaches to multiethnolect: Language variety and stylistic practice”. International Journal of Bilingualism 12: 43–61. Sebba, Mark and Susan Dray. 2013. “Making it real: ‘Jamaican’, ‘Jafaican’ and authenticity in the language of British youth”. Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik 60, 3: 255–273. Svendsen, Bente Ailin and Unn Røyneland. 2008. “Multiethnolectal facts and functions in Oslo, Norway”. International Journal of Bilingualism 12: 63–83. Wiese, Heike. 2009. “Grammatical innovation in multiethnic urban Europe: New linguistic practices among adolescents”. Lingua 119: 782–806.

2 The Research Context

2.1 The PRU Pupil Referral Units (PRUs) are one type of ‘alternative provision’1 by which children can be educated in the UK.  There were 353 PRUs in operation in England and Wales in 2014–15, providing education for 15,015 pupils, an increase of 1435 from the previous year (Department for Education 2016). PRUs cater for those young people who, for whatever reason, are prevented from attending mainstream school. Often this is due to the fact that they have been temporarily or permanently excluded on the basis of bad behaviour, although the bad behaviour itself is likely to be a symptom of much more complex reasons for an individual finding it difficult to adapt to the requirements of a mainstream school environment. It’s no coincidence that many of the young people we met, and many of those one reads about in the PRU system, have a lot going on behind the scenes in their home lives. In a recent newspaper article, a London PRU head teacher comments that ‘[s]ome of these kids have had more things happen to them in the first 10 years of their lives, will have had more emotions to process, than you and I will have in a lifetime’ (Quine 2015). Clichéd as it may sound, there is no escaping the fact that © The Author(s) 2018 R. Drummond, Researching Urban Youth Language and Identity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73462-0_2

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instability (to put it mildly) at home can lead to instability at school. This is not meant as an excuse—I am fully aware that many young people cope with similar issues with little obvious effect on their outward behaviour and engagement. But as anybody who has worked in PRUs (or any school, come to that) will tell you, every child is different, and every child responds to events in their lives in different ways. Forced exclusions from school can either be fixed-period or permanent. Fixed-period exclusions can be anything from a few hours to a few days, although this must not total more than 45 days in any academic year. Official guidance makes it clear that a permanent exclusion should only be put in place ‘in response to serious or persistent breaches of the school’s behaviour policy; and where allowing the pupil to remain in school would seriously harm the education or welfare of the pupil or others in the school’ (Department for Education 2017: 10). Permanent exclusion is undoubtedly a last resort to be used ‘where bad behaviour has escalated to unacceptable levels despite the best efforts of staff to manage it, or in response to a serious incident of the very worst behaviour’ (ibid.: 4). After a pupil has been excluded, alternative full-time education provision will be made available by the local council from the sixth day of the exclusion, either in another school willing to take the pupil or in a PRU. According to Department for Education figures for 2014–15 (Department for Education 2016), the overall rate of permanent exclusions from all state-funded schools was 0.07% of pupil enrolments, equating to 5800 individuals. Of these exclusions, 83% were from secondary schools, with the most common reason for exclusion being ‘persistent disruptive behaviour’, accounting for 32.8% of the permanent exclusions in all schools. Boys were over three times more likely to receive a permanent exclusion than girls, and pupils known to be eligible and claiming for free school meals (indicating low-income families) were around four times more likely to receive a permanent or fixed-period exclusion than those who are not eligible. In terms of ethnicity, black Caribbean pupils were over three times more likely to be permanently excluded than the school population as a whole, although pupils in Gypsy/Roma and Traveller of Irish heritage ethnic groups had the highest rates of both permanent and fixed-period exclusions overall. Pupils of

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Asian ethnic groups had the lowest rates of permanent and fixed-period exclusion. The aim is always to put as many pupils as possible back into mainstream education as soon as they are felt able to cope, but of course as they get older, this becomes less practical and less likely, as the risk of disruption to coursework and exams increases the later a readjustment such as this takes place. In our experience there seemed to be a general understanding that those pupils who were in their final year of compulsory schooling (aged 15 and 16) would not return to mainstream school, whereas those who were one year younger did have that opportunity. Having said that, very few pupils we met were being considered for re-­ entry into mainstream school, at least as far as we knew. We are only aware of meeting one young person who definitely went back to school.2

2.2 ‘Our’ Centres Exclusions in Manchester are higher than the national average, with a 0.12% rate of permanent exclusions in 2014–15 compared to the national figure of 0.07% (Manchester City Council 2017). Manchester Secondary PRU has places for 400 full-time students in a variety of learning centres located around the city. Different PRUs around the country do things in different ways, but in Manchester, the learning centres exist in various types of buildings with varying degrees of suitability for educational purposes; few are purpose built. Both centres we were at were ex-youth clubs, with one still functioning as such in the evenings. Meadow Cross3 is located in a residential area near the centre of the city. On the ground floor there is a large communal area with an open kitchen and dining area, with an additional open area housing a pool table and a couple of staff offices, with girls’ and boys’ toilets behind. Next to this is a large gym hall, where young people are able to play football. There are two five-a-side goals in place, along with basketball hoops. There is a separate room off the hall containing gym equipment, although this is locked most of the time. Young people are able to use it, but they must be specifically supervised, which has staffing implications for the rest of the building. Up some open metal stairs there is another open area

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with a table tennis table and a full-size snooker table, although the latter is very rarely used, if at all. Off this area are three classrooms and a locked ‘chill-out’ room with comfortable chairs and a TV. This room was rarely used when we were there, except as a venue for the usually weekly student forum meetings in which students and staff discuss any new and ongoing issues surrounding day-to-day life in the centre. All three classrooms are comfortable, well resourced, and suitable for learning. One is specifically kitted out for art lessons. Meadow Cross is generally bright, clean, and well maintained, with photographs (of past and present students engaged in activities), posters (mostly ‘teenage’ information posters around drugs, alcohol, sex, etc.), and centre-specific information adorning the walls. Ashbourne is also located in a residential area, but further from the city centre. On the ground floor there is an open communal area with three main sections: an open kitchen and dining area, an open classroom, and a space for a pool table, a table tennis table, a TV, and settees. There is also a staff office. Leading off from the pool area there is a second classroom and some toilets. Upstairs there is a gym hall, although it is rarely used. While the second classroom at Ashbourne is fine, the first is problematic, situated as it is right next to the kitchen and the entrance, and opposite the main staff office. Lessons are continually and unavoidably interrupted by visitors, by preparation for lunch, or by disruptions from the other students. The building is more run-down than Meadow Cross, and it is not as bright or as well maintained. There are similar posters and such on the walls. Each learning centre is responsible only for a particular stage of education. Our two centres cater for ‘Key Stage 4’ students, a stage of the English school system which covers the two years known as Years 10 and 11 (for pupils aged 14–16) in which GCSE (General Certificate of Education) exams will be taken. This represents the end of compulsory schooling for these young people, although they must remain in some form of education or training until the age of 18. There is no post-16 PRU provision as such (at least in Manchester), but all students are helped to find places in college, at which they tend to enrol on vocational courses such as hair and beauty, mechanics, sports and leisure management, or catering. The groups in each centre are small, with generally no more than eight of each year group (so 16 in total) at any one time. The year groups are

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taught separately for most lessons, but are combined for sporting/physical activities, which generally take place away from the centre. The PRU follows the same National Curriculum4 as mainstream schools, but the variety of subjects is reduced to the core areas of English, Maths, Science, Computer Science, one creative subject such as Art or Design, and a general course in Preparation for Working Life (PfWL). Subject teachers work on a peripatetic basis, moving between centres to deliver their classes, whereas additional subjects such as Personal Social and Health Education (PSHE) tend to be taught by the permanent centre staff. There are also regular arts-based classes run by visiting experts in areas such as drama, music, or DJ-ing. Each centre has two coordinators who oversee the day-to-day running of the centre and who usually have some kind of youth work background. In addition to being in charge of the centre, the coordinators also sit in on classes as additional support for the subject teacher. Another key staff member is the youth support worker—a permanent member of staff in each centre who offers general support in and out of classes. All staff members, but particularly the coordinators and the support worker, are very aware and capable when it comes to the pastoral needs of the young people. Various other staff members come and go on a daily or weekly basis, such as additional support workers, information and communications technology (ICT) specialists, and representatives of PRU management, such as the attendance officer. Due to the small and enclosed nature of the environment, there is a real sense of everybody pitching in and working outside their designated areas as needed. Meals are prepared by whichever staff members are available and capable, be that c­ oordinators, youth workers, or even caretakers, and staff roles seem very fluid, at least to an outsider.

Key Staff The key staff at our two centres are shown in Table 2.1. I’ve included a brief description to help picture the scenes throughout the book. All names are pseudonyms.

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Table 2.1  Key centre staff (p. 26) Meadow Cross

Ashbourne

Coordinators Coordinators Anna. Early 30s, not local but from   Tim. Early 50s, local to the area,   another northern UK city, white, petite, white, tall, well built, quite very kind, and compassionate. Usually tough, but with a fun side. wears casual but smart clothes—jeans/ Usually wears jeans, trainers, skirts, shirts, and sweaters. and a polo shirt.   David. Mid-40s, local with Jamaican   Joy. Mid-late 50s, local with heritage, mixed race, tall and fit/ Jamaican heritage, black, also muscular, also kind and compassionate. tough, but with a soft fun side. Usually wears chinos/jeans and t-shirts. Usually wears trousers and a blouse/cardigan. Youth support worker Youth support worker   Michael. Early 50s, originally   Nick. Mid-20s, local, East-Asian heritage, from another UK city, Jamaican quite small but muscular, well liked, fun. heritage, black, tall, fit, very Usually wears jeans, t-shirt, and trainers. well respected by staff and Replaced by Matt during the project, but students. Usually wears chinos/ continued to work between different jeans and a polo shirt or centres. sweater.   Matt. Mid-20s, local, white, well built. Usually wears jeans and a t-shirt. Caretaker   Val. Late 50s, local, white, slight build, kind, and friendly. Gets involved with the young people and the daily activities. Always wears jeans and a sweater.

Daily Routine The day-to-day routines and social practices of the centres will become clear as events unfold. However, as a general rule, the young people are supposed to arrive daily (Monday to Friday) at around 9.00 am. If it gets to 9.15, they get a late mark, and after 9.30, they are supposed to be marked absent for the morning. Good attendance, along with good behaviour in class, is publicly noted on a ‘reward chart’ on the wall. After each lesson, the class teacher will give each student a mark out of five (technically, it’s out of six, but a six is almost unheard of ) for behaviour and engagement, and these are noted, collated, and put onto the chart. At the end of the term each student is rewarded with a gift card, able to

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be used in high-street retailers (sometimes, there might be requests for specific shops), whose value relates to the overall scores achieved. This can amount to considerable sums over a term, even more so when ‘saved up’ over a year. There is no uniform, with pupils free to wear whatever they choose. The days end at 3.00, Monday to Thursday, and 12.30 on Friday. Everybody is fed at lunchtime with food prepared by staff onsite; this is usually a hot meal of varying quality and health benefits (sometimes a fantastic home-made curry, other times frozen chicken nuggets and chips), although at Meadow Cross, cold sandwiches were often used as a mild punishment for the whole group for minor disciplinary transgressions. This was often justified on the basis that staff were spending so much time dealing with behaviour issues that they didn’t then have time to prepare cooked food. At Ashbourne there were attempts to get people to sit at the table and eat together, although this rarely happened, with people tending to wander into their preferred spaces; at Meadow Cross this rule was strictly enforced, albeit with the girls routinely setting themselves up on a separate table. Staff would eat with the young people. At Meadow Cross there was a very strict (and strictly enforced) washing-up routine, with each person responsible for washing, rinsing, drying, and then putting away their own plate and cutlery. At Ashbourne there was no such routine, largely because there was a dishwasher, into which people put their dirty plates, with varying degrees of care and success. In addition to normal classes, there are usually two weekly outings— one is a morning at the local college, where students are introduced to various vocational courses (e.g. carpentry, hair and beauty, mechanics) for a few weeks at a time, and the other is some kind of a sporting activity. This could be football, BMXing, swimming, climbing, and so on; I even spent one morning at a golf driving range while we were there. These trips are usually staffed by the youth worker and one of the coordinators, and involve a journey out in one of the minibuses owned by the PRU. There are also occasional trips out to local museums or other places of interest, and usually a termly trip out to a bigger venue, such as a theme park. In between classes, pupils are generally free to play pool, watch TV (interestingly, this almost never happened at Meadow Cross, even though it was allowed), or go outside and smoke. More than half of the young people at both centres were regular smokers. ‘Save us half ’ was a commonly

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heard request between individuals as one went out for a cigarette—at around £10.00 (13.00 US$)5 for a pack of 20—it’s an expensive habit for a 15-year-old. Vaping, although seemingly very common among young people one sees every day, at least now in early 2017, was not common at all while we were at the centres. Ashbourne allowed visits to the local shop to buy sweets, drinks, and so on, although students were supposed to let staff know they were going. Use of mobile phones was restricted at both centres, but much more strictly at Meadow Cross, where phones were not allowed at all during the day. At Ashbourne they were simply banned in class, a rule that was enforced to varying degrees depending on the teacher, but which was supposed to involve all phones being handed in at the beginning of each class and returned at the end. The teacher would pass around a plastic tray in which phones were supposed to be placed. It was not unknown for some individuals to have two phones for this very purpose— they would make a big show of handing one in, while the other remained in their pocket. When students had phones, they were used primarily for music, occasionally for messaging of some form, and almost never for actually speaking. Using them for taking photos of each other was absolutely banned, a rule that was strictly enforced in both centres, so much so that I only witnessed it happening once, with instant repercussions. Messaging was restricted anyway due to a lack of ‘data’, as there was no access to wireless, and few students, if any, were on any kind of a contract with a supplier. One youth worker, Nick, who worked at both centres at different times, was particularly popular, as he would ‘turn his hotspot on’, allowing others to use his data via Wi-Fi. Attendance in both centres was patchy, although often fairly predictable on an individual basis, with some pupils rarely missing a day, and others only turning up occasionally. At times, discipline issues played a part in determining who was there at any one time—although already excluded from mainstream, it is possible to also be excluded from a PRU learning centre, usually for a one-off incident, as ongoing issues would likely already have been addressed. Fixed-period exclusions during our time there were common, particularly for periods of between half-a-day and two days, and particularly among the boys.6 Permanent exclusions from particular centres happened occasionally, with individuals being moved to alternative centres or being moved to a bespoke one-to-one

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programme.7 From our perspective, this happened very quickly—one day somebody was there, and on our next visit two days later, they weren’t. However, behind the scenes, it was a little more complex. In such a small, condensed environment, people were almost forced to interact. Unlike mainstream school, where you could pick your friends and choose where you would hang out and with whom, the choices in a learning centre are very restricted. This meant that friendships (or alliances) in the centres did not always reflect friendships outside. Several of the young people apparently had entirely separate outside lives, with no connection to their peers at the PRU. However, there were a few friendship pairs or groups that existed inside and outside, some of which changed during our time there. Two boys, in particular, have known each other from birth, and have followed each other around the PRU system since Year 7. And, of course, all the various relationships were subject to the usual teenage volatility and unpredictability. Emotional/sexual ­relationships between students seemed to be very rare, at least in our time there, and at least to our knowledge; we were only aware of two ongoing on-and-off relationships, one between a Year 11 girl and boy, and the other between a Year 11 girl and a Year 10 boy. These were both noted by staff and monitored from a distance. Behaviour at both centres was extremely variable. Almost without exception, every individual we encountered was capable of either calmly playing by the rules or losing their temper and making life difficult for everyone around them. Obviously, some young people were more prone to one or other extreme, and most spent their time somewhere in the middle. Similarly, every young person dealt with their own issues and frustrations in different ways, from almost silent but resolute non-­ cooperation to extremely aggressive and, at times, violent outbursts. Almost by definition, the centres were full of very strong characters in one way or another, and the combination of different personalities was often volatile. It is often hard as a linguist to step back and judge the overall nature of the language used in a particular context. However, if I were to try and put myself in the shoes of an impartial observer, and by recalling how I myself felt when I first spent time in the centres, I would say that the general linguistic environment is loud, with almost continuous swearing

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at times, and outbursts of anger, laughter, and ‘banter’ in equal measures. This is only a snapshot of the context at this stage—the details will emerge more fully throughout the following chapters. But the initial picture I want to leave you with is one of two noisy environments in which young people are free to express their emotions, disagreements, and their own individual personalities within the enforced boundaries of fairness and awareness of others. Arguments (often extremely intense) are frequent, although physical fights are rare. Battles between staff and students are everyday occurrences, often involving the same individuals, and often revolving around the same ongoing issues and grievances. The PRU is a lively, unpredictable, extremely challenging, but ultimately positive and invigorating context in which to work.

The Young People It might be useful at this stage to have an idea of who the young people are, as from this point on, names will start appearing. Although it may be too much to take in when presented all at the same time, Table 2.2 can serve as something to refer back to as new characters emerge. The table provides information on names (pseudonyms8), sex, year group, appearance, and personality of the main participants in the study, or those who are referred to individually, especially in Chap. 5. There were other young people involved, but they only played a fleeting role, generally because they either left early on or arrived late in the project. Obviously, ‘appearance’ and ‘personality’ do not lend themselves to such simplistic categorisation as can be represented in a table,9 but I do so in an attempt simply to give a broad picture, thus enabling the reader to visualise the scenes as they are depicted in the book. Think of them as generalisations gathered from a selection of snapshots early in the project, presenting the young people in a way that a repeated but uninvolved observer would likely have seen them. They are largely based on my own first impressions and comments in the early part of my diary, before I got to know more about them as individuals. Under ‘appearance’ I have included skin colour— again, this is meant to be purely a visual description, with no comment for now on ethnicity, which will be explored in a later section.

Yr 11

Yr 11

Shannon F

F

M

M

F

Georgia

Kane

Luke

Caitlin

Yr 10

Yr 11

Yr 11

Yr 11

F

Leah

Yr 11

F

Alesha

Ashbourne

(continued)

Aloof and laid-back. Sometimes gives the Light brown skin, expertly applied make-up, impression she shouldn’t be here with these some gold jewellery, lip piercing, generally people. Can be quite lazy and disengaged in quite stylish clothes but always casual—jeans/ class. leggings, trainers, coat/jacket. White skin, some usually subtle make-up, Loud and full of life. Constantly swearing, always jeans/jeggings, trainers, coat/jacket. often shouting, usually laughing. Usually good in class. Very loud and boisterous, although sometimes White  skin, often some less carefully applied withdrawn. Constantly swearing, often make-up, jeans/leggings, t-shirt, hoody, shouting, often laughing, can be aggressive. trainers, coat/jacket. Variable in class. White skin, some less carefully applied Loud and full of life. Usually swearing, often make-up, jeans/leggings, t-shirt, coat/jacket. laughing, sometimes shouting. Variable in class. White skin, jeans, trainers, hoody, jacket. Quite loud, can be aggressive. Good natured and smiley until he loses his temper. Usually disengaged in class. White skin, jeans, t-shirt, hoody, trainers. Very changeable. Sometimes friendly, sometimes very withdrawn, sulky, and aggressive. Can appear to be quite bullying at times. Mixed in class—sometimes engaged, sometimes withdrawn, sometimes disruptive. White skin, little make-up, jeans/jeggings, Lively, loud, and full of life. Quick to smile and trainers, t-shirt, leather jacket. laugh. Has a temper when provoked. Generally engaged in class.

Table 2.2  The young people. Pseudonym, sex, year group, appearance, and personality (p. 31)

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M

M

Daniel

Callum

F

F

M

M

Shanique

Danielle

Abdou

Jamal

Meadow Cross

M

Nathan

Ashbourne

Yr 11

Yr 11

Yr 11

Yr 11

Yr 10

Yr 10

Yr 10

Table 2.2 (continued) Extremely lively and full of energy. Always talking, shouting, laughing (often at others), very mischievous. Often arguing. Mixed in class due to so much energy. Mixed. Thoughtful and laid-back at times, and then angry and verbally aggressive. Can be withdrawn. Intelligent and very eloquent. Loud and lively. Very talkative, quick to laugh and smile, mischievous. Mixed in class, but can be engaged.

(continued)

Quiet, keeps herself to herself. Usually serious, can be light-hearted one-to-­one. Quite engaged in class. White skin, often some less carefully applied Friendly, talkative, sticks up for herself, quick make-up, jeans, t-shirt, jacket, Timberlands. to smile, usually engaged in class. Very dark brown skin, tracksuit, hoody, Lively and quite loud. Very quick to smile and trainers. laugh, but can also be sullen and moody. Likeable and wants to be liked. Sometimes engaged in class, sometimes slow and tired. Brown skin, jeans/tracksuit, t-shirt, hoody, Very cool, usually calm, intelligent, and jacket, trainers, casual but immaculate. eloquent. Talkative, likes attention and gets it. Usually engaged in class. A leader.

Dark brown skin, jeans, t-shirt/shirt, coat/ jacket, trainers.

White skin, tracksuit, trainers.

White skin, always jeans, t-shirt, denim jacket, dirty trainers.

Light brown skin, tracksuit/jeans, t-shirt, hoody.

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Yr 10

Yr 10

F

F

M

Stacey

Megan

Jenson

Mackenzie M

Jordan

M

Yr 10

F

Bethany

Yr 10

Yr 10

Yr 10

Yr 11

M

Jacob

Yr 11

M

Jake

Meadow Cross

Table 2.2 (continued)

White skin, jeans/tracksuit, t-shirt, jumper/ hoody, trainers.

White/olive skin, jeans, t-shirt, hoody, coat, trainers.

White skin, jeans/tracksuit, t-shirt, hoody, trainers.

White skin, little make-up, jeans/leggings, jumper, coat, trainers.

White skin, little make-up, jeans/leggings, jumper, coat, trainers/shoes.

White skin, little make-up, jeans/leggings, t-shirt, coat/jacket, trainers/boots.

Brown skin, tracksuit/jeans. t-shirt, hoody, trainers.

White/olive skin, jeans/tracksuit, t-shirt, hoody, trainers.

Very laid-back, usually calm, but quick to anger. Polite and eloquent one-to-one. Sometimes seemingly slow to catch on in class, sometimes engaged. Full of energy, lively, quick to laugh and joke. Boisterous. Can be argumentative. Talkative. Quite engaged in class but easily distracted. Lively, talkative, and friendly. Quick to smile and laugh. Stands up for herself and her friends. Bright, hard-­working, and engaged in class. Loud and aggressive. Quick to smile, but a very sharp edge. Can be bullying. Very talkative and argumentative. Not engaged in class. Sometimes quiet, sometimes argumentative and aggressive. Not particularly talkative outside her small network. Mixed in class, sometimes disengaged, but rarely disruptive. Loud and often very aggressive. Very quick to anger, and very physical with it. Quick to laugh, but often at others’ expense. Disengaged and disruptive in class. Quiet in a group, talkative in small friendship network of girls. Quite intelligent and eloquent. Fairly engaged in class. Friendly, boyish, quick to smile, quite boisterous. Fairly engaged in class.

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2.3 PRU Identities At the simplest level there are two identities within the centres: adult and young person. These are identities rather than simple age brackets, as, within the centres, being an ‘adult’ assumes the possession of a certain degree of authority (albeit variable according to precise role) and engagement with a particular set of behaviours, and being a ‘young person’ assumes a lack of authority and engagement with a different set of behaviours. However, while there is ostensibly only one obvious identity group for young people (in terms of the day-to-day running of the centre), we saw different roles within the general identity group of ‘adult’. For example, ‘teacher’ is a very different role from ‘coordinator’, which itself is different from ‘youth worker’, which is different from ‘classroom support worker’, and so on. In some ways, of course, all of the adults in these groups could be classed as ‘teachers’ in relation to all the young people being ‘learners’. In reality, the identities of both the adults and the young people alike are very fluid. They exist in a complex network of roles in which overlaps and tensions might change moment by moment. Individuals who are officially ‘teachers’ might at times need to become ‘youth workers’, with the additional pastoral support that the role requires; indeed, they might then choose to continue in that role as the lesson ends, and they find themselves playing pool with some of the young people at break time. Meanwhile, the coordinators regularly found themselves stepping into the role of teacher, despite having perhaps had little or no official training in a particular subject. An hour later they might adopt the role of learner, sitting in a class in a supporting role only to find themselves taking the opportunity to brush up on their own maths/ English/science. The young people themselves, while spending most of their time as learners, would nevertheless sometimes adopt the role of teacher, a role which the more confident ‘teachers’ were happy to indulge. Indeed, when we as r­ esearchers entered the environment, we encouraged the young people to take on this role, as we were there to learn from them.

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A Community of Practice? Although originally developed and theorised by Lave and Wenger (1991) to better understand the processes involved in different types of social learning, the concept of Community of Practice (CofP) has been usefully and productively employed in studies of language for a number of years. Perhaps the most influential and well-known exponent of its use in sociolinguistics is Penelope Eckert, whose ethnographic study into the language of American high school students (e.g. Eckert 2000; Eckert and McConnell-Ginet 1999) relied heavily on understanding the social realities of two observed CofPs, known as Jocks (broadly middle-class pro-­ school) and Burnouts (broadly working-class anti-school). Since then, many studies into language variation have found CofPs to be a meaningful and valuable approach to making sense of particular contexts (e.g. Mendoza-Denton 2008; Moore 2010; Kirkham 2015; Lawson 2011), to the point where the concept is as familiar as more traditional approaches, such as speech communities and social networks. Ostensibly, an ethnographic study carried out among adolescents is ideally suited to utilising a CofP-based approach, as this is the age at which there tends to be more of a focus on self-identification in relation to societal norms. It’s a time of life when the group to which an individual belongs (or is seen to belong) can play a considerable role in how that person then navigates their way through different aspects of their lives. It is also clear how adolescents, particularly those in a school setting, fulfil the three criteria of a CofP as defined by Wenger (1998: 73): mutual engagement of its members, some kind of joint enterprise in which members are involved, and a shared repertoire of linguistic and non-linguistic resources among the members. Indeed, many of the studies which take a CofP approach, including those mentioned above, are exploring precisely this stage of life. However, the context under investigation here is not quite so clear-cut. Unlike mainstream school settings in which the CofPs are identified as existing within the much larger population of the school itself, PRU learning centres are too confined for this to happen in any meaningful way. All the school-based studies mentioned earlier talk of different CofPs

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separating themselves from each other to a certain extent, be that through the physical space in the school grounds they choose to occupy, through the activities and practices in which they engage, or through the extent to which they are prepared to even communicate with each other. This simply can’t happen in the same way in a PRU setting. The physical space is so restricted, and the numbers of young people are so small, that it is hard to establish anything like the same territorial or practice-based differentiation. There are recognisable friendship groups, networks, and socially relevant orientations, but from a practice-based perspective (within the centres at least), they are arguably not strong enough to warrant a CofP interpretation. In addition, a PRU setting by its very nature automatically limits the existence of the fundamental CofP division running through almost all school-based studies: that of pro-school versus anti-­ school. Of course, it is possible for individuals to be relatively more or less oriented towards successful education within a centre, but I think it’s fairly safe to interpret the fact that they are in the PRU in the first place as an indication of a general underlying anti-school feeling. In other words, although there are significant differences between the individuals in the PRU along the lines of interests, social practices, clothes, and so on, and although these differences then help to generate identifiable groupings within the larger population in a centre, the likelihood is that in a mainstream school, many of them would have been seen as being part of a single anti-school, disruptive, exclusion-bound group.10 Without the ubiquitous binary opposition dynamic of pro- and anti-school, we are left with a group of people whose similarities are, to a certain extent, greater than their differences. Perhaps it is possible to view an entire learning centre as a CofP. After all, despite the majority of CofP studies looking at largely voluntary groupings, the concept is just as valid when used in relation to those which are perhaps more forced. However, this then raises the question of joint enterprise, one of the three essential elements of a CofP, and the one which is perhaps the most complex. If we accept the young people in each centre as constituting their own CofP, then the joint enterprise aspect could be viewed along the lines of those expressed in Eckert (1996: 56), in which the Burnouts are described as needing to ‘find ways to exist in and out of school that neither implicate them in corporate practice nor

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cost them their participation in the institution altogether’. But how meaningful is such a CofP in a context in which there is no opposition and no alternative? Perhaps it doesn’t matter—there are plenty of examples of CofPs which don’t require there to be a balancing alternative, but there is a sense in all the school-based studies that membership of one CofP is partly as a result of a rejection of another. In the PRU, there is not that option. In some ways, it is this shared background that makes the context so potentially interesting, certainly from a linguistic point of view. It is a context in which a selection of very strong and (in mainstream educational terms) anti-social personalities are being forced together into an extremely high-contact situation. Unlike a mainstream school, there is literally no escaping contact with peers. Even if an individual chooses to isolate themselves, the physical size of the centre means that they are still always part of the action. In addition to this, there is the fact that each one of these young people would have ‘enjoyed’ a certain level of notoriety in the mainstream school. There is undoubtedly a particular kind of kudos that comes from engaging in actions that ultimately lead to exclusion, even if different people view the situation in different ways. Each young person will arrive at the centre with a particular reputation (the young people are often aware of each other before they meet, as they each have contacts in different centres or schools where they may have been previously) or with a particular story to tell. As a result, each young person has a perceived role or status in the social pecking order that they are keen to maintain. The problem of course is that there are likely to be quite a few individuals who all see themselves as being near the top of that pecking order, a position where space is perhaps limited. I realise that this description leaves unresolved the issue of whether a CofP-based approach is relevant in this context. It’s something I will return to when I discuss the methodology of the project, but for now, I would have to say that despite being convinced of its value elsewhere, I do not feel it is an entirely appropriate way of looking at this particular group of people in this particular situation. After all, I do not want to be one of those people who use the term to vaguely refer to ‘any old group’ of people (Eckert, cited in Tagliamonte 2016: 152).11

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Chavs The young people are of course aware of how they are perceived, and several of them suggested that they would all be viewed as ‘chavs’ by people outside. One day in November I was playing pool with Nathan and Luke at Ashbourne, talking about the project, when Nathan said, didn’t I think it was prejudiced, looking at their speech, thinking they spoke differently because they were in the PRU.  Luke joined in with, ‘Yeah, because we’re in here so we’re automatically chavs.’ Staff too were aware—Anna commented that people outside the centre would class all of the young people there as chavs, but that within the centre, the distinction was drawn differently. Chav is a term that can be heard a lot in the UK to describe a certain type of person. Although like many names, it can mean slightly different things to different people, the underlying features are quite consistent. Dictionary definitions include ‘an insulting word for someone, usually a young person, whose way of dressing, speaking, and behaving is thought to show their lack of education and low social class’ (Cambridge) and ‘a young person in Britain of a type stereotypically known for engaging in aggressively loutish behaviour especially when in groups and for wearing flashy jewellery and athletic casual clothing (such as tracksuits and baseball caps) (Merriam-Webster). Jones (2011) provides a thorough examination of the concept of chavs in modern-day Britain, making a strong case for the argument that use of the term is part of the demonisation of Britain’s working class. In his introduction he tells the story of Gymbox, a trendy London gym which offered classes such as ‘Bitch Boxing’ and ‘Chav Fighting’ alongside its more mainstream-labelled repertoire. Customers were asked, ‘Why hone your skills on punchbags and planks of wood when you can deck some chavs … a world where Bacardi Breezers12 are your sword and ASBOs13 are your trophy’ (Jones 2011: 3). Unsurprisingly, this generated some complaints, but when the Advertising Standards Authority got involved, Gymbox’s (ultimately successful) response was that there was no offence caused due to the fact that ‘nobody in society would admit to being a Chav; it was not a group to which people wanted to belong’ (Jones 2011: 3).

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But people do ‘admit’ to being a chav. For example, Shannon in Extract 2.1: Extract 2.1 Shannon

Shannon We all talk like chavs. Susan Everybody? Shannon Everyone talks like chavs … Shannon …  we all call each other chavs. Actually, we call each other, everyone in chavs, cos we’re all from near enough.

This is not to say the term has no negative connotations (it is clearly used as an insult at times), nor is it to say that people necessarily wanted to be identified as a chav, but there is a sense that the term has been reclaimed to some extent, at least among some of the people here.

Identifiable Groups Various groupings of young people did emerge during our time in the centres, some of which play a role in subsequent analysis presented here. But I would still argue that the space, numbers, and restricted lifestyle of the PRU centres meant that differences were less important than they would be on the outside. As discussed earlier, if we were to take a CofP approach, then the most meaningful grouping would be that of the centre, with individual differences giving way to the shared endeavour of day-to-day existence in the PRU—in which case, any smaller groupings are within the CofP itself, and should perhaps be better viewed as alliances or simply (loose) friendships rather than any kind of meaningful group. I certainly did not get the impression that they played the same kind of a significant role that such labelling has tended to play in other school-based studies. In order to give an idea of the kinds of sub-divisions that existed, at least in the minds of the young people themselves, Table 2.3 shows the

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various labels that they used to describe themselves and each other. These mostly come from one-to-one or paired chats with Susan in which she asked individuals to position themselves in relation to their peers along the lines of shared interests, clothes, and ways of speaking. There were other descriptions (e.g. Alesha was ‘gorgeous’, Nathan was ‘annoying’), but the ones included here are those that have a certain label-like quality. Larger text size indicates multiple labelling by others, while an asterisk indicates self-identification. The information in Table 2.3 is neither exhaustive nor consistent— not everybody was asked, and the information came about in different ways in each conversation. Occasionally, we specifically asked people what social group names they were aware of, but this never yielded much information; instead, they would simply label individuals. This was unlike the pilot study, in which one girl in particular was able to simply reel off a list of names, including hoodrats, emos, scooter boys, goths, hipsters, chavs, nobodies, skaters, bitches, BMXers, geeks, and posh boys. Some of these names did appear in conversation a year later, but rarely in the clearly defined way in which they seemed to exist in the mind of this particular girl. Table 2.3  Labels given to particular individuals indicating possible social groupings (p. 40) Chav

Shannon* Callum Kane

Caitlin Daniel Luke Georgia* Tomboy

Swag

Alesha

Callum* Caitlin Kane Leah

Metalhead

Normal/Standard Gheo

Leah* Caitlin* Georgia*

Alesha Jamal Jake Jacob Abdou

Alesha Jacob* Jordan* Megan*

Jade Shannon

Daniel*

Daniel Luke

Mosher

Gothic

Hood

Girly girl

Alesha

Gwop boy Jamal*

Separate/unsure

Leah

Luke*

Daniel

Alesha Nathan

Smokers

Georgia Kane Leah

Hoodrat Abdou

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Finally, a note on the linguistics of social group names—the terms above are not all nouns. Below are some examples in order to give some context on how the terms were used: Callum: Callum: Megan:

Swag, I know I have swag. Caitlin talks like a standard girl. [on how some of the boys speak] I don’t know, just like, ghetto. Shannon: Yeah cos we’re all smokers. Shannon: Nearly all the girls in here are tomboys except Alesha, she’s a girly girl. Callum: [on Daniel] Yeah, he’s a metalhead. Georgia: He’s a mosher Daniel, listens to rock music. Kane: [on Daniel] You mad? straight up gothic. Stacey: He was, he was. Weren’t Abdou a little hoodrat? Callum: Leah’s just hood yeah. Jamal: [answering ‘what about you, what are you?’] Gwop boy. Georgia: He’s more like, just on his own.

Orientations Despite the fact that the physical space and nature of the learning centres restricted the emergence of the kinds of social groups found in other school-based ethnographies, the young people were far from being a homogenous whole. Yes, their situation demanded that they cooperate/ interact/coexist with different people to a much greater extent than would be expected in a larger setting, but it was still possible to identify often clear differences between individuals. These differences emerged in the usual ways—music interests, clothing style, engagement in activities, language, ethnicity, and gender, and will play a part in the description and analysis later in the book. However, given the restrictive environment and the subsequent limitations on the extent to which the young people were able to fully express or perform their identities, these differences will be discussed in terms of orientations towards certain

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salient characteristics or practices. These orientations will be described later, when we have become more familiar with the individuals themselves.

2.4 Summary In this chapter I’ve tried to place our two centres within the wider context of the UK education system. I’ve also tried to provide some insights into the internal geography, social structure, and social groupings within the two centres. In keeping with the reflective theme of this book, I should point out that this is not how I imagined this chapter being presented. On embarking on the project I envisaged being able to identify real and meaningful social groups even within the confines of the centres. I had expected to be able to use these groupings as part of my analysis, ideally as part of my quantitative variationist-based approach. I soon learned that things aren’t this simple. Susan’s approach brought it home to me the extent to which roles and identities are enacted in practice, which makes it harder to identify particular social groups, especially in such a claustrophobic and concentrated environment. In some ways it’s almost as if the PRU strips away many of the resources that are available to the young people in performing their usual (outside) roles and identities. Despite it being a place in which there is freedom of expression and emotion, there simply isn’t the physical or disciplinary space for meaningful group identities along the line of those described in other school ethnographies to be created. This is not to say that everybody merged into one homogenous group, far from it, but the boundaries between any identifiable groupings were very blurred. In a mainstream school it’s relatively easy for an individual from one group to have no contact and even no awareness of an individual from another group. This simply isn’t the case in a PRU learning centre. Alliances exist, and labels are used, but they are, in general, weakly maintained. As a result, similarities and differences between individuals which might meaningfully be used to help better understand the context, and which emerge through the process of ethnographic observations and participation, will be discussed in terms of social and practice-­ based orientations.

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Notes 1. Alternative provision is defined as ‘education arranged by local authorities for pupils who, because of exclusion, illness, or other reasons, would not otherwise receive suitable education; education arranged by schools for pupils on a fixed-period exclusion; and pupils being directed by schools to off-site provision to improve their behaviour’ (Department for Education 2013: 3). 2. In actual fact, of the 239 pupils who left Manchester Secondary PRU in 2015–16 (the year after we were there), 29 returned to mainstream school (10 moved to a specialist school, 2 were taken off the roll, 18 left the area, and 180 were Year 11 leavers) (Manchester City Council 2017). 3. Both centre names are pseudonyms. 4. Details of the National Curriculum can be found here: https://www.gov. uk/education/school-curriculum (accessed May 2017). 5. Approximate prices and exchange rate as in September 2017. 6. This is in line with national trends, as 55.69% of pupil enrolments in PRUs had one or more fixed-period exclusion in 2014–15 (Department for Education 2016). 7. The rate of permanent exclusions from PRUs nationally was 0.13% in 2014–15 (Department for Education 2016). 8. The original plan was to have the young people choose their own pseudonyms for any subsequent writing up of the project. However, probably due to poor explanations on our part, this didn’t quite work out. This is a shame, as the names some of them chose could have provided additional insights into the way they viewed themselves and the project, but too many were similar to their own names, or simply the name of someone else in the centre. Add this to the fact that some had already left by the time we got around to allocating names, we decided it was better to create our own pseudonyms. However, a great deal of thought went into this process, with often several names discussed for a particular individual until we thought we had got it ‘right’ for that person. 9. Descriptions of appearance are intentionally vague, just to give a general impression. Particular features that would risk actual identification have been removed or altered. 10. Different UK school-based ethnographies have identified different groups which might broadly fall under the category of ‘burnout’. For example, Emma Moore’s ‘Populars’ and ‘Townies’ (e.g. Moore 2010),

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Sam Kirkham’s ‘Parkdale’ (after a neighbourhood) and ‘Rebellious’ (e.g. Kirkham 2015), and Robert Lawson’s ‘Neds’ (e.g. Lawson 2011). 11. This is taken from Sali Tagliamonte’s historiography of variationist sociolinguistics. Here she is talking to Penelope Eckert about ‘third wave’ variationism and Eckert talks of regretting ever introducing the term ‘Community of Practice’. 12. A popular ‘Alcopop’ drink among some social groups in the UK. 13. Anti-Social Behaviour Order—a court order aimed at restricting antisocial behaviour in an individual. Stopped being used in 2015.

References Department for Education. 2016. Permanent and fixed period exclusions in England: 2014 to 2015. Available at https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/statistics-exclusions [Accessed May 2017]. Department for Education. 2017. Exclusion from maintained schools, academies and pupil referral units in England Statutory guidance for those with legal responsibilities in relation to exclusion. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/school-exclusion [Accessed Oct 2017]. Department for Education. 2013. Alternative Provision Statutory guidance for local authorities. Available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/ alternative-provision [Accessed Oct 2017]. Eckert, Penelope. 1996. (ay) Goes to the city: Exploring the expressive use of variation. In Guy Gregory, Feagin Crawford, Deborah Schiffrin & John Baugh (eds.), Towards a social science of language: Papers in honor of William Labov. Volume 1: Variation and change in language and society. London and Amsterdam: John Benjamin. Eckert, Penelope. 2000. Linguistic variation as social practice: The linguistic construction of identity in Belten High. Oxford: Blackwell. Eckert, Penelope and Sally McConnell-Ginet. 1999. “New generalizations and explanations in language and gender research”. Language in Society 28: 185–201. Jones, Owen. 2011. Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class. London: Verso. Kirkham, Sam. 2015. “Intersectionality and the social meanings of variation: Class, ethnicity, and social practice”. Language in Society 44, 5: 629–652. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404515000585

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Lave, J. and Wenger, E. 1991. Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge University Press. Lawson, Robert. 2011. Patterns of linguistic variation among Glaswegian adolescent males. Journal of Sociolinguistics 15, 2: 226–255. Manchester City Council. 2017. Update on Pupil Referral Units and school exclusions; information on unregistered schools, independent schools and supplementary schools. (Report). Available at http://www.manchester.gov. uk/meetings/meeting/2877/children_and_young_people_scrutiny_committee [Accessed Oct 2017]. Mendoza-Denton, Norma. 2008. Homegirls: Language and cultural practice among Latina youth gangs. Malden and Oxford: Blackwell. Moore, Emma. 2010. “The interaction between social category and social practice: Explaining was/were variation”. Language Variation and Change 22: 347–471. Quine, Oscar. 2015. “Pupil Referral Units: The children beyond mainstream education – and the schools that turn their lives around”. The Independent. 31st October. Available at http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/ schools/pupil-referral-units-the-children-beyond-mainstream-educationand-the-schools-that-turn-their-lives-a6713976.html [Accessed Oct 2017] Tagliamonte, Sali A. 2016. Making waves: The story of variationist sociolinguistics. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. Wenger, Etienne. 1998. “Communities of practice: Learning as a social system”. Systems Thinker 9, 5: 2–3.

3 Our Roles and Identities

With this research being an ethnographic study, we became part of the spaces we were researching and our presence had effects. Rather than seeking to ignore, downplay, or abstract away (Schilling 2013: 128) these effects (see Chap. 4 for a discussion which touches upon the researcher effect in relation to our own particular approaches), it is important to examine them as part of the overall process. In this chapter I reflect on our roles in the context, and where we were positioned in relation to other people. I explore our roles and identities both as an individual and as a pair/team of researchers. Although there was a lot of overlap between Susan’s experiences and mine, we ultimately experienced the contexts differently; we each had our own relationships with the people from each learning centre and the spaces they inhabited and allowed us to share. This was especially the case given that we were rarely in the same place at the same time, so although we might legitimately have seen ourselves as a team of researchers, in the eyes of the young people and staff, there is every chance we were seen as two completely separate individuals who happened to refer to each other from time to time. This is, then, a very personal reflection on the expectations, intentions, and experiences of being both an insider and an outsider in two learning centres. And © The Author(s) 2018 R. Drummond, Researching Urban Youth Language and Identity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73462-0_3

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although I can offer some limited insights into Susan’s experiences, the reflection must be predominantly on my own. Our roles were unique in the centres, in that we didn’t fit into any pre-­ existing categories, either for the students or for the staff. Everyone at the centres was quite used to unfamiliar adults coming in from time to time, but these were usually in the form of university students on work placement, or members of PRU senior management, who the young people might see only once or twice a year. We were different. Some of the young people did know me to an extent from the pilot study the previous year, but I’m not sure that even they really knew what it was we did. Of course, we explained the project when we were first introduced, and we tried to do so in a way that was accessible and would mean something to them, but the whole concept of ‘university researchers’ was quite alien to most.

3.1 Rob In providing this self-description, I recognise the same feeling of discomfort as expressed in Mendoza-Denton (2008), in which she vividly describes the conflicting feelings of disciplinary obligation and attention-­ seeking that such insights generate. Like her, I am fully aware that the focus should be on the people among whom we worked rather than on us, but we cannot and should not ignore the effect we inevitably have on the contexts in which we find ourselves. In addition, we must acknowledge that this effect will likely be different depending on whether the researcher happens to be, for example, a white, male, 45-year-old native English speaker from Hertfordshire; a black, female, 65-year-old native English speaker from the US; or a Hispanic, female, 25-year-old Spanish speaker from Colombia.1 Seeing as I previously described the young people and the staff in rather simplistic and perhaps insensitive terms, it only seems fair that I do the same here for me. I’m a white male in my mid-40s. I’m just under six feet tall, average/slim build, with a bald head that I keep shaved. While I was working in the centres I would always wear jeans, trainers, some kind of polo shirt, and a zip-up tracksuit top or hoodie. My trainers were pretty standard middle-aged-man low-end Nikes. I was consciously

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trying to dress in a neutral way, although my age meant that neutral = not teacher, rather than somewhere vaguely between adult and student (cf. Bucholtz 2011: 35; Mendoza-Denton 2008: 49–57). When I was younger (and didn’t actually look much different to be honest, apart from a bit more hair, which was always shaved anyway), I used to do a lot of work as a TV extra. This is relevant, as nine times out of ten I was employed as some kind of police or prison officer in British soap operas, or else I was the completely average-looking man lurking in the background; this should give you some idea of my overall appearance. During the pilot study there was a group of boys (Year 11 at the time, so no longer there during the main project) who suspected I was ‘fed’ (police). One was so convinced that he simply refused to be recorded, as then I couldn’t ‘prove anything’. The discussion as to whether I was or wasn’t fed happened regularly during my time there, and I remember him telling everyone how he knew I was fed in response to a challenge by the youth worker. Apparently I ‘look fed’, I ‘walk like fed’, I have ‘fed hair’, and I wear ‘fed clothes’. Months later, after the pilot study had finished, I bumped into him as I was getting into my car near the university, ID badge still around my neck. He nodded at me in greeting, slowly looked me up and down, tutted, shook his head, and then walked away saying, ‘I could’ve sworn you was fed.’ Speech-wise I do not sound local to the area. I grew up in south-east England and have an entirely predictable southern middle-class educated-­ type accent. Being a linguist, I am obviously very aware of my own speech, and have listened to it many times during the transcription of recordings. Although I show no signs of accommodating to the local accent or acquiring any local variants, it is clear that I do tend to style-­ shift towards an overall less formal register when speaking to the young people.

3.2 Susan Susan is a similar age to me, of average height and slim build. She is also white, with light brown curly hair, and a friendly, open face. When in the centres she would generally wear blue jeans, boots, and a sweater. If I was

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‘fed’, then Susan was ‘teacher’; she certainly would not have looked out of place fronting the classes we observed. Speech-wise, Susan is also not local, although she does have an accent that contains some generic northern England features (e.g. no trap/bath split). Her speech could also be described as quite typically middle-class and educated, and while I didn’t notice her style-shifting to quite the same extent as me, there was discernible variation when she spoke to some of the young people, particularly in a one-to-one context.

3.3 Our Roles and Identities in the Centres Although many of the factors which would determine our precise roles and identities in each centre were largely out of our control, we could at least go into the centres with a view of the kind of roles we would like to adopt. Our preferences in this regard were influenced by my experiences during the pilot study, conversations between the two of us as the project started, and discussions with PRU senior management before entering the research sites. In one sense, our ideal role would have been one of observer. We wanted to be able to blend into the background as much as possible and simply watch what was going on. But we also needed to develop some kind of relationship with both the staff and the young people if we were ever going to gain their trust enough for them to allow us to record them. This posed a problem, as the students and staff would clearly have different, often oppositional agendas, which could potentially make it hard to ingratiate ourselves with both groups simultaneously. There would undoubtedly be times when staff and students were in disagreement (as it turns out, this was in many ways the default position, at least with some individuals from both sides), and we would have to be very careful with regard to whose side we were perceived to be taking. Allying with the students could damage relations with the staff, thus jeopardising cooperation from them, but allying with the staff risked the potentially more serious damaging of relations with the students. In the end, we tried to stay neutral as much as possible, although we both soon realised that a

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conspiratorial shared glance with a student can do wonders to build rapport. What we wanted to avoid at all costs was being in a position in which we were expected to exert authority over the students in any way. Clearly, this was not our role anyway, and there was never any expectation that we should be in a position to do this. Generally, the staff were very aware that we were there as ‘extra’ observers, but there was no escaping the fact that we were two capable adults in an environment in which there was sometimes a sense of there not being enough staff on hand to deal with issues (see Eckert 2000: 72–73). We ended up treading a fine line between being helpful to the staff by being an extra body when needed and avoiding having to tell students ‘what to do’ in any way. I found that being available as a kind of classroom assistant was a useful role, as it enabled me to develop some kind of a relationship with individual students while also helping the teachers. However, there were a few occasions when one of us was left alone with a group almost inadvertently, only for a very short time, and on each occasion, I remember willing for nothing to happen. Interestingly, I was aware of having slightly different roles and a slightly different identity in each of the two centres. In the sections below I describe these as best I can. I will also attempt to provide some detail around Susan’s roles and identities in the two centres, although obviously this is from my perspective.

Meadow Cross I was initially quite wary of working in Meadow Cross again. Of the two centres, it was the one in which I had felt less comfortable during the pilot study. I never quite pinned down precisely why this was, although I think it might have been to do with the coordinators and their e­ ngagement with the project. Both sets of coordinators were equally friendly and happy to have me at their respective centres during the pilot, but I just felt that the coordinators at Ashbourne were that bit more on board and understanding of the research project as a whole, meaning that they were a little bit more aware of how to help me do what I wanted to do.

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I was never made to feel unwelcome at Meadow Cross at all, and Michael, the youth worker, was fascinated by the research and could not have been more helpful—it was simply that I had found it harder to fit in for some reason. On returning to Meadow Cross, the presence of Susan made me feel a lot more confident. Susan represented the fact that the project was now a lot more serious—it had money behind it, and the explicit endorsement of PRU senior management. It also meant that the project was more noticeable, as it would no longer be a case of just me flitting between the two centres. All of this combined to give the project a kind of legitimacy that it was lacking during the pilot phase, and for me, this legitimacy was an important resource to combat my unease. This is probably a good point to state that if anybody who has undertaken a linguistic ethnography, particularly in a school context, tries to tell you that they simply breezed in confidently taking everything in their stride, then they are not telling the whole truth. Much as I came to enjoy my time at the centres, often looking forward to my next visit, I cannot pretend that I didn’t feel anxious as I walked in each time, particularly at the beginning. Eckert’s (2000) description of her first day at Belten High rings as true for me as I imagine it does for most school-based ethnographers: I walked around and around the halls of the school, telling myself that I was familiarising myself with the locale. The fact is that I was scared silly. I didn’t know how I was going to break in, and I felt stupid. (Eckert 2000: 75)

One reason for this apprehension at Meadow Cross was the fact that there was a very dominant and vocal group of Year 11 boys at the centre, with a particularly dominant leader in Jamal. It was almost immediately clear that in order to get in with the boys, it was especially important to get in with Jamal, which wasn’t the easiest thing to do. Jamal is bright, confident, and charming, but he has the ability to change the atmosphere with a single look or single utterance, suddenly making you feel intrusive and awkward. At times, he seemed on board with the project and happy to talk to us, but at others, he would withdraw his approval, and, by

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a­ ssociation, that of his friends. Interestingly, he is one of the only individuals who we saw regularly with whom neither Susan nor I managed to secure any kind of one-to-one recording. However, this uneasiness was mitigated by the enthusiasm of the youth worker, Michael. Michael was invariably pleased to see me, and genuinely interested in how the project was going throughout our time there. He was an excellent and vital link to the young people, who all liked and trusted him. As the project progressed, I would simply need to let him know if there was anyone I particularly wanted to speak to, and he would engineer a situation in which this became easier. Over the following few months I became a lot more comfortable at Meadow Cross, but the sense of unease didn’t disappear entirely. Some days were better than others, and it got to the point where I could in some ways predict the likely nature of the day by looking at the timetable, by noticing which staff were around, or by determining Jamal’s mood. Art was a reliably good lesson to be around for, as both teachers were genuinely interested in the project, and it was one in which I felt I could be of some actual use, as there was something tangible to be done. This might simply be retrieving equipment, holding something straight, or washing paintbrushes, but to me this was preferable to sitting in a classroom, awkwardly watching people do maths for no obvious reason.

Ashbourne I was as keen to get back into Ashbourne as I was wary of Meadow Cross. During the pilot study the atmosphere had been very positive overall, and I was looking forward to seeing the staff again. Part of me was worried I was remembering this in a rose-tinted way, but I was hopeful this was not entirely the case. In actual fact, the whole project is one that is perhaps easier to view in a more positive way from a distance. It has so much ­obvious appeal, and generates so much interest among academic and non-­ academic colleagues and friends alike, that it is easy to forget sometimes how challenging it was, both in the pilot study and now, in the larger study. But the situation still appeared positive at Ashbourne—the two coordinators were fully on board, and they clearly ‘got’ the project right

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from the beginning. They appeared very pleased to have me back, and were equally welcoming to Susan. One aspect that immediately made Ashbourne easier was the fact that several of the Year 11 students were still there from last year. This wasn’t the case at Meadow Cross, where there was only one familiar face, and she had been almost silent during the pilot study. But here, five of the Year 11 students had been involved to varying degrees the previous year, and several of these were quite dominant characters in the group as a whole. More than this, I felt I had got on particularly well with some of them a year ago, and I was hopeful I could largely carry on where I had left off. I see in my diary that of the familiar faces, I predicted that Leah, Georgia, and Kane would be pleased to see me, and Shannon and Luke would be indifferent. This wasn’t to be the case in actual fact, but at least this unfounded belief allowed me to enter the context with a bit more self-confidence than I otherwise would have had. Although I didn’t feel quite as comfortable at Ashbourne as I had the previous year, I still felt more at home there than at Meadow Cross. Some of this might be due to the fact that some of the rules were perhaps a little more relaxed at Ashbourne, particularly around the pool table. Actually, it was more the case that the pool table featured in minor punishments more in one centre than in the other. Where it was quite common for people to be temporarily banned from the pool table in Meadow Cross, often for days or even weeks at a time, this rarely happened at Ashbourne. This has a huge effect on the atmosphere as a whole within a centre. When people are playing pool there is always something going on—there is always a focus for people’s attention that is easily shared by people outside the central group. When there is no pool, people are left with little to do and tend to just sit around. As an outsider, it is far easier to subtly observe and involve yourself in interactions around a pool table than it is to engage with people in their own small conversations. For this reason, the pool table became my default hang-out point in the centre. It was where I felt the least awkward, particularly in the early stages of the project. So while I made an effort to become involved in as much of the day-­ to-­day life of the centre as I could, the pool table was a place to go back to and gather my thoughts without feeling too out of place.

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I was certainly more confident at Ashbourne. I felt I had the freedom to go where I wanted, and was comfortable observing, joining, or initiating interactions with any of the students and staff. This was never entirely the case at Meadow Cross, where I always felt like a (generally welcome) visitor. There were individuals with whom I felt the same familiarity and ease as I did with those at Ashbourne, but overall, the two centres were quite different places for me. Interestingly, I got the impression that this situation was reversed for Susan, at least in the early stages of the project. Susan immediately hit it off with some of the staff at Meadow Cross, especially Michael, and this seemed to give her the same confidence there as I had at Ashbourne. She also got on extremely well with the staff at Ashbourne, but I just felt that her connection with Michael and her personal shared experience of Joy’s home country of Jamaica2 meant that she was able to forge special connections at Meadow Cross. The Jamaica connection, once it gradually emerged in the awareness of the young people, also gave Susan an additional level of respect among some of the students, especially (although not exclusively) at Meadow Cross. In both centres we spent some time during the first visit explaining who we were and what we were doing there. Despite the detail we tried to offer, I think the general understanding was that we worked at the university, and that we were interested in the way young people speak. Looking at our diaries, I see that at Meadow Cross, I specifically emphasised that we weren’t police as we introduced ourselves. It wouldn’t have crossed my mind to do this originally, but I had learned from the pilot study that this was a possible misapprehension. What was especially interesting about when we explained the project to the young people was the almost complete lack of interest they showed. It wasn’t a negative reaction, or an obstructive reaction—it was simply indifferent. This was especially true for Meadow Cross, perhaps because we were unknown to almost all the young people, and the coordinators there had not always been as interested themselves as the ones at Ashbourne. This was the first of many realisations concerning the distance between our worlds and those of the young people; we were in close geographical proximity, but that was about all.

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3.4 How We Were Perceived It’s hard to say precisely how we were perceived by the young people when they first met us, or even throughout our time with them. However, it is possible to piece together some sense of this by looking at instances from our diaries in which we noted how they referred to us in some way, either directly or indirectly. More of these interactions will emerge in later chapters, but to give an initial idea: Tuesday 9th Sep, Meadow Cross. Susan’s diary. Tim was handing out sheets with a list of jobs, reading them out. ‘Research Scientist’. He looked at me. ‘Susan would you say that is what you do?’ I said that I was a social scientist, so yes. Jamal said ‘but you just sit in our classes’. Tuesday, 16th Sep, Meadow Cross. Rob’s diary. Susan’s conversation in PfWL3 the other day about research scientists seems to have struck a chord, as Jake asked me if I was a research scientist too, like ‘that lady’. I said I kind of was. Wednesday 17th Sep, Meadow Cross. Rob’s diary. Incidentally, the teacher introduced me to the class, asking if they knew who I was. Jamal: ‘Who’s Rob? Oh, that’s Rob. Yeah, we know him’. Then Jake brought out the research scientist line again. Tuesday 14th Oct, Ashbourne. Susan’s diary. As she walked passed me I felt her touch my back and I knew she had stuck something on it. We laughed. There was a post-it note on my back that read ‘nana’ (I’ve kept it.) It was done in a friendly way and Caitlin proceeded to walk over to Anna who was teaching the ‘theory’ group and stuck one on her back too. I don’t know what was written on hers. My post-it made me feel old. But then I realised that it was highly possible that these young people may have grandmothers who are my age. That didn’t help much though. I really did feel old.

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Thursday 23rd Oct, Ashbourne, Rob’s diary. Nathan then asked if that woman who comes here was my wife. I explained that she wasn’t, that she is simply a colleague from the University working on the same project. He then asked if she was my sidechick, but I said no. … I wandered over to the pool table first, and stayed long enough for Luke to make one of his usual comments about my bald head. I smiled along as I usually do, then went back and sat at the table. Wednesday 12th Nov, Ashbourne, Rob’s diary. Leah was continuing a conversation I caught the tail end of earlier, when she was trying to work out if you should say ‘I’m going for a lay down’ or ‘I’m going for a lie down’. Anna told her she should ask me as I’m the expert to which Leah replied ‘just cos he works at a fucking university doesn’t mean he’s a fucking expert’. Monday 19th Jan, Meadow Cross. Susan’s diary. Later on, as I was leaving I said goodbye to him [Abdou] and Michael as I passed the office where they were sitting and chatting. Abdou said that he thought I was ‘funny’. Michael and I asked him simultaneously what he meant by ‘funny’. He said ‘You make me laugh, you ask funny questions, you say funny things.’ ‘What kind of things?’ I asked. He said: ‘I dunno just the things you say’ One thing that always struck me throughout our time in the centres was the power of using someone’s name. Looking at it now it seems so trivial—of course we expect people to refer to each other by name, and the young people were happy to call (literally) staff by name all the time. But when you come in as an outsider it is very noticeable when people start doing it, especially if the relationship is uncertain or inconsistent. For example, I’d had a good relationship with Leah at Ashbourne during the pilot study when she was in Year 10, and I know that she knew my name, having spent a lot of time working on a recording with her and two friends, in which she can be heard several times trying to get my attention back to her story by calling me ‘Rob’. However, the Year 11 Leah was now that bit more self-aware, cool, and distant. I noted on the first day that she

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entirely blanked me—maybe forgotten, maybe indifferent, so I was aware it was a relationship that needed to be rekindled, especially as she was potentially so useful for the project as a core character in the centre. But then one day in October I found myself out with the Ashbourne group for an indoor climbing activity, holding the rope for Leah as she prepared to scale the wall, with still no conversation between us. Just as she was about to start her climb she turned, looked me in the eye, and with a completely straight face, said, ‘If you fucking drop me, Rob, I swear I’ll burn your fucking university down.’ She did remember me after all!

Notes 1. I am one of these. 2. Susan lived and studied in Jamaica for several years, and has strong connections to the country and culture. 3. Preparation for Working Life class.

References Bucholtz, Mary. 2011. White kids: Language, race and styles of youth identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Eckert, Penelope. 2000. Linguistic variation as social practice: The linguistic construction of identity in Belten High. Oxford: Blackwell. Mendoza-Denton, Norma. 2008. Homegirls: Language and cultural practice among Latina youth gangs. Malden and Oxford: Blackwell. Schilling, Natalie. 2013. Sociolinguistic fieldwork. CUP

4 Methods

This chapter will discuss in detail the various processes we went through in navigating our theoretical and methodological journey through the project. Quite intentionally in terms of recruitment for the project (see Chap. 1), Susan and I come from different areas within what could broadly be called sociolinguistics. However, what was intended to be a relatively painless meshing of two approaches in pursuit of the research aims and questions turned out to be rather more involved than we had anticipated. The chapter is set out as follows: firstly, it will outline our individual research backgrounds and accompanying approaches, before highlighting some of the difficulties we faced. It will then describe the ways in which we dealt with our differences and identify some of our shared practice. Finally, it will discuss what we learned from the process, including some practical reflections and suggestions for other researchers embarking on similar collaborative projects. It should be pointed out that some of the text in this chapter, and much of the thinking that went into producing it, comes from work that Susan and I did together in preparation for a jointly authored chapter in another book (Dray and Drummond 2018). It was always the plan to use that chapter as the basis for this one, but I don’t want to take © The Author(s) 2018 R. Drummond, Researching Urban Youth Language and Identity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73462-0_4

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credit for ideas and points that aren’t mine. What’s presented here is an adaptation of that collaboration.

4.1 Rob and a Variationist Approach Very early on in the planning of the project, I was aware of the need to branch out from my own narrow experience of sociolinguistic analysis. I was (and still am, to a large extent) primarily a sociophonetician from the variationist tradition, albeit one with an increasingly critical view of some of the established practices and assumptions that pervade the discipline. Pioneered by William Labov in the 1960s and 1970s (e.g. Labov 1972), variationist sociolinguistics looks at the inherent variability of language (i.e. different ways of saying or talking about the same thing), and explores how this variation relates to society. It is essentially ‘the study of the interplay between variation, social meaning and the evolution and development of the linguistic system itself ’ (Tagliamonte 2006:5). It began as, and in some cases remains, a primarily quantitative enterprise, developing and applying ever more sophisticated statistical methods of uncovering the often-hidden patterns that exist within our everyday speech, and relating them to aspects of our social lives. I fell into variationist sociolinguistics accidentally when I started my PhD (Drummond 2010), knowing little about its history, and not much more about its methods, approaches, or theoretical underpinnings, having come from an English-language teaching background. It is only with hindsight that I can see how I fell into it somewhere in the region of its first and second waves (Eckert 2012; Wardhaugh and Fuller 2015: 169–195; Drummond and Schleef 2016), guided as I was by the people around me at the time. Certainly, the primary focus for me when approaching any linguistic data was the quantitative analysis of language features (primarily sounds) in relation to macro-social categories such as gender or age, or engagement in social networks or CofPs. I was fascinated by the intricacies of statistical analysis, and by the power which such analysis has in uncovering hidden relationships between linguistic and social factors. For me, there was an objective truth in this kind of analysis that was absent in other areas of sociolinguistics. I could see that

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the final interpretation as to the meaning behind the observed correlations may be open to debate, but there is no doubting the material evidence that led to uncovering that correlation in the first place. However, I was not completely on board with the variationist enterprise as a whole. Even in the early stages of my engagement with it, one aspect had always troubled me in particular, and that was the way in which we collect data. In most cases, the actual speech on which so much analytical time and effort is focused is gathered by way of some kind of sociolinguistic interview, a tried-and-tested technique, or a series of techniques, for accessing a variety of speech styles from the same ‘authentic’1 speaker. Much has been written about the use of sociolinguistic interviews (e.g. Becker 2013; Rickford and McNair-Knox 1994; Wolfson 1976; Eckert 2001; Briggs 1986), and both its merits and its shortcomings continue to be debated, as well as what it actually comprises (see Becker 2013 for a discussion of the differences between a broad ‘sociolinguistic interview’ and the more strictly Labovian ‘Sociolinguistic Interview’). Schilling-Estes (2008) counters some of the resultant criticism by providing a very convincing argument for revisiting the approach, suggesting that it has more to offer than we give it credit for, especially when we ‘recognize the limitations of … [a] fundamental principle behind the sociolinguistic interview’—the idea that the ‘best’ data is unselfconscious ‘vernacular’ speech (p. 971). And this is indeed a serious concern—the idea that there is even such a thing as ‘the vernacular’ in this sense. Do we really have a ‘natural’ way of speaking, a style that emerges when we are paying the least attention to how we are using language? If so—when does it appear? Is it the style we use when we are most relaxed, perhaps with our partners, with our families, with our friends? For many of us these are three different styles right there. What is perhaps unlikely is that it is the style we use when talking to a stranger with a microphone, however relaxed and engrossed in the conversation we may feel. There is nothing wrong with attempting to access a more unselfconscious way of speaking at all, and in many ways, it makes sense to do so, but given what we know about the extent to which people routinely adjust their speech depending on contextual factors, it seems odd to prioritise this one style above all others.2 Schilling-Estes addresses this tension, and shows how an understanding of the limitations of the concept

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of ‘the vernacular’ can open up greater possibilities and opportunities within the structure of the sociolinguistic interview. However, these opportunities do depend, as she firmly states, on us as analysts ‘[knowing] how to listen’ (p. 984). While Schilling-Estes’ argument is convincing, and while there is no doubt that sociolinguistic interviews can elicit fascinating and useful data, there is no escaping the fact that such data represents an extremely narrow snapshot of a person’s linguistic and social reality. However elaborate and well designed the tasks, and however good our analytical listening skills, the speech has usually been collected by a single interlocutor, in a single location, at a single point in time (repeated interviews are sometimes used, but this is not the norm). This fact often gets forgotten somewhere in all the subsequent analysis, as the focus naturally shifts from the process of collecting the data to ‘what it all means’, ignoring the fact that what it all means is so heavily tied to the context in which it was produced. This is of course a generalisation, but it often appears that the actual data collection is almost a necessary inconvenience to be dealt with as quickly as possible in order to let the real (and more interesting) work begin, and that little thought has gone into it as a process beyond making sure it is of good recorded quality and from a representative sample of the population. Because the one-off interview is such a common method of data collection and has been for so long, it perhaps ceases to be questioned, and its obvious limitations become a shared, if usually unspoken, understanding at the point of disseminating research findings. After all, when these same researchers aren’t writing up or presenting their latest work, most of them are in classrooms teaching new sociolinguistics students how our speech varies according to who we are talking to, a sociolinguistic fact that a standard sociolinguistic interview patently fails to capture. So, it’s not as if we don’t know the shortcomings of such an approach to language analysis, we just choose to accept, ignore, or overlook it. This is not to say that research in this mould is not extremely valuable, far from it. Nor is it the case that we are necessarily trying to ‘hide’ anything when we do not confront the sociolinguistic interview as an issue; as I said, it is a procedural understanding and acceptance that comes with the territory. After all, we don’t feel the need to re-explain in every study

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why we tend to look at particular variables (certain vowels, ‘-ing’, ‘like’),3 or why we don’t rely on self-reported usage of particular variants. I simply think we should acknowledge more often the fact that data collected in this way can only ever offer a partial picture. It’s a useful picture but it’s incomplete, and its influence would in some ways be stronger if we accepted that, rather than allowing interpretations to be overgeneralised and taken more or less as fact. Of course, I’m not the first person to have reservations about this specific aspect of variationist methods. For example, Rickford (2014) provides useful insights into the problems of sociolinguistic interviews in his call for more attention to be given to stylistic and/or situational variation within sociolinguistic research. He uses the analogy of a sociolinguistic interview being like ‘a fisherman’s net cast into a river’, with what is caught possibly being useful and even valuable, but not an accurate or complete sample of ‘what lies beneath’ (p. 590). He then illustrates why we should be cautious in our inferences from such data by providing examples of situational (usually a change of interlocutor) and metaphorical (usually a change of topic) switching (Blom and Gumperz 1972:424–5) in which the stylistic variation is clear. He distinguishes between, and provides examples of, serendipitous (captured by chance, often due to a momentary change of interlocuter) and orchestrated (intended and engineered by the researcher, perhaps by changing the context) switching, before highlighting current work by Sharma and Rampton (2015), which is essentially a combination of all of these aspects, as a promising way forward. This fundamental reservation, along with a growing uneasiness since my PhD with the way in which variationist studies tend to work with top-down, macro-social categories in order to explain the data (a reservation that was to get stronger, especially when I came across Deborah Cameron’s (1990) Demythologizing Sociolinguistics: Why Language Does Not Reflect Society), led me to realise that perhaps my most natural environment was somewhere within third-wave variationist studies (Eckert 2012). The more I learned, the more convinced I was by the idea that language use constructs rather than reflects identities, and that linguistic features can not only index social meanings (Ochs 1992; Silverstein 1985, 2004), but that these meanings can often be multiple (Eckert

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2008; Kiesling 2013) depending on the context and how they are used in relation to other social and stylistic practices. However, engaging in third-wave ideas is not to reject first- and second-­ wave ideas. Clearly, the macro-social categories of social class, ethnicity, and so on still play a part, as the meaning-making features that play such an important role in third-wave studies do not simply appear out of nowhere. In other words, people can only use the linguistic features that are available to them, and what is available to them is determined in part by these larger social factors (see Tagliamonte 2016: 152–153 for a discussion on this point).4 Alongside this developing understanding of my own relative position with variationism, I was also becoming more aware of work within interactional sociolinguistics, as it is an approach which third-wave studies draw upon. Pioneered by John Gumperz in particular (e.g. Gumperz 1982), interactional sociolinguistics focuses on richly detailed interactions which are, ideally, situated within extensive participant observation. The approach consists of micro-discourse analysis of ‘key episodes’ (Rampton 2006: 24), in which social identities are constructed and reproduced. However, despite being fascinated by descriptions of ­interactional sociolinguistic research, it was an area I approached with some degree of scepticism. I had always been very wary of most types of discourse analysis, especially the micro-analysis of the type seen in interactional sociolinguistics. With hindsight I can see that this unease and scepticism was largely unfounded and stemmed from a lack of understanding of the process, but at the time, it was very real. My main issue was simply to do with the sheer amount of interpretative meaning that could be produced from such a tiny fragment of speech. It reminded me of studying poetry at school and discussing what a particular line ‘really meant’, and all the time thinking that if only T.S. Eliot were still alive, we could just go and ask him what he meant, and save us the hassle of our wild speculations. My views on this kind of analysis were to change, and with good reason, but at the beginning of the project, this is where I was. I could see that interactional analysis had something useful to say, but I distrusted the process behind it. To me, it still seemed like an exercise in the overinterpretation of very selective data, with little scope for falsifiability.

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(Ironically, I could not at that stage see that this is precisely how a traditional quantitative variationist analysis often looks to an interactional practitioner.) However, it was a process I was preparing myself to embrace, as I was convinced that interactional analysis should play a significant role in the project as a whole. In sum, as the project began, I was a variationist specialising in the analysis of sound who was trained within firstand second-wave techniques but who was finding a new home within third-wave ideas and who was open to the possibilities promised by interactional analysis. I was happy with this state of affairs, and confident the project would be a success. Then I started having methodological and theoretical discussions with Susan.

4.2 Susan and an Ethnographic/Interactional Approach Susan is first and foremost an ethnographer. She is interested in the subjective realities that are enacted in particular spaces in particular times. Although her focus might be on language, she uses whatever semiotic practices that emerge to enable her to make sense of what is happening. In terms of practical analysis, Susan’s approach fits within interactional sociolinguistics (see earlier description), focusing on the discourse of everyday interactions. However, in terms of underlying approach, Susan draws on the material-semiotic work done within the discipline of Science, Technology and Society (STS) (e.g. Law 2008). In describing her approach elsewhere, Susan says: I apply an approach to ‘practice’ drawn from STS, which is used widely in a range of disciplines including geography, feminist technoscience studies, anthropology and postcolonial studies. This approach explores social issues by asking how they are generated in material practices or, put another way, how realities (e.g. identities, normative assumptions, truths etc.) are crafted in the relations between humans, technologies and other material objects (e.g. Law and Singleton 2005; Mol 2002; Verran 2001). Working with case studies, this ‘material-semiotic’ (Haraway 1991; Law 2008) approach takes practices as its empirical focus. It works by trying to identify the categories that are being generated in the practice being observed (Dray 2017: 45-46).

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In this approach, you cannot come to the data having already categorised a person into a particular social group, be that ‘working class’ or ‘mixed race’. You have to look at the practice and see which version(s) of the ‘social’ is being enacted or performed at that particular time in that particular context. Whereas other approaches might enact ethnicity or class, for example, into being by referring to wider social structures, material semiotics doesn’t do this because realities do not exist outside of the relations that produce them. Although I now have a much better understanding of what Susan’s approach entails, and throughout the project I became more and more open to what to me were new ideas, at the beginning of the project, I had very little awareness. As far as I was concerned, Susan was simply the ideal person to provide the ethnographic/discourse/interactional insights that the research so clearly needed.

4.3 A Clash of Cultures It became clear early on that Susan and I were coming from very different directions with regard to how to approach this kind of research. It wasn’t so much that we disagreed over particular ideas, it was more that we simply didn’t understand the ideas that the other person was putting forward. More than this, we often didn’t know that we didn’t understand, so things became even more difficult to untangle. We would regularly find ourselves talking past each other, completely missing the point of what the other was saying due to a prior misunderstanding. Or else we would think we were working along the same lines, only to realise we were using the same terminology to refer to different concepts. Initially, we reassured ourselves that this was all part of the process, that such misunderstandings were inevitable, and that the project would be all the better for it. However, as we each delved deeper into the theoretical underpinnings of our different approaches in order to find common ground, thinking (hoping) that the differences were largely superficial ones to do with particular techniques or procedural habits, we gradually realised that the situation was far more serious. Within our different skills and methods

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are embedded certain assumptions and theories about the nature of the relationship between language and society, and even different ways of seeing the world. These assumptions and theories, while separately justifiable, do not always sit well together. Some of the core elements of the two traditions are outlined below in relation to the extent to which our different approaches aligned or failed to align with each other. This is not a comprehensive account of either approach, since there is more than one way of practising ethnographic (e.g. Hymes 2004) and variationist (e.g. Schilling 2013) research. Rather, it is a description of our specific case and the salient differences that came to matter in our collaboration. (For comprehensive treatments of ­ethnography, see, for example, Clifford and Marcus (1986), Hammersley and Atkinson (2007). For variationist sociolinguistics, see, for example, Tagliamonte (2011), Chambers and Schilling (2013).)

The Two Approaches I, as a variationist, was drawn to the patterns and materiality (e.g. the sounds) of language in an attempt to describe and explain their variability in relation to the identities and social contexts of the speakers, and how these might relate to broader issues. Whereas Susan, as an ethnographer, was more interested in exploring language in all its messiness in this particular space, looking at how it contributes to the meaning-making process, without looking to tell a tidy story or apply it so directly to a wider context—an example perhaps of the way in which the ethnographic/ anthropological enterprise is ‘phenomenological’, while the variationist enterprise is broadly ‘explanatory’ (Woolard 2008: 434). Variationist studies, especially those in the more traditional first and second waves, aim to follow the ‘scientific’ knowledge tradition of theoretically informed hypotheses, balanced samples, objectivity, and a desire to reduce researcher effects. Practitioners are required to have a very good understanding of the relevant linguistic systems under investigation, be that to do with phonotactic constraints on particular pronunciations of a sound such as ‘ing’ (e.g. Drummond 2012), or the various discourse functions of a word such as ‘like’ (e.g. D’Arcy 2017) in order to correctly

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identify and quantify their use in spoken language. When working with sound, they need an understanding of the physiological processes of human speech, and they need to know when and how to measure these processes acoustically using specialist software. Although they work with a range of speech styles, their main target is almost always the unselfconscious ‘vernacular’—the type of casual language an individual will use when they are so caught up in what they are saying that they forget to attend to how they are saying it, as this is the language that is ‘the most regular in its structure’ (Labov 1972: 112) (see earlier discussion). Speech data is usually gathered through a ‘sociolinguistic interview’ (see above) of one form or another, in which participants are encouraged to relax and engage in something as close to a casual conversation as is possible. Ethnographic techniques such as participant observation, when used at all, tend to be employed strategically and in a limited fashion, with the primary aims of contextualising the recordings and gaining greater access to participants. Almost none of this chimes well with an ethnographic approach, in which the testing of pre-determined theory-based hypotheses by way of an ‘objectively’ gathered and balanced data set makes little sense. Within ethnography ‘theory isn’t used to structure and control the contexts of data elicitation in ways that makes the data maximally relevant to the testing of specific hypotheses’ (Rampton 2006: 385). Variationists enter a research site knowing what they need and having a good idea of what they might find (even if their assumptions prove to be incorrect), whereas ethnographers enter a research site with no such limiting pre-conceptions. Variationist studies have traditionally used quantitative methods to explore how the use of particular variants correlates with, and therefore reflects, macro-social categories such as sex, ethnicity, social class, age, and geographical location. Working with tendencies and probabilities within carefully selected samples, such studies seek to generalise beyond the immediate research context in order to say something about language and society more generally, while at the same time adding to our understanding of the process of language change. More recent third-wave variationist work has then brought the focus back to the individual, looking at the context of variation and the role it plays in relation to a speaker’s

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social reality, or in their engagement with various CofPs (Lave and Wenger 1991; Eckert and McConnell-Ginet 1999). Research within the third wave sees language use as constructing identities through stylistic practice (Eckert 2012: 94) rather than reflecting them, with the social meanings of variable features being key to this process (e.g. Podesva 2007; Eckert 2008; Kiesling 2009). The mechanism for creating these semiotic links between linguistic features and social meanings is indexicality (Ochs 1992; Silverstein 1985; Drummond and Schleef 2016). An ethnographic/interactional approach does not engage with macro-­ social categories as such, and does not seek to generalise beyond the specific context being explored, at least not in the way a quantitative variationist study might. While a traditional variationist study would deliberately seek out a representative (in terms of macro-social categories) sample of participants so as to be able to extrapolate from its findings, an ethnographic study works with case studies of whichever people are part of the specific context under investigation. It seeks to produce ‘theoretically telling (rather than typical) cases’ (Rampton et al. 2015: 16). This is not to say that the approach has no interest in large social categories, but this interest lies in the ways in which such group identities ‘get constructed in culture, discourse and ideology, and how humans come to inhabit these social categories in ways that are both similar and different’ (Rampton et al. 2015: 20). Clearly, however, as we move towards third-wave variationism, with its focus on the individual and stylistic/social practice, the distance between our two approaches narrows considerably. As the project began in earnest, I think we both identified the world of third-wave variationism as somewhere which might at least offer us both a chance of mutual understanding, if not agreement.

Identifying Differences It gradually became apparent that our two approaches interacted in four different ways. Firstly, some aspects overlapped neatly, such as the need for ongoing observation and participation; neither of us wanted a situation in which we came in, carried out/ran some interviews/focus groups,

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and then left again. Secondly, some aspects differed, but in a potentially complementary way, such as the desire to observe and record the young people in different contexts; for Susan this was important to get as complete a picture as she could of the environment, for me it was more a case of getting audio recordings of different styles of language. Thirdly, some aspects didn’t combine, so we had to find a compromise, such as the way we transcribed the data; I needed it to be carried out in Elan5 so as to align the text with the audio, but for Susan this was an unnecessary extra step. Finally, some aspects were apparently unsurmountable, such as the way we categorised individuals into groups; I was happy to use ethnicity as a possible grouping criterion, but this made no sense to Susan, who saw the top-down application of labels as completely nonsensical and irrelevant until we had observed what grouping emerged naturally. In these instances, there was no other option than to do our own thing, at least as a starting point. Perhaps one of the most obvious differences between us lay in the way in which we approached participant observation, and its subsequent documentation. We both knew that observation was to be a vital part of the research, and we decided to use electronic field diaries in the form of ongoing Word documents to record the day-to-day activities. The diaries were stored in a shared folder, with each available to the other person all the time. Although both diaries constitute records of our experiences, the data within them is very different, fuelled as it was by different motivations and priorities. Susan’s includes detailed and reflexive accounts of both the linguistic and the non-linguistic materialities of the practices and spaces she participated in and observed, alongside details of seating arrangements, clothing, and moment-by-moment accounts of how lessons or other scenarios played out. Recurring themes are cross-referenced to previous entries, specific items of clothing are illustrated, overheard songs and other cultural references are identified and linked to. For Susan, the diary was a core source of data in itself, and an absolute priority. My diary, on the other hand, is not so detailed, and my observations are not so insightful. For me, the diary’s main role was to contextualise the recordings of speech, or to make comments that might help in identifying specific individuals for future recordings. In other words, the observational data was primarily there to support the recorded data; it did not

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necessarily constitute analysable data or evidence in itself, at least in my mind. In my defence, part of my diary deficiency was down to my lack of skills in this area rather than any lack of intent. As Hymes (2004: 4) suggests, professional training in this area is largely ‘a matter of the transmission of a craft and of learning by doing—by personal experience’, and this was experience I did not have at the time. Proper ethnographic observation and documentation are not things you can simply learn; they are skills that are developed through experience, and I didn’t have that experience. Perhaps I simply hadn’t been reading the right things: Eckert (2000: 74) makes the point that ‘ethnography is not practical for everyone’ and notes the importance of particular personal qualities and the need to invest time. She explains how it requires ‘tolerance for sitting around a lot, waiting for something to happen, patience with empty spaces, when one could be back in the office writing something’. This is not a description of ethnography that Susan, or other more anthropologically oriented ethnographers, would recognise, as something is always happening; empty spaces are never actually empty, as artefacts and silences also tell stories. Clearly, Eckert’s comment suggests that what counts as ethnography may differ considerably depending on the training and the background of the researcher. As a result, we have two quite different diaries. The extent to which this actually matters, or presents an actual problem, is debatable. On the one hand, the diaries simply represent two different ways of going about the same task—each a relatively predictable result of the background and research objectives of its author. However, on the other hand, and with the distance of time, we are left with two very different data sets. In the same way that a variationist analysis would suffer if one set of data was recorded at a quality level which enabled fine-grained phonetic analysis and another was recorded at a level that only allowed broad phonemic generalisations, any subsequent comparison and collation of observations is unbalanced. I should point out that I am not for a moment suggesting that a variationist approach lacks sophistication or an attention to detail—simply that the focus for such attention lies in different areas. To illustrate, it soon became clear that the situation with regard to the diary was reversed when it came to noticing precise ways in which particular speech features

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were being pronounced. Sociophoneticians are used to working with, for example, over ten different auditorily distinguishable ways of pronouncing ‘th’, or fine variations in the length and trajectory of the vowel in ‘like’, whereas such a level of detail would be missed by linguists from other areas. This highly nuanced perception and selection of sounds is a fundamental skill that variationists learn and develop to the extent that it becomes impossible to not notice such things. Knowing precisely what to count, when it’s relevant to count it, and how to explore the numbers beyond comparing frequencies in order to uncover productive patterns, requires a particular sort of understanding. Just as Susan and I could observe the same interaction and I would not notice particular aspects of the context that might be so obvious to Susan, so would Susan fail to notice slight (but relevant to me) variations in particular phonetic realisations. Each of us would usually be able to see/hear what we missed on it being subsequently highlighted or explained by the other, but the initial incidents were not on our own personal radars. It may therefore be pertinent to recognise a distinction between the practical use of ethnographic and variationist tools, and the different research practices in which they contribute to particular forms of knowledge. Ethnographic and variationist traditions want to practise social science differently (see Law (2004) for some thoughts on this). At the risk of oversimplifying, it might be said that ethnographers are trained to see in a particular way, and variationists are trained to hear in a particular way (Dray and Drummond 2018). Many of the differences can simply be put down to the fact that each discipline is asking specific questions about the relationship between language and society that may not be relevant in the other tradition. The focus of a variationist approach is primarily on language as a more or less quantifiable object, able to be described and then explained, usually in terms of correlations with social factors, although sometimes in terms of causal relations. Some of these relations involve the indexing of stably referential realities, such as identities (be they macro-social groups such as social class, ethnicity, gender or be they micro-level personae situated in particular contexts), which may or may not be constructed in interaction (e.g. Eckert 2016). Whereas the focus of an ethnographic/interactional approach is on language practices as situated and contingent, a variation-

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ist approach seeks to explore the ways in which language constructs or performs realities (e.g. Bauman and Briggs 1990). Categorisation (of people and of data) is a particular issue. One key question that variationist studies ask is how language use relates to particular groups of people, or, increasingly, how language use helps to ­construct those social groups in the first place. However, in getting to the point where that question can be asked, it is often the case that assumptions have already been made with regard to broader social groups, assumptions that are antithetical to a strictly ethnographic approach. When a variationist enters a particular context with a view to investigating, for example, the speech of working-class children in a particular area (Snell 2015), the participants have been assigned working-class identities a priori through external means. The same is true for similar studies into gender and ethnicity (Bucholtz 2011), or sexuality and social class (Podesva 2007), or pro- and anti-school adolescents (Eckert 2000). However committed the study might be to exploring the ways in which identities emerge in interaction on a micro-social level, certain macro-­ social assumptions are already in place. An ethnographer who does not come from a variationist background, however, would enter a context with no prior expectations in order to see what emerges as the most suitable and appropriate analytical framings/categories. These may or may not coincide with those already identified as relevant in a variationist approach, an approach whose assumptions render a large part of the ethnographic enterprise (mistakenly) redundant.

Other Collaborative Studies We are by no means the first people to attempt to combine variationist and ethnographic approaches; indeed, there has been a recent notable increase in studies which attempt to bring together the generalising statistical descriptions of quantitative methods and the local and specific narrative descriptions of qualitative methods in order to generate a more complete picture. This is particularly true of scholars trained in the variationist tradition who have utilised ethnographic methods to enable them to (a) access a variety of contexts in which to capture speech data

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beyond the traditional sociolinguistic interview or similar (e.g. Snell 2015; Sharma 2011; Podesva 2007) and (b) observe the social networks or practices of participants in order to identify categories which might be used as a replacement for the more traditional variationist macrosocial categories of sex, class, age, ethnicity, and region (e.g. Eckert 2000; Kirkham 2015; Moore 2010; Levon 2012). The underpinning motivations and aims in such studies tend to remain largely variationist: they seek to describe language variation (and change), usually in relation to the use of ‘non-standard’ linguistic features, then investigate the interaction between the linguistic features and various social factors. The interaction is then examined and explained as a function of identity. The findings from such studies are often generalised beyond the immediate research context, or are at least seen as being available for comparison with other studies. As a consequence, field notes and ‘thick’ descriptions, the essential and core data of the ethnographic endeavour, tend to be largely absent from the resulting analyses and interpretative work inasmuch as they don’t tend to contribute in any meaningful way to the ‘evidence’ presented in research reports. The observational data is still described, often in some depth (depending on the format of the report; e.g. Eckert 2000), but usually ultimately to support the spoken language data. Observations are legitimately and usefully implemented to support and evidence interpretations of specific utterances (e.g. Snell 2015), to explain the rationale behind the identification of specific social groups (e.g. Lawson 2011), or to illustrate why linguistic variation might be patterned in a particular way (e.g. Sharma 2011). This is entirely understandable if the requirement is that core data be audio-recorded at sufficient quality for acoustic and/or auditory analysis, while also meeting the discipline’s requirements for objectivity, validity, and reliability. Observational field notes simply don’t meet these criteria: being subjective, selective, contradictory, and specific, they don’t cohere. It is therefore no surprise, given this difference in how the methods capture data, that the ethnographic methods take on a different role. Instead of constituting ‘core’ data in themselves, they are used largely for practical or support purposes. At the data collection stage, they help in the quest to gather a greater range of audio recordings across different contexts, owing to the extended amount of time spent in the

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field and how this builds trust with participants, and at the analysis stage, they support and provide additional, vital meaning to those recordings. But this is not a one-way street. A similar thing happens when ethnographers make use of quantitative methods from the variationist tradition, such as exploring the frequency of particular linguistic variants (e.g. Rampton 2006). To variationist eyes, the analyses can at times look superficial, relying, as they often do, simply on the binary presence or absence of a feature (e.g. Bucholtz 2011: 129) rather than a more comprehensive frequency count allowing subsequent statistical analysis. This may well allow the identification of insightful patterns in a specific case study, but such an analysis is largely meaningless in the variationist enterprise, in which the question of ‘Does it happen?’ is always and unavoidably followed by ‘How often, and in what contexts?’ Rampton et al. (2015) suggest that in drawing on methods developed in other traditions, ‘paradigms don’t have to be swallowed whole’, and that ‘mixing’ methods can work as long as findings and methods are ‘separated from the explanations and interpretations with which they are conventionally packaged’ (p. 36). However, while all these different studies mentioned above do indeed combine variationist and ethnographic/ interactional approaches (albeit to varying degrees), very few are collaborations between two people from different traditions themselves. Instead, they are the work of an individual, straddling the two approaches. This is important, as dealing with methodological or theoretical conflicts between traditions in one’s own mind is clearly very different from dealing with them ‘externally’ with another individual. It undoubtedly involves some difficult decisions, but I would suggest that it is generally easier to reach a compromise with yourself than it is with another person due to the fact that your methodological heart ultimately lies more in one tradition than in the other. When such studies are joint enterprises (e.g. Sharma and Rampton 2015), the collaboration has often occurred at the data analysis stage rather than earlier, which again, makes a difference. Combining and applying different analytical methods to data that has already been collected is very different from trying to reconcile different approaches to the collection of that data in the first place. With data collected, you are already one significant step further along the process, and it is a case of doing what you can with possibilities already limited by

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what is there. When the data is yet to be collected, there is no such restriction. I would argue that this is one of the aspects that makes our study particularly interesting—it is an account of what happens when two often-conflicting traditions of sociolinguistics attempt to work together from the very beginning of a project.

4.4 Our Combined Approach As I write this in 2017, one year after the official end of the project, and therefore a year without daily interaction with Susan, I begin to wonder quite where we ended up after all in terms of theoretical approach. It seems to me that as we work on the data, sometimes separately, sometimes together, we have each quite naturally begun to slip back into the relative comfort of our pre-existing beliefs, albeit with some (at times not inconsiderable) adjustment as a result of our shared enlightenment. This is something I will return to in due course, but for now I will outline where we thought we were as we got to grips with the project. The period between July and October 2014 was a time of very mixed emotions and experiences. Both Susan and I were extremely excited about the project, and we both realised that it had the potential to offer us something very special academically, socially, and personally. We were also both aware that our approaches differed, but we engaged with the differences with a great deal of openness and optimism. For me in particular, this was an opportunity to add some ballast to my growing unease with variationist methods. This was not the case for Susan, as she had already reached the stage in her own work where she was comfortable with the approach she was taking. Of course, she was always reflecting on and refining her methods, but she had, by and large, been through the epistemological soul-searching that, I presume, we all encounter as academics at some point, regardless of discipline. For her the collaboration was an interesting prospect, and one from which she knew she would learn something, but it was not borne from any perceived shortcomings in what she was already doing, whereas I was consciously looking for something different, something to fill the gaps and cracks in (or perhaps

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to entirely replace) the foundations of my own understanding of sociolinguistic research. Looking through my diary and emails of those months, I can see that there were a lot of ups and downs, largely because of me. I can see that I tended to veer between being entirely open to new ideas, particularly when we discussed them face to face, and then having doubts, leading to late-night emails undoing all the progress we thought we’d made. As we didn’t see each other every day, this would often then lead to lengthy email exchanges or detailed comments on each other’s diaries, which sometimes led to agreement, but sometimes didn’t. There was no doubt that I was the one making more concessions, but this was only to be expected given where we both were in relation to our disciplines at the time.

Categories During this period, we agreed on two underlying principles which spoke to our own individual intuitions about exploring language and identities. Principle 1: Not Categories … Since we were interested in exploring how identities were generated and we didn’t know what these identities were yet, we couldn’t use them as analytical categories. A common criticism of the variationist method is that it assigns identity categories to speakers and then goes on to use these same categories to explain the observed language variation (Cameron 1990; Bucholtz and Hall 2005; Eckert 2000) irrespective of their relevance, or even existence, for the speakers themselves. Similarly, ethnography has been criticised for using identity categories to describe participants while simultaneously and contradictorily arguing that such identities are fluid and locally performed (Woolgar and Pawluch 1985). We therefore agreed not to assign any pre-determined identity categories to the participants other than their stated institutional roles in the learning centres, while acknowledging that even these roles were

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fluid within the actual context. In other words, we described the participants either as staff (centre coordinators, teachers, classroom support workers, youth workers, etc.) or as pupils, but we remained aware of the fact that these were institutional identities which, while central to the existence of the research site, were not always the identities in play at a given moment. Principle 2: …but Practices Although initially guided by Susan, we both felt that practices might provide helpful categories with which to explore patterns in language use. Rather than impose these a priori, thus simply replacing one kind of pre-­ categorisation with another, we intended to let any relevant practices emerge from our observations in the learning centres. However, as the data collection began in earnest, and as we each learned more about the other’s approaches, our two apparently converging principles started to antagonise one other. Rather than strengthening each other in a single way forward, there were times when it looked like we might have to turn back to the relative comfort of our own separate traditions and carry out two parallel projects in the same research site. These were unsettling and extremely disheartening moments, when the project felt like it wasn’t going to work out at all as we had hoped. One particular challenge related to our decision not to use pre-­ determined identity categories: while Susan was gradually noticing how rarely ethnicity was enacted in the learning centres and, when it was, collating non-coherent and ambiguous stories about the participants’ multiple and fluid identities, I became preoccupied with defining each pupil’s individual ethnicity, ideally through self-identification, but also through reported family history. Much as I wanted to embrace Susan’s way of doing things, I couldn’t escape the fact that I desperately wanted to ensure the project was still relevant for a variationist audience, who, I believed, would treat the omission of such ethnicity categories as a fundamental problem, especially in relation to the stated MUBE/MLE background to the project. While, on the one hand, I was totally on board with the idea that ethnicities are enacted in practice, I couldn’t shake the idea that a self-identified ethnicity along racial/family lines helps tell a

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more complete story. I knew that if I were at a variationist conference, listening to someone’s work relating to ethnicity, I would expect to be told what ethnicities the participants ‘belonged’ to, or identified with. I’d like to think that such categorisation and any subsequent correlation with linguistic features would then be examined and challenged, but I didn’t (and don’t) see a problem with reporting those details in the first place, in order to illustrate what it is that is being challenged. Our s­ olution was simply for me to carry out what amounted to a parallel variationist analysis on the same data for comparison purposes, asking the young people how they would categorise themselves on a standard Equal Opportunities Monitoring form. Juxtaposing these categorisations with the multiple and fluid ethnicity categories emerging from the ethnographic data made these reported ‘self-identifications’ look unreliable as single, objective ‘facts’, which raised important questions for us: was this combination of methods making things worse, rather than better? What effect was each having on the other? Another challenge concerned our second principle: practices. It soon became apparent that we had quite different understandings of the concept of ‘practices’, and were focusing on very different things as we went about trying to identify them. My experiences and familiarity in this area revolved around the ‘communities of practice’ (Lave and Wenger 1991) commonly applied in third-wave variationist studies which tend to focus on the community aspect of practice theory. Although the concept is actually quite precise, there is a sense that it is overused, and now finds itself quite vaguely applied to ‘any old group’ of speakers (Eckert, cited in Tagliamonte 2016: 152), in order to define and ascribe relatively stable identity categories to individuals/groups. Susan, on the other hand, was familiar with a material-semiotic theory of practice in which practices are relatively stable patterns of socio-material relations (e.g. Haraway 1991; Law 2008). This way of thinking interrogates the notion of ‘practice’ and how, for example, identities are circulated and changed as practices move and interrelate. It wasn’t clear to either of us how this could fit in a study of language variation (or indeed whether it should). Unlike the ethnicity question, there was no obvious compromise here, as the two approaches in fact related to two fundamentally different ways of seeing the world. Reluctantly at first, I began to learn more about Susan’s understanding of

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practice, and gradually began to appreciate and understand what it involved. It did require a considerable conceptual adjustment, forcing me to (attempt to) focus more on the moment-by-moment intricacies of how realities were being created in particular contexts, but as I started making this adjustment, other differences, such as the role of observational data and, to an extent, the variationist need to be able to generalise, started to be resolved. This gradual move towards Susan’s way of thinking in fact represented a very real professional upheaval for me. I was beginning to see that our two approaches were not as compatible as I had thought at the very beginning of the project, and what I had initially envisaged as a slight change of direction in order to challenge some traditional variationist assumptions and find a better way forward was starting to look like a wholesale abandoning of the entire variationist enterprise. The more we discussed it, the more I felt that Susan’s approach was better, and that any variationist aspects I wanted to keep (such as a straightforward but detailed description of the variety of English found in the centres) were simply extraneous features that I was clinging on to out of some sense of loyalty or habit.

Mini-Crises As the data collection period progressed, we continued to work along these lines: Susan confident in her approach, and me confident in the parts I knew about, and hopeful that things would work out for the best more generally. Every now and then we would have a mini-crisis, resulting in long email exchanges or a meeting (usually lasting a few hours), in which we’d look at where we were heading and address the most recent concerns. Despite being quite demoralising at the time, the process of confronting the crises was generally positive overall. It was time-consuming, and emotionally and intellectually demanding, but it was ultimately useful. I can’t help feeling that an underlying sense of stereotypical British reserve and politeness made things a little more long-winded than they might have needed to be, with both of us seemingly overanxious not to offend,

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demoralise, or challenge the other, being naturally quite polite and non-­ confrontational individuals. Perhaps things would have been less problematic if one of us (probably me as project leader) had been a bit more assertive and willing to debate more readily. But we always got through these crises in our own way. Eventually.

4.5 Practicalities Much of the above relates to our overall approaches to this kind of research, and the underpinning theoretical beliefs. This section describes and summarises the practicalities of what we actually did, before looking at some of the difficulties we faced.

Data Collection and Analysis On entering the sites each day, we each took with us a notepad and pen, and a Zoom voice recorder. I had a Zoom H2n, and Susan had a Zoom H1n. I also often carried an additional H1n that I sometimes gave to students to use themselves. In addition to this, we left a voice recorder with each centre to be used when we weren’t there—David at Ashbourne looked after an H1n, and Michael at Meadow Cross looked after an older version of the H2n. We didn’t use any additional microphones; the recorders were simply placed on a surface in sight of the young people. We recorded in as many contexts as we practically could, including: • • • • •

regular classes (English, maths, science, etc.); interactive classes involving some kind of activity (e.g. cooking); youth forum meetings; one-to-one conversations with young people; general between-class (in)activity (playing pool, table tennis, weight training, spitting bars, casual conversations); and • peer recordings, usually of conversations outside while smoking, with the young people taking charge of the recorder.

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We didn’t actually start recording until quite a long period of observation/familiarisation, and hopefully gaining the trust of the young people and staff. In Meadow Cross our first recordings took place in mid-­ October (approximately six weeks after we entered the site), and in Ashbourne we waited until the last week of November (after approximately 12 weeks). It was always our intention to take the process slowly, and we simply kept the discussion going as to when the time was right in each centre. Nothing in particular sparked the first recording in either centre, we just reached a point where we felt we were in a position to ask without running the risk of outright refusal, a refusal which could jeopardise future recording opportunities. Recordings were made in .wav format and transferred at the end of each day to a secure shared folder, where they stayed temporarily before being transferred to one master portable hard drive and two separate portable hard drives (one kept with me, and one with Susan). Recordings made by the centre staff were collected periodically and dealt with in the same way. All recordings were logged on a shared spreadsheet with details of date, context, speakers, length, approximate content, potential quality/value for analysis, and points of interest. Recordings were transcribed in a variety of ways. The initial plan was to have everything transcribed into Elan, but this is a time-consuming process, and Susan especially needed a more efficient way to know what the recordings contained. She therefore transcribed several of the recordings in Word first, at varying levels of detail depending on what was needed at the time. We also experimented with a trusted and secure transcription service for some of the more straightforward interview-type recordings, again to get an idea of overall content. Elan transcription was carried out by the two of us, plus additional postgraduate students, who were specifically trained to use the software. As mentioned earlier, we made observational field notes as effectively as we were able, typing them up into our own field diaries in the form of two shared Word documents. These were usually completed in the evening or the following morning. On a normal day in the centres, we would aim to arrive just before the young people got there at around 9.00, and stay until they left at 3.00. We tended to arrange our visits around the weekly timetable, targeting

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particular classes/activities and occasionally avoiding others. Our visits were always arranged with the staff, who sometimes identified particular days to be avoided (perhaps because they were having one-to-one sessions, or there was a parent–child meeting, or scheduled exams) as well as days that might be particularly useful (special activities or events, trips, etc). I got the impression we were welcome to come whenever we wanted, but the staff were actively trying to help us to make the most of our time. I certainly never felt unwelcome, and I know Susan didn’t either.

Problems and Challenges We faced a large number of practical difficulties during our time in the centres, some of which were to do with the various theoretical and methodological differences described above, but others were shared across both approaches. In some ways, it was in dealing with these difficulties that we began to learn more about each other’s processes and, in doing so, were able to find some common ground. The following section describes some of these difficulties and offers suggestions, where relevant, from our own experience in the hope that they might provide some useful ideas for other researchers working in similar contexts.

Engagement, Resistance, and Misunderstanding Perhaps our biggest practical challenge was simply how to get the young people on board with the project and willing to participate in something that many of them thought was odd or peculiar, and which was outside the previous experience of all of them. Although obvious, I can’t overstate how crucial this aspect of the project was. If the young people took it upon themselves to not engage with us in any meaningful way and in any significant numbers, then there simply was no project. We therefore had to tread incredibly carefully, especially at the beginning, in order to gain their trust and hopefully spark some interest. The small, claustrophobic nature of the research environment meant there was nowhere for us to hide. It’s not as if we had the luxury of the space found in a mainstream

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high school, where if one group of students proved to be uninterested or hostile, we could simply move on to another area of the school; rather, we were always on show, and always right in the middle of the action. Susan and I had different ways of going about the task of engaging with the young people, some of which have already been described in Chap. 3 in relation to the roles we adopted in the centres. I think we both found things slightly easier when there was some kind of activity going on with which we could get involved. For me, this frequently centred around playing pool and table tennis. Fortunately, while no expert, I am good enough at both so as not to be excluded on the basis of wasting people’s time. In Ashbourne in particular, pool playing time was coveted and fiercely defended, so there was little tolerance for beginners who would take too long to play. As soon as people were out of lessons, there would usually be a race to the table, followed by arguments as to who was ‘up next’. Games would then continue, with the winner staying on each time, until the individuals playing absolutely had to finally drag themselves back into class. I spent a lot of my time around the pool table in both centres, mostly watching, sometimes playing, but glad to get the chance to interact with the young people. To me, any time spent engaging in playing/watching pool, and the conversations it generated, was time well spent in the process of building up relationships and some degree of trust. It was also useful in that it gave me ‘something to do’, a focus for my attention, and thus something to avoid me looking awkward and lost (which is how I often felt). Another useful technique was being in the classrooms during lessons and simply making ourselves available to help where necessary. Rather than simply sit at the back of the class and observe, the more we were able to involve ourselves in the lesson, the more likely we were to be able to engage in some kind of interaction with individual pupils. Different classes lent themselves to this approach to varying degrees, but any activity in which the young people were expected to work alone or in small groups on a particular problem or task was an opportunity to offer help. The extent to which that help was acknowledged and received was also a good indication of whether there was any kind of relationship developing with a particular person. The most productive classes were those which involved some kind of real activity beyond the exercise book or worksheet.­

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For example, in art and cookery lessons, it was fairly easy to find opportunities to help both young people and the teacher, be that by providing paint or ingredients, or helping to clear up, while at the same time joining in with various conversations. Of course, being accepted or tolerated in a class environment was only one part of our task; it was also crucial for us to be able to both record that context and then also speak to and record people on an individual or small-group basis. The nature of the project afforded us enough time to be able to be patient in terms of gathering recorded data; however, at some point we had to take that leap and start asking people for their permission to be recorded. The concept wasn’t entirely alien to them, as, when we were introduced in each centre right at the beginning of the project, we had mentioned the fact that we would like to record them. Having said this, it wasn’t entirely clear at the time that any of the young people were actually listening, let alone taking in any information about who we were and why we were there. As it turned out, there was generally very little resistance to the idea of being recorded, particularly in a class environment. The support of the centre staff helped in this respect, as they often reassured the young people that it was all quite above board and nothing to worry about, so gradually the voice recorder would start to appear in classes. We soon got to the stage where it was almost expected that when one of us happened to be in the class, there would likely be a voice recorder emerging anytime soon, but of course we always asked, and always reassured people that anything we recorded would be completely anonymised. There were occasional protests, but these usually were of the same nature as the everyday protests about almost everything they were asked to do in a classroom. And while in the early days we were both quite sensitive about such resistance, we soon gained the confidence to question why a particular individual did not want to be recorded, and after a bit of reassurance, they would usually change their mind. Approaching individuals for a one-to-one chat was slightly more problematic. Although there were very few individuals who consistently refused to take part, much more likely was a temporary lack of cooperation, usually on the basis of ‘I can’t be arsed’ rather than any specific ideological barrier to what we were trying to do. One individual, Alesha, who

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was well known for being (self-admittedly) lazy, and spent most of her time sitting around complaining about how bored she was, would still say that she couldn’t be arsed to talk to us, even when there was no other option than to continue sitting and being bored. We soon learned, therefore, how important it was to pick our moments, and we would share tips and experiences in this regard between us through our fieldwork diaries. Once we had managed to get an individual or a small group alone, usually in one of the side rooms, or perhaps in the classroom during break, or maybe just in a quiet(ish) corner of the main shared space, we then faced the challenge of engaging them in conversation. Again, this became much easier if there was a particular task to carry out, at least initially. The two most successful tasks we used were our wordlists and Susan’s chat about where an individual sees themselves in relation to others, which she managed to do with most of the people in both centres. Susan is especially good at this kind of interaction, and I would listen to recordings with a mixture of admiration and envy that she was able to do this so well. The key is simply to allow yourself to be genuinely engaged and interested in what the other person is saying, trying not to think about how useful this data might be later on. This is no secret, and is nothing new; it’s the kind of advice I give my students when they embark upon any kind of sociolinguistic data collection. However, it is incredibly hard to do successfully in practice—to allow yourself to submerge completely into the interaction and be willing to put yourself in the role of naïve learner. Susan is able to do this, and the results speak for themselves in terms of both the quality and the quantity of the data she elicited in this way. In addition, the task she used was valuable in itself quite apart from the fact that it got the young people speaking. On a sheet of paper, Susan would put the young person’s name in the middle, and then ask them to indicate where they positioned themselves in relation to other people in the centre, looking for similarities and differences in terms of clothes, music, interests, and ultimately ways of speaking. This generated a wonderful resource with regard to how the young people perceived themselves and others, and it also helped us work out significant relationships, alliances, and tensions. The wordlists were another very useful technique. The task was a variation on a very well-known theme in that the words we were asking about

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were words which we had heard being used by the young people, but which were being used in either new or different ways to what we were used to. We gradually compiled lists of these words, divided them into groups of ten, and then used them on printed sheets in order to talk through with individuals. We would ask them if they knew a particular word, if they use the word, and what the word meant to them in context. The conversations could last from two minutes to ten minutes depending on the mood of the participant, but they often generated fascinating insights, and got the young people speaking about various topics, not least the way in which they use language. The wordlist served as a tool with which to engage people in conversation; it gave us a reason to go up to people and ask if they could spare five minutes, rather than awkwardly trying to chat to them for no obvious purpose other than to record them. It also gave us a reason to pester them, only slightly, in a bid to get them to engage. Hassling 15-year-olds to spare five minutes in order to carry out a clearly stated task is, let’s face it, a lot less weird than hassling them to simply come and have a chat. Of course, not everybody obliged, and on several occasions, somebody would agree and then simply refuse to engage. We have more than one recording that sounds as though Susan or I are asking questions to nobody, with every question generating silence, a shrug, an eye roll, or perhaps a grunt. In both situations (outright refusal or agreement and then non-engagement) there was really nothing we could do except keep the door open to the possibility of trying again next time.

Noise I described earlier how the learning centres are noisy environments. Clearly, this does not bode well for making the kinds of recordings that are needed for phonetic analysis. For Susan, it was not as much of a problem; as long as she was able to make out what was said and by whom, the level of background noise was not a particular issue. However, for me, the overall volume was a serious concern that restricted my ability to carry out acoustic analysis. This was not unexpected to an extent—if you choose to record in an open classroom, then of course it will be harder to

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isolate the voice of a particular individual above the general noise and overlapping speech of everybody else. However, I don’t think we had anticipated quite how hectic things can become. Recordings made outside the classroom were often even more problematic. At Ashbourne in particular, there was often music playing, and it was usually very loud, making it almost impossible to discern individual conversations. We have several recordings where even Susan (who is much more used to this kind of data) cannot distinguish precisely what is going on. In many ways, this issue is really just another example of the theoretical and methodological clashes between our approaches. Taking an ethnographic/interactional approach obliges you to use data that emerges naturally in everyday conversation and interaction. Interview data can be useful in order to gain additional information, but the context is so contrived that it arguably has little value in relation to exploring the everyday practices of a particular environment. On the other hand, a variationist approach, particularly a sociophonetic one, puts a very real and practical limit on the kind of data that is usable. This means that the type of speech gathered in a one-to-one situation (i.e. quiet) is ideal for analysis, whereas the noisy interactional data is problematic. There is of course a certain irony here, given the traditional variationist stated aim to access the unconscious ‘vernacular’. Here is a situation in which the longed-for speech is there and available to be recorded, only as actual data it is almost unusable. But more than this, there is a serious issue in the extent to which we were actually targeting completely different types of data. Although we were working in precisely the same context, I was prioritising situations in which there were fewer speakers and little background noise over those in which there were multiple speakers and lots of interaction, whereas Susan was prioritising completely the opposite. Again, although we were keen to combine approaches, and I was especially interested in looking at phonetic variation within interactional rather than interview data, the practical and methodological pressures were meaning that I, at least, was reverting to type. However, our different approaches did ensure that we came away with a usefully varied data set that has turned out to be extremely valuable. There are plenty of examples of recordings that I wouldn’t have attempted to make, yet which have produced something of importance to my own analysis.

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Note-Taking An ethnographic approach requires a lot of field notes. As discussed earlier, the field notes form a core part of the data themselves, and their accurate and consistent recording is essential to the whole process. However, the learning centre environment did not lend itself to sitting quietly and making notes on what was going on around us. But more than this, we were both very much aware of the way in which we would be perceived if we were to sit, observe, and take our notepads out. Having gone to great lengths to reassure the young people especially (but also the teachers) that we were not testing, judging, or evaluating them in any way, it was essential that the perception matched the reality, and having someone scribbling in a notepad at the back of the class was not going to achieve this. We therefore did what we could to take notes surreptitiously, although this of course ran an even greater risk of looking suspicious if caught. But we had to do something in order to guard against forgetting an important observation or interaction, a likely outcome when trying to recall the day’s activities from memory later that evening. Given our different approaches when it came to keeping detailed notes, this was more an issue for Susan than for me, and she dealt with it by often taking some time out during the day, perhaps in the lunch break or perhaps while the young people were in a lesson, in order to sit down and collect her thoughts and observations in a notebook, to later transfer to the diary. She did this openly, and was happy to explain what she was doing if asked, as it was less obviously relevant to particular events in a classroom. Although I also did this on occasions, the role of my less detailed notes meant that I was more likely to rely on memory, accepting that there would be details missing. I’m not suggesting this is ideal, as I don’t believe it is, but given what I knew at the time, this was the best way for me to approach it. I did, however, develop a useful technique to pass on to any future researchers. While in the context of the centre, it would be unusual for someone to suddenly bring out a notebook and start jotting things down mid-conversation, people thought nothing of me taking out my phone and typing a quick, or even a long, message to someone. In actual fact, the message was simply to myself, relating the precise wording of a non-recorded interaction that I didn’t want to forget.

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Incomplete Data: Still Valid? All of these issues we faced, inconsistency with regard to engagement, poor recording quality, lack of note-taking opportunities, led to us gathering data that could never be described as complete, at least in the sense that it contained the same elements for each participant for each context. But more than this, the variable enthusiasm and willingness with which some of the young people spoke to us meant that the data was not always strictly ‘accurate’ either. The more time we spent with the young people, the clearer it became that some of them sometimes told us what they thought we wanted to hear in order to move on, regardless of its truthfulness. This realisation started us thinking about what counts as ‘truthful’ or ‘valid’ data in social science research, where the data depends on cooperation from participants. How appropriate was it to treat a volatile space such as this like a scientific laboratory, when our procedures necessarily lacked any scientific consistency? We were continually juggling multiple variables over which we had no control: human variables such as moods, energy levels, attention spans, willingness to engage, the need for a cigarette; technological variables such as noise levels, the need for speakers to be in range of the voice recorder; and material variables such as physical absence, which manifested itself in a multitude of possibilities that we could never predict: self-selected non-attendance, temporary and permanent exclusions, bad weather (notably snow and sunstroke), dog bites, family events (mostly funerals and birthdays), personal tragedies or difficulties. We faced all of these issues during our time in the centres, some of them on an almost daily basis. And all of them, in their own way, contrived to make our data that bit less complete, truthful, and arguably valid. However, this validity question is of course once again much more relevant to one of our approaches than it is to the other. In fact, were it not for my (variationist) desire to have something approaching a balanced data set in which we had at least attempted to gather similar types of recordings from each participant and in which an obviously ‘put-on’ or highly ‘performed’ utterance would at least be questioned in

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terms of how representative it was of that participant’s speech, then it is unlikely that the question of validity would have emerged, at least not in the sense of it being problematic. Until I started raising concerns, Susan would (quite rightly) have seen this aspect of the data as simply adding to the richness and value of what we had gathered and observed. For Susan, and an ethnographic approach more generally, the data simply is what it is. You can only ever record and report on what happens in a particular context when you are there. In this sense there is an entirely obvious acceptance that any data and any study will be partial. The variationist need for a greater sense of order, balance, and replicability stems from its underlying desire to generalise at least to a certain extent.

Funding and Time There was one aspect of the research process that I never got used to, and that was the relatively small amount of time I was able to spend on the project, especially at certain points in the year. This, it turns out, is the reality of most externally funded research. For those not familiar with the process, it goes something like this. Firstly, an individual or a group of individuals identifies an area they would like to research for whatever reason, and they start to put together an application to one of the research funding bodies. In UK linguistics this tends to be the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), or the Leverhulme Trust. One of the individuals becomes the Principle Investigator (PI), and they then take charge of the potential project above any additional Co-Investigators (Co-I) and any Research Assistants/Associates (RA). The RAs are often unlikely to have been identified at this stage, and would be selected and employed later if the funding application is successful. The application is submitted, asking for the bulk of whatever money is needed to carry out that research and disseminate some of the findings, with the university usually providing the remainder. This money is identified for a number of purposes such as ‘buying out’ some time for the PI and Co-I (i.e. relieving them from

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some of their usual teaching or admin duties), employing one or more RAs, purchasing recording equipment, transcription costs, day-to-day expenses such as travel, conference attendance, and so on. Funding applications to different funding bodies are dealt with in slightly different ways, but they always involve a process of peer review by other academic experts in the area who will assess the quality, relevance, and cost-­ effectiveness of the proposed project and the research team themselves. Sometimes, the PI has an opportunity to respond to any comments, showing how they would address any issues that had been picked up in the review process. These reviews and responses are compared and checked, and then sent back to the final decision-making panel of whichever funding body has been applied to, to decide if the money is to be granted. All funding is fiercely competitive, with only a small percentage of applications being ultimately successful. There is huge pressure currently on faculties, departments, research groups, and individuals within universities to secure external funding, as it impacts on so many things. On an institutional level, the amount of external funding determines in part how much government money is available, while on an individual level, it sits alongside publications as a key expectation and measure of ‘success’. It is therefore enormously exciting when the letter or email arrives to say that you have been granted the funding, as it means you have met all sorts of institutional criteria, becoming suddenly very popular with people higher up in the university whose names you were only vaguely aware of. But more than this, the funding gives an opportunity to work on a project that you have devised, that you are interested in, with time away from other tasks. My letter came in March 2014 from the Leverhulme Trust, telling me I’d been granted my £107,113. Not a vast amount in the overall scheme of things, but enough to do what I needed to do. The bulk of my grant would be used to employ a full-time RA for two years, with another significant portion allocated to a replacement staff member for the one-third of my time that could be ‘bought out’ by the project under the rules of this particular grant. Different grants and funding bodies have different rules as to how much time the PI can be bought out for. Sometimes a PI may choose to only ask for the

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equivalent of a day or half-a-day per week on a particular project— enough to oversee it, but allowing them time to get on with other work. My grant gave me 1.7 days per week on the project, and the addition of my contractually ­allocated ‘research time’ brought this up to 2–3 days per week. If it sounds vague, that’s because it is. Academia, like many other professions, is one in which there is never a finite amount of work to be done. Individual tasks might be completed (teaching a course, marking some essays, writing a paper, etc.), but research is endless and usually flexible. This is why you hear so many academics moaning to each other about not getting time to research—all of the immovable tasks take up so much time, resulting in the flexible work having to be fitted in where and when possible. Research is so important to us as academics both in terms of career success and in terms of personal fulfilment, that it usually still gets done, but often during evenings, weekends, and holidays. I’m not complaining; there are far more demanding (and important) jobs both physically and emotionally, but this is the situation we are in. The result of all this is that for one reason or another, as a PI, you never get the same amount of time on the project as the RAs. In this case, Susan had the relative luxury of being able to focus all of her employed time and energy onto the research, whereas I was juggling my other demands of teaching, supervising PhD students, dealing with admin, and so on. This time I am complaining; it’s a very frustrating way to work, and I began to envy the additional time Susan had to spend time with the young people especially. Coupled with all the uncertainty surrounding our combined approach (or lack thereof ), this lack of time started to become a real issue. In many ways, I felt like I was losing control of the project. What had begun as a piece of research that was ambitious and daunting but within my sphere of understanding was beginning to morph into something I didn’t recognise. This resulted in a very up-and-down relationship with the project—in the good times I was excited and optimistic about the possibilities this new direction would open up; but in the bad times I simply couldn’t see how we were possibly going to achieve what we had promised, considering how relatively little time I was spending on the project at particular times throughout each month.

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4.6 What We Learned Throughout the project, and for a while after, we both reflected on what we learned from the experience of working together on the main research element of the project, and in doing so, we can offer some pieces of advice and suggestions that may be useful for anyone considering similar collaborations. Do not assume that you are talking the same language even if the terminology appears to be the same. We soon learned that if a conversation was still going after two hours and we had come full circle back to where we had started (this happened regularly), then we needed to interrogate our terms. Key examples in our case were practice, social meaning, identity, ethnicity, performance, and ‘casual’ speech. Identify the likely time-consuming activities for the various methods and where they are going to occur in the life of the project. We didn’t anticipate or appreciate the delay and subsequent backlog that would be caused by having two different method-specific time-consuming periods of data collection and preparation that necessarily occurred at different stages of the project. The ethnographic fieldwork and extensive field notes consumed Susan’s time for the first year of the project, delaying the time-­ consuming process of transcription into Elan. However, my own quantification and subsequent analysis of sociophonetic variables (a time-­ consuming process in itself ) could not begin until enough transcription had been done, taking us well into the second year of the project. With hindsight, this could have been managed more effectively had we known the precise demands of each other’s approach. Just as I had no idea as to the depth and detail needed to record a thorough ethnography, Susan was not aware that sociophoneticians spend a lot of their time isolating literally thousands of examples of a particular linguistic feature before recording them on spreadsheet along with additional social and linguistic details for each and every one. Be open-minded and willing to learn from each other. Above all, trust the expertise of your collaborator in an area you know less about. We learned to treat our communication problems and breakdowns as potentially productive moments for exploring what was going wrong (we are l­ inguists

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after all). We tried to work out what it was we were not hearing when the other spoke, and why. This wasn’t always easy, but it was always worthwhile. In time, we came to see each other’s worlds as different, rather than wrong, better, or worse. And we would always reassure ourselves that at least it would provide useful content for the book! Be prepared to compromise, but not simply give up your position. We found that good ideas often came while we were trying to work out a compromise, and often the process forced a useful and timely re-­ examination of our own practices and assumptions. Look for commonalities. We gradually learned that it was far more productive to talk about, and then work on, things we were agreed on, or found interesting, rather than things we weren’t. Susan and I disagreed on a lot of things, and we have naturally different approaches to almost everything. However, on a personal level, we got on very well, which tended to put most of the other differences in perspective. One thing we did agree on though was the fact that the project itself was worthwhile, and that our collaboration had made it immeasurably stronger and better. It had made it infinitely more difficult and stressful, but it was worth it overall.

4.7 Conclusion As I mentioned in the introduction, I am not at all convinced that we achieved what we set out to do. In fact, I am almost certain that we did not. I don’t think we have successfully combined our approaches into a meaningful ‘new’ way of undertaking this kind of research and linguistic analysis. However, what we have done is try something different in attempting a genuinely collaborative piece of research between two people whose approaches to linguistics mean that they have different ways of seeing the world. In the process of this collaboration, we have both reflected on, questioned, and even dismissed some of the assumptions that lie within each of our disciplines. And in doing so, we have adopted, at least in part, some of the research practices, techniques, or beliefs from each other’s approaches. Hopefully, this will become clear in some of the following chapters, where I present findings that, while not a perfect

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combination of research practices, are clearly not entirely of the type traditionally found in either approach alone. This limited collaboration has resulted in both of us moving from the positions from which we started, albeit to varying degrees. We cannot begin to say, in all honesty, that we have both moved into some kind of combined and mutually beneficial area of understanding, but we have at least both turned around and had a long, hard, critical look at where we had each been standing when we began this project. Personally, I feel as though I was tempted over to a new way of doing things that was full of promise, partly due to the fact that I was dissatisfied with some significant aspects of where I was. However, it was only when I was nearly there, having questioned so many assumptions relating to where I had started, that I was able to look back and notice the many strengths that existed all along. I am not the same researcher I was when I began this project, but I am still a variationist. I will continue to question the value in collecting one-off sociolinguistic interview data, and I will continue to question the existence, accessibility, and value of something as intangible as ‘the vernacular’. I will also fiercely promote the absolute necessity of including ethnographic observational data in our research if we are ever to hope for anything other than an extremely superficial understanding of language use in a particular context. And I will do all this armed with the additional evidence and experience from my forays into another sociolinguistic world.

The Final Position If the discussion above has left you confused as to the final approach taken in this study, then this seems somehow appropriate, as I was too. However, I did work things out, and I will describe in more detail where I personally ended up as I begin to analyse the linguistic data more directly in Chaps. 6 and 7.

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Notes 1. An authentic speaker is an idealised individual who demonstrates a ‘pure’ version of the language variety we are investigating. See Johnstone (2014) for a critique. 2. In discussing the assumptions we routinely accept in the course of our research, Eckert (2003: 394) suggests that ‘[i]f the Authentic Speaker is an elephant hovering in the corner, the vernacular is a moose sprawling in the middle of the table’. 3. Certain variables have been researched time and time again in variationist work, usually because they naturally vary to a greater extent, or because there is a measurable social aspect to the variation. For example, the vowel sound in move is often investigated, as it appears to be undergoing change in most varieties of English (known as GOOSE fronting). The pronunciation of ‘-ing’ has been referred to as ‘[a] staple of sociolinguistics’ (Hazen 2006: 581), and the use of ‘like’ as a discourse marker or quotative (see Chap. 6) is a common current focus. 4. While readers who have a background in sociolinguistics will likely be familiar with the ‘three waves’ of variationist research, I appreciate that those outside the discipline might not. For some background, I strongly recommend the three works cited earlier: Eckert (2012); Wardhaugh and Fuller (2015: 169–195); Drummond and Schleef (2016). 5. Elan is a piece of transcribing software that allows the transcription to be time-aligned with the audio. This can save a lot of time when revisiting audio data to find out precisely how something was said (e.g. for studies into sociophonetic variation). It is less useful if your primary focus is what was said (e.g. for studies into discourse analysis). Transcribing into Elan is generally more time-consuming, and a lot more involved, than directly into Word, for example.

References Bauman, R. and C.L. Briggs. 1990. “Poetics and performance as critical perspectives on language and social life”. Annual Review of Anthropology 19: 59–88.

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Becker, Kara. 2013. The sociolinguistic interview. In Christine Mallinson, Becky Childs, & Gerard van Herk (eds.), Data collection in sociolinguistics. New York: Routledge. Blom, Jan-Petter and John J. Gumperz. 1972. The social meaning of linguistic structures: Code-switching in Norway. In John J. Gumperz & Dell Hymes (eds.), Directions in sociolinguistics, 407–34. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Briggs, Charles L. 1986. Studies in the social and cultural foundations of language, No. 1. Learning how to ask: A sociolinguistic appraisal of the role of the interview in social science research. New York: Cambridge University Press. Bucholtz, Mary. 2011. White kids: Language, race and styles of youth identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bucholtz, Mary and Kira Hall. 2005. “Identity and interaction: A sociocultural linguistic approach”. Discourse Studies 7, 4–5: 585–614. Cameron, Deborah. 1990. Demythologizing sociolinguistics: Why language does not reflect society. In J.E. Joseph & T.J. Taylor (eds.), Ideologies of language, 79–96. London: Routledge. Chambers, Jack K. and Natalie Schilling (eds.). 2013. The handbook of language variation and change. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons. Clifford, J. and G.E. Marcus (eds.). 1986. Writing culture: The poetics and politics of ethnography. Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press. D’Arcy, Alexandra. 2017. Discourse-pragmatic variation in context: Eight hundred years of like. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Dray, Susan. 2017. “Identity matters: Language, practices and the (non)performance of rudeness in a Pupil Referral Unit”. Linguistics and Education 38: 44–54. Dray, Susan and Rob Drummond. 2018. Language variation-in-­practice: Variationist and ethnographic research methods in collaboration. In Karin Tustin (ed.), The Routledge handbook of linguistic ethnography. London: Routledge. Drummond, Rob. 2010. Sociolinguistic variation in a second language: The influence of local accent on the pronunciation of non-native English speakers living in Manchester. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Manchester. Drummond, Rob. 2012. “Aspects of identity in a second language: ING variation in the speech of Polish migrants living in Manchester, UK.” Language Variation and Change 24: 107–133. Drummond, Rob and Erik Schleef. 2016. Identity in variationist sociolinguistics. In Sian Preece (ed.), The Routledge handbook of language and identity, 50–65. London: Routledge.

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Eckert, Penelope. 2000. Linguistic variation as social practice: The linguistic construction of identity in Belten High. Oxford: Blackwell. Eckert, Penelope. 2001. Style and social meaning. In Penelope Eckert & John R.  Rickford (eds.), Style and sociolinguistic variation, 119–126. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Eckert, Penelope. 2003. “Sociolinguistics and authenticity: An elephant in the room”. Journal of Sociolinguistics 7, 3: 392–431. Eckert, Penelope. 2008. “Variation and the indexical field”. Journal of Sociolinguistics 12: 453–476. Eckert, Penelope. 2012. “Three waves of variation study: The emergence of meaning in the study of sociolinguistic variation”. Annual Review of Anthropology 41: 87–100. Eckert, Penelope. 2016. Variation, meaning and social change. In Nikolas Coupland (ed.), Sociolinguistics: Theoretical debates, 69–85. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Eckert, Penelope and Sally McConnell-Ginet. 1999. “New generalizations and explanations in language and gender research”. Language in Society 28: 185–201. Gumperz, J.  J. 1982. Discourse strategies (Vol. 1). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hammersley, M. and P. Atkinson. 2007. Ethnography: Principles in practice, 3rd edition. Abingdon: Routledge. Haraway, D.J. 1991. A cyborg manifesto: Science, technology and socialist feminism in the late twentieth century. In D.J. Haraway (ed.), Simians, cyborgs and women: The reinvention of nature. New York/Abingdon: Routledge. Hazen, Kirk. 2006. “The in/ing variable”. Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics 5: 581–584. Hymes, D. 2004/1996. Ethnography, linguistics, narrative inequality: Toward an understanding of voice. London: Taylor & Francis. Johnstone, Barbara. 2014. ‘100% authentic Pittsburgh’: Sociolinguistic authenticity and the linguistics of particularity. In Veronique Lacoste, Jakob Leimgruber, & Thiemo Breyer (eds.), Indexing authenticity: Sociolinguistic perspectives, 97–113. Berlin, Germany: Mouton de Gruyter. Kiesling, Scott. 2009. Style as stance: Stance as an explanation for patterns of sociolinguistic variation. In Alexandra Jaffe (ed.), Stance: Sociolinguistic perspectives, 171–194. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kiesling, Scott. 2013. Constructing identity. In J.K. Chambers & N. Schilling (eds.), The handbook of language variation and change, 2nd edition, 448–467. Malden, MA: John Wiley and Sons.

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Kirkham, Sam. 2015. “Intersectionality and the social meanings of variation: Class, ethnicity, and social practice”. Language in Society 44, 5: 629–652. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404515000585. Labov, William. 1972. Sociolinguistic patterns. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Lave, J. and E. Wenger. 1991. Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Law, John. 2004. After method: Mess in social science research. Abingdon/New York: Routledge. Law, John. 2008. Actor-network theory and material semiotics. In B.S. Turner (ed.), The new Blackwell companion to social theory, 3rd edition, 141–158. Oxford: Blackwell. Law, John and Vicky Singleton. 2005. Object lessons. Organization 12, 3: 331–355. Lawson, Robert. 2011. Patterns of linguistic variation among Glaswegian adolescent males. Journal of Sociolinguistics 15, 2: 226–255. Levon, Erez. 2012. “The voice of others: Identity, alterity and gender normativity among gay men in Israel”. Language in Society 41, 2: 187–211. Mol, A. 2002. The body multiple: Ontology in medical practice. Durham N.Ca./ London:Duke University Press. Moore, Emma. 2010. “The interaction between social category and social practice: Explaining was/were variation”. Language Variation and Change 22: 347–471. Ochs E. 1992. Indexing gender. In A. Duranti & C. Goodwin (eds.), Rethinking context: Language as an interactive phenomenon, 335–358. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Podesva, Robert. 2007. “Phonation type as a stylistic variable: The use of falsetto in constructing a persona”. Journal of Sociolinguistics 11: 478–504. Rampton, Ben. 2006. Language in late modernity: Interaction in an urban school. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rampton, Ben, Janet Maybin, and Celia Roberts. 2015. Theory and method in linguistic ethnography. In Julia Snell, Sara Shaw, & Fiona Copland (eds.), Linguistic ethnography: Interdisciplinary explorations. London: Palgrave. Rickford, John R. 2014. “Situation: Stylistic variation in sociolinguistic corpora and theory”. Language and Linguistics Compass 8, 11: 590:603. Rickford, John R. and Faye McNair-Knox. 1994. Addressee- and topic-­ influenced style shift: A quantitative sociolinguistic study. In Douglas Biber

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& Edward Finegan (eds.), Sociolinguistic perspectives on register 235–276. New York: Oxford University Press. Schilling, Natalie. 2013. Sociolinguistic fieldwork. Cambridge: CUP. Schilling-Estes, Natalie. 2008. “Stylistic variation and the sociolinguistic interview: A reconsideration”. In 5 Años de Lingüística Aplicada en España: Hitos y Retos (25 Years of Applied Linguistics in Spain: Milestones and Challenges; proceedings from AESLA 25), ed. Sharma, Devyani. 2011. “Style repertoire and social change in British Asian English”. Journal of Sociolinguistics 15, 4: 464–492. Sharma, Devyani and Ben Rampton. 2015. “Lectal focusing in interaction: A new methodology for the study of style variation”. Journal of English Linguistics 43, 1: 3–35. Silverstein, Michael. 1985. Language and the culture of gender: At the intersection of structure, usage, and ideology. In E. Mertz & R. Parmentier (eds.), Semiotic mediation: Socio-cultural and psychological perspectives, 219–259. Orlando, FL: Academic Press. Silverstein, Michael. 2004. “Cultural concepts and the language-culture nexus”. Current Anthropology 45, 5: 621–52. Snell, Julia. 2015. Linguistic ethnographic perspectives on working class children’s speech: Challenging discourses of deficit. In J.  Snell, S.  Shaw, & F.  Copland (eds.), Linguistic ethnography: Interdisciplinary explorations, 225–245. London: Palgrave. Tagliamonte, Sali A. 2006. Analysing sociolinguistic variation. New  York: Cambridge University Press. Tagliamonte, Sali A. 2011. Variationist sociolinguistics: Change, observation, interpretation. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. Tagliamonte, Sali A. 2016. Making waves: The story of variationist sociolinguistics. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. Verran, Helen. 2001. Science and an African logic. London/Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Wardhaugh, Ronald and Janet M. Fuller. 2015. An introduction to sociolinguistics. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Wolfson, Nessa. 1976. “Speech events and natural speech: Some implications for linguistic methodology”. Language in Society 5, 2: 198–209. Woolard, K.A. 2008. “Why dat now?”. Journal of Sociolinguistics 12, 4: 432–452. Woolgar, S. and D. Pawluch. 1985. “Ontological gerrymandering: The anatomy of social problems explanations”. Social Problems 32, 3: 214–227.

5 A Year in the Life of the PRU

5.1 About the Chapter This chapter has three purposes. Firstly, it gives some insight into the daily life of both the learning centres and the characters that will emerge throughout the rest of this book. This will enable you as the reader to begin to visualise and understand the environment, providing some context for the various analyses and observations in other chapters. Secondly, it describes our own time with the young people and staff, from the first unfamiliar and often awkward days to the last quite emotional goodbyes. This is intended to offer some insight into the personal journey of ethnographic research. Thirdly, it illustrates the process of the research itself; the process of us entering a research site as strangers, negotiating our way towards getting to know the young people and the staff, encouraging them to participate, and then dealing with the often-unpredictable events and developments as they unfold.

© The Author(s) 2018 R. Drummond, Researching Urban Youth Language and Identity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73462-0_5

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In order to tell these three stories, the chapter is made up almost entirely of extracts from our diaries, along with a few transcripts of relevant recordings. Throughout, potentially interesting observations will be commented and reflected on. These reflections will be separated from the main text and will be identified as either relating to a broadly ­methodological point (marked as ‘Method’) or a broadly linguistic point (marked as ‘Language’). The extracts don’t always describe something exciting or eventful—often they are simply accounts of the apparently mundane, but they all reflect something about daily life in the PRU. Some events are drawn out and described in detail, others are fleeting observations. The extracts themselves are kept as close to the original diary entry as possible, as this most accurately reflects our immediate interpretations of the events and represents how we understood a situation at that particular point in time, even if we were subsequently to learn more. They have been minimally edited for length and extraneous or irrelevant detail, or to remove information that might identify a specific individual. Before each extract I have made it clear whose diary, Susan’s or mine, it has come from, as we experienced the two centres differently at times, and these are very personal reflections. There is not an equal balance between extracts from Susan’s diary and mine; the majority are Susan’s. This is for two reasons: firstly, due to the way in which the project was set up Susan simply spent more time than me in the centres (see Chap. 3 for more details on this). But secondly, and more importantly, Susan is a true ethnographer. As discussed in Chap. 4, the detailed, blow-by-blow field notes, which are painstakingly recorded each day, constitute ‘the core data’ for Susan as much as any audio recordings. Where my observations are often brief and sometimes border on the perfunctory, Susan’s describe in wonderful detail the minutiae of a particular event, with each day afforded pages of rich description. By far the hardest part of creating this chapter was deciding on which of Susan’s 360,000 words to leave out. I do appreciate that it is unusual in a book of this kind to present such a large amount of ‘raw’ data in this way, and I do so here having given it a great deal of thought. The strength in doing so lies in the fact that it is a straightforward, honest, and undiluted account of our experiences in the centres. In that sense, it is not so much data for

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analysis (for which purpose it would have been more ruthlessly selected and interpreted according to a particular theoretical framework), but rather illustrative experience. I also need to make the point that Susan’s diary was not written with a view to being published precisely in this way. While it was always the intention to have a diary element to the book, Susan’s field notes were written as a private resource—a kind of thinking tool. They are reproduced here with her full permission, but I am using them in a way that I think will satisfy the needs of this particular book rather than in the way they were initially intended. The chapter has been split into two parts, with the first part describing our experiences in Meadow Cross, and the second describing our experiences in Ashbourne. In order to help identify the individuals who appear throughout and to distinguish between staff and students, I provide a summary of the adults and young people from each centre in Tables 5.1 and 5.2, respectively. For more details, refer back to Chap. 2.

5.2 Meadow Cross Tuesday 2nd September—Susan Some of the girls were in the early stages of preparing lunch as part of their BTEC1 cookery class, supervised by Michael. Others (boys and girls) were outside smoking and talking and drifted in and out of the main entrance into the dining area mostly silently. Michael put some music on which one or two of the boys occasionally turned up. Tim eventually turned it off, having had enough of the ‘noise’. The boys like tracksuit Table 5.1  Staff and students at Meadow Cross (p. 105) Staff and role

Students

Tim Coordinator Joy Coordinator Michael Youth worker Various teachers

Shanique, Danielle, Brady, Abdou, Jamal, Jake, Jacob, Bethany, Stacey, Megan, Jenson, Mackenzie, Jordan

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b­ ottoms and baseball caps. Several of them wore their hats all day. I’m not sure if they had them on when they were eating (I wonder if they were asked to take them off?) but they had them on in class in the afternoon. The hats seemed to be part of their all-day attire, more like their shoes, than their jackets. And they all wore them with the peak at the front. It used to be the thing to wear your cap the other way around, with the peak at the back, but that doesn’t seem to be the case any longer. There also looks to be a trend for wearing them on the tightest notch so that for some this means that they sit high, slightly up off the top of your head. Not all of the young people (YP herein) with caps wore them like this, but Jamal’s hat had a certain attitude going on. He was doing more than just wearing his hat. How he wears it is saying something, but I don’t know what. … After lunch, I stayed sitting at the table with Tim, Joy, Michael and Rob. Jamal and Abdou also stayed. Michael raised a question with Abdou about how he used ‘rass’ and ‘ra’. And why there were two variants. How did they differ? Abdou didn’t answer. There was a short silence (this is normal practice—it seems that it is important to wait a while when a question is asked. Sometimes an answer will come, sometimes it won’t.) On this occasion the answer came from Jamal, who was sitting at the other end of the table with his elbows on his knees and his head hanging forwards looking at the floor. Up until this point he hadn’t appeared to be even listening to the conversation, but he lifted his head and simply said ‘“ra” is more like an exclamation’. Short, to the point and also it matched my understanding of it. I couldn’t have said it better! ‘Rass’ (still) appears to be used as a cuss/curse word. These are both Jamaican terms and were also used in the Youth Club ten years ago,2 so they are not new to youth practices in the UK. However, it seemed like Michael had only just started to hear ‘ra’ being used by the boys. This is interesting because this may be relatively ‘new’ vocabulary items for the Learning Centre. … Yr11 Class Despite the apparent lack of interest in the subject under discussion, there were spurts of engagement from several YP.  Interaction with the topic would move from silence to explosion. From no one talking, to one

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person talking with the teacher in a turn-taking way, to a cacophony of voices that became noise. When that happens, and several YP are talking on top of each other it is very difficult to know what to listen to [Method note 1]. The general impression I get from these discussions is that the YP are supporting each other. They tend to be collaborating in some way. I need to watch and listen to these kinds of interactions more, because I am not sure that I have got this quite right. Sometimes it is clear who to listen to because of the volume they use. When an individual really wants to be heard, they may shout. I think this is interesting. Does this mean that sometimes when the YP speak at the same time, they are speaking without wanting/needing/intending to be heard as individuals? Are these messy discussions, these multiple simultaneous voices ‘talking’ as a collective, not as individuals on these occasions? Method 1 Obviously there are two ways to deal with this—you either sit back and take it all in as a collaborative communicative event, as Susan appears to do in this description, or else you try to focus in on one or more particular individuals and try to take in precisely what they are saying or doing. Both approaches provide valuable insights. Here, we had not introduced the voice recorders yet, so my inclination would be to observe the situation as a whole. Had this been recorded, it would be beneficial to use the opportunity to focus on one or two individuals and rely on the recording to capture the overall audio picture. Trying to isolate individual voices in a recording is a lot more difficult.

Jamal provided an example of how to get your individual voice heard: the teacher had asked for examples of unexpected events—of things that could happen without warning that may affect your attendance at work, or your ability to hold onto a job. There was silence initially. Someone then said ‘death’. The teacher asked ‘whose death?’ Abdou said his own death would be unexpected. A messy conversation ensued about how your own death, whilst being unexpected wouldn’t be relevant to the question because you wouldn’t be here afterwards to know the effect of this on your job, and it wouldn’t really matter anyway because you would

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be dead. Over the top of this discussion, Jamal shouted out ‘Do you know ketamine?’ He was ignored. Possibly because it seemed bit off-­ topic. He tried again a bit louder ‘Do you know ketamine?’ Still no one paid him any attention. He tried a third time, now almost shouting: ‘Do you know ketamine?’ The teacher said ‘yes’ and opened the floor to Jamal. Jamal then went on to explain how he had a friend who had taken Ketamine and gone into his kitchen and thought it was a swimming pool. ‘That’s unexpected’, he said. It was on topic. He then added: ‘and he was going to dive into the water. He would have got hurt if he had dived on to the kitchen floor. That would have been unexpected too.’ The teacher took this up and reshaped it into personal injury—one of the answers she had been looking for. This answer was on target, but it wasn’t ‘standard’ or expected as far as mainstream educational practices go. Tuesday 9th September—Susan Today the YP were outside for Art spray painting planets and shooting stars, but several of the boys had disappeared after they had had their turn. It seems to me that there are moments when the YP don’t have patience, don’t want to wait, are bored. They aren’t necessarily trying to hide, they just wander off, something grabs their attention and they are gone … In class, discussing jobs. Tim (centre coordinator) was handing out sheets with a list of jobs, reading them out. ‘Research Scientist’. He looked at me. ‘Susan would you say that is what you do?’ I said that I was a social scientist, so yes. Jamal said ‘but you just sit in our classes’. I said I did other stuff when I left here, I didn’t just come to classes. I started to say that perhaps what he was interested in was the natural sciences, which were different from the social sciences and he started to lose interest. The conversation was over. You have five seconds to make a point in the learning centres. You don’t have time to be polite using the linguistic strategies I have been brought up to know. There isn’t time. This is the conclusion that I am rapidly coming to. Thursday 11th September—Rob Art class. These are usually very good sessions, as the teacher gets on well with the YP and encourages discussions. They were doing the Pollock

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activity that the Ashbourne group did the other day—Jake, Jacob, Jamal, Jayden, Abdou and Shanique were spraying paint onto big sheets on the floor. It was funny that as well as wearing aprons, some were also wearing bags on their feet to protect their trainers. It struck me that when I was that age there’s no way we’d have made ourselves look so ridiculous, but then again, we never wore such expensive trainers to school. Art again after break, but a very different task—to create a ‘window mount’ with three equidistant squares. It involved some very precise measuring and some maths, a fact that was not lost on Shanique, who was very resentful about it. I don’t think they really understood what they were doing, even though the teacher had explained at the beginning. As they finished the task they realised what it had all been for, prompting this exchange: Jamal: ‘Have you made us do all this just for some fucking squares?’ Shanique: ‘Are you fucking shitting me?’ A few more joined in with similar exclamations. The teacher explained how useful it was, and held hers up against a picture on the wall to show how good it looked Jamal: ‘That looks shit’ Michael: ‘That’s art, that’ Thursday 16th September pm—Rob There was an interesting bit of banter between the boys at pool. They were talking about gangs, and who ‘runs’ where. It made me think of Norma’s book [Mendoza-Denton 2008] where she described how the gangs only really existed in prison, but that people on the outside affiliated themselves with them to varying degrees, rather like the players and fans of a football team. The boys here are not in the gangs as such, but they align themselves with one or other depending on neighbourhood, family ties etc. In the process of the conversation, Jamal said ‘...and I run [place name]’ much to everyone’s amusement. Some of the boys are wearing/carrying ‘man-bags’. Jamal’s is the smartest—it’s Armani, but Jake and Jacob also have them. They look slightly

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incongruous, worn as they are on a very short strap. Jamal’s was on him all day. Wednesday 17th September—Rob I arrived late (9.30) due to traffic. I went in, but decided to wait until 10.00 to go in a lesson rather than disrupt anything. I sat in the dining area, alone except for the caretaker who was busy(ish) in the kitchen. One boy came in at 9.35. The caretaker told him Tim had said to wait downstairs. He sat, opened a plastic bag, and started eating a big bag of monster munch [a type of crisps] and a bottle of cherry coke. I’m presuming this was breakfast. I’m no dietary expert, but that can’t be a good way to start the day. At 10.00 I went into the English class. They were continuing with Of Mice and Men. Apparently, they had watched the film rather than read the whole book because of time issues. This is probably not ideal from an outsider perspective, but it’s entirely understandable in this particular context. I imagine some other English teachers would be horrified, but I doubt many of them have faced the challenge of PRU teaching. Four of the boys—Jake, Jacob, Jamal and Abdou were engaged in the class and contributed well and intelligently. Shanique said nothing. It was a good class overall. The boys were engaged more than some of my undergraduate students sometimes are. It just goes to show that these are not ‘bad’ kids as such, and they are certainly not unintelligent. For some it might simply be that they cannot cope in a mainstream environment with all the distractions and temptations. Incidentally, the teacher introduced me to the class, asking if they knew who I was. Jamal: ‘Who’s Rob? Oh, that’s Rob. Yeah, we know him’. Then Jake brought out the research scientist line again. There was a great language moment in class. Jamal was doing something to Abdou—trying to look at his work or something and Abdou said ‘Allow it, allow it, allow it’, meaning ‘leave it, forget it’ etc. [Language note 1] This was the first time I’d heard this phrase in the centres, even though I was aware of it elsewhere.

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Language 1 ‘Allow it’ meaning ‘leave it, stop it, forget it’ is a familiar phrase in urban varieties of English such as MLE/MUBE, despite its relative lack of frequency here. An interesting (if harrowing) insight into its use is provided by forensic linguist Tim Grant, who describes how the term risks being misunderstood in a legal setting: http://www.scoop.it/t/language-society-and-law/p/ 4021838534/2014/05/23/allow-it-the-pain-of-inadmissible-knowledge

Thursday 25th September—Rob I had a chat with Michael. He asked me about the project, and we spoke about individuals. I said that Jamal was interesting. Michael said that Jamal knew ‘what was going on out there’, that he knew people who had been to prison etc, but that I should take some of the others’ stories with a pinch of salt. Then he talked about Abdou, who is from an African background, but tries to identify with the Jamaican heritage boys. Michael called him out on this apparently, and said he should be proud of his African heritage, asking him questions about Haile Selassie. Apparently Abdou then asked his parents and reported back to Michael. In this respect, Abdou is a really interesting person to look at, as he is apparently struggling with this dual identity of good African boy at home (by all accounts his parents are not happy with the fact that he has ended up in the PRU—a feeling that is not always obvious with regard to other families, although I have no concrete evidence for this) and streetwise Jamaican boy with his friends. This definitely comes through in the way he speaks, which seems inconsistent at times. Today, Meadow Cross (well, the boys) were due to play a football match against another centre, so we all went off in the minibus to the venue. I sat next to Abdou. The boys were continuing a battle with Shanique which had started inside, and even had Jamal and her almost squaring up to each other, with Jamal saying, ‘go on, hit me’. I think it all started from Shanique ‘looking’ at him. Thursday 2nd October—Susan Yr11 Class Michael’s interest had been sparked by Abdou and Jamal’s discussion about their gang affiliation during Art and during the break he had

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taken the opportunity to ask them what they would do if they met each other in their respective gangs outside of school. (Jamal is from [city area1] and Abdou is from [postcode 2]—the ‘other side’ of the road from [city area 1]). Jacob is from [city area 3]. So they hang out in different ‘gangs’. Michael said there was a momentary silence whilst the two of them looked at each other and then they both said they would fight. They wouldn’t show allegiance to each other, they would show it to their gang. I asked Michael if he thought that was what would happen. He didn’t know and he said that he didn’t think they really knew either. They would have to have it happen to them to know how they would react. Tuesday 7th October—Susan Yr11 Class. Discussing why Jamal had been absent yesterday The teacher asked him what he had. It had been a horrible cold wet and windy day yesterday. Had he been off with pneumonia? This sparked a challenge. Could Jamal spell ‘pneumonia’? Jamal wasn’t interested, so the teacher said that if he could spell it, he could go home. Jamal jumped up. ‘where is the pen?’ he asked and walked over to the white board. He wrote ‘n-u’. ‘Well, you need a “p” said the teacher, but I’ll give you that, keep going. ‘a “p” where?’ said Jamal putting it at the beginning as he spoke. Jacob shouted that he didn’t, that the ‘p’ was wrong, but Jamal kept going and wrote ‘pnumonia’ with his body in front of the word so it was accidently obscured from everyone else but me, as I was sitting nearby. I said to him quickly and quietly to put an ‘e’ after the ‘n’ and before the ‘u’ and he did it very swiftly then stood back. I don’t know if I should have done that, but it just happened, and he had already ruined his chance of going home as he had been given the ‘p’ by the teacher. The teacher was surprised: ‘you may have something there, you may be onto something, you know’, he said giving him the dictionary. Look it up and see if you’re right. I didn’t expect Jamal to do this, but he did. He sat down and waded through the dictionary until he found the word and then announced it was right. He seemed to know he couldn’t go home though.

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Thursday 9th October—Rob Yr11 Class I overheard the boys talking about gangs again briefly today, when they were talking about their previous schools and Abdou was saying that he was the only ‘Blood’ in the school. Michael picked him up on this and said ‘what do you actually mean when you say you’re a Blood’ to which Jamal replied ‘he just means he prefers wearing red’ and then he proceeded to make a ‘C’ (for Crips) with his hands, quickly checking he was doing at the right way round. Tuesday 14th October—Rob Yr 10 Class They were working on a piece of writing, a diary inspired by The Woman in black. The teacher, as usual, was really encouraging them, saying that what they had done already was excellent, and picking out some good features. This really worked with the girls especially. Jenson was in a bad mood. In fact, as we were walking in the teacher said half-jokingly, ‘I wouldn’t sit next to him unless you want to get hit’. But he really was in a bad mood, not engaging at all. The teacher tried to encourage him to continue with his story, but he didn’t respond at all until he was given the chance to type it on a laptop. Later on in the lesson Joy made a very loud comment to the teacher ‘what are they teaching them in ICT, to type with one finger?’ Jenson reacted angrily. Joy said she wasn’t talking about him, she was making a comment to the teacher, but Jenson made the point that he was the only one typing, so it was obviously about him. Joy stood her ground and repeated that she was making a comment to the teacher and that he should calm down. I felt a bit sorry for Jenson. Update on a few recurring language items. ‘Dead’ as an adjective, meaning bad. I’m dead at this [Jake about table tennis] That’s so dead [Jamal about a picture] Which makes sense, as the opposite is also used: ‘that’s live’. I’ve heard it a bit this time around, but also a lot last year in the pilot study. ‘Mother’s’ being a shortened form of ‘I swear on my mother’s life’

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I’ve heard this a lot from the Meadow Cross boys, but particularly Abdou. Maybe because he’s often trying to persuade other people of something. It usually ends up as something like: I did xyz don’t chat shit mothers I did you’re chatting shit mother’s mother’s This is a half-remembered conversation between Abdou and Jamal, but the gist is correct. I’m taking ‘mother’s mother’s’ to mean ‘on my mother’s mother’s life’. Thursday 16th October—Susan There had been a fight yesterday between two of the boys and Michael had ended up on the floor with the two of them keeping them apart. One had called the other a ‘tramp’ (this is the version that I heard being recounted later) and the other had tried to kick him. The kicker was sent home, thumping the minibus as he left. The bus now has a window that can’t be opened and is insecure, so Tim is trying to get it fixed, whilst still needing to use it. … I sat in the Yr10 class for half of the second half of the lesson, which meant I missed the action in the Yr11 Art class between Shanique and Jamal [Method note 2]. Shanique threw a pencil at Jamal so he threw a table tennis bat at her and it hit her in the face, on her glasses. The end result was that Jamal was sent out of the class and was set up with his drawing stuff (a shell and a pencil and rubber) on the table tennis table. I don’t think he did much because he kept sticking his head around the Y10 door, which was open. [The recorder, however, was in the Yr11 class …] Extract 5.1 Man threw a bat Jamal Shanique Abdou

When’s your birthday? You don’t need to know that [information ] [next Thursday ]

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Method 2 It is simply impossible to be in different places at the same time, so interesting events and interactions will inevitably be missed. Most of the time you are blissfully unaware of what might have happened in your absence, but it can be frustrating when you hear about a particular incident from other people after the event, especially if you could have been there. However, this is mitigated to an extent by having more than one voice recorder. In both centres we had left a voice recorder with one of the coordinators, with instructions on how to use them, and the request that they consider bringing them into classes if they get the opportunity. This worked especially well in Meadow Cross, as Michael was so keen on the project. Each week we would simply swap the memory card in Michael’s recorder and listen with interest to what had happened while we weren’t there. It wasn’t always successful—settings might be inadvertently adjusted, buttons not pressed, and so on, but generally it worked well.

Jamal ((loudly)) Shut the [fuck up ] man (.) this girl’s dumb Michael [alri – alri ((laughs)) ] (.) alright Abdou Next birthday ((sound of movement and chairs/tables scuffing on floor in response to Shanique throwing a pencil)) Jamal What do you think yo ((scuffling and furniture moving as Jamal and Shanique get physical)) Michael right – righ –((laughs)) Teacher Oi Michael ((laughs))  Right! Michael Okay Sha[nique (.) ]he’s onl – he’s only asking you a question. He’s just asking youJamal [(unclear)] Jake Na-a-ah Jacob Raa Michael He was only [asking you a question. Put your phone away, put your phone away]  [ ((multiple voices overlapping in background))  ]

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Teacher ((quickly)) Michael, Michael he’s got a bat Michael put it away ((noise of bat being thrown)) Jacob [((shouts))] Jake [((shouts))] Abdou [((shouts))] [ahhhhhh (.) l::i::ck to the head! ] Michael [now you’ve got now you’ve got to] come out now (.) come out Jacob licked him Shanique I’m definitely fine, fuck it. Michael come out! Teacher I can’t believe you did that. You had complete control, and you chose to do that Shanique I don’t care though (unclear) Abdou ((laughing and screaming)) your glasses are [bent!] Hahaaaa Michael [come] on Jake ((laughs)) Michael Abdou (.) there’s no call for that Jamal Yo (unclear) she [licked me wi the ting] after I got away (unclear) Michael [you nearly knock her eye out ] Michael no you hit her in the eye Jamal so::? ((high rising pitch)) Michael come out Teacher It was a table tennis bat Michael come out Jamal didn’t even lick [her] Michael [no ] come out here and (unclear) Jacob ((laughs)) Michael come on (unclear) come on Shanique okay I threw a pen and a rubber and not a bat Teacher no no you were both out of order Jake (unclear) [((laughs)) ] Jacob [((laughs)) ] Abdou [Jamal initials] (.) ((laughing)) let me try it Jacob Man threw a bat ((laughs))

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Tuesday 21st October—Susan At the moment the voice recorder is still a talking point for the YP: Jamal demonstrates against it in a deliberate, perhaps exaggerated, and almost thespian way. There are a lot of body language and facial gestures that accompany his verbal disapproval of the machine. I get the impression he is making it clear that he isn’t happy about it, but actually he may be intrigued and perhaps doesn’t mind it at all, but as a gangster (or however he perceives himself ) he is not supposed to condone these kind of practices. The recording of voices is not perhaps the issue for him—he is by all accounts a skilful ‘spitter’ and recording would be a good thing in this practice; but we are recording different voices, not his spitting voice. This appears to make a massive difference. Comment—Rob, Present The incident below happened on a day Susan was at Meadow Cross, but it was when Michael had the voice recorder, so she wasn’t aware what had been recorded which is why it didn’t appear in her diary at the time. It strikes me as a good example of how the centres often worked—meaningful and valuable conversations dealing with important issues often occurred almost in passing rather than in more formal contexts. Throughout our time at Meadow Cross there had been issues of bullying, with Abdou often the victim and Jamal the instigator. Here, Tim and Michael, while people are clearing up from lunch, are taking the opportunity to talk to Jamal about it all. The other Yr11 boys were present. The excerpt is interesting both because of the insights into what has been going on, and because of the way Jamal enacts his innocence. Extract 5.2 The Cage Tim Michael Tim

… I’ve noticed with a couple of yous he seems to be the target cos he’s er maybe not gonna fight back I’ve noticed [that] [or ] if he does – yeah

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Michael because he’s nice Tim cos he’s a nice lad Michael he’s a nice boy Jamal he’s shook ((shouts)) Jacob ((laughs)) Michael no he ain’t he’s not shook Jamal yeah he is Tim and in his heart he has actually got quite a lot of goodness but Michael yeah Tim he’s not got a lot of fight back (.) so I could sort of like say give him a dig (.) and I know he wouldn’t hit me back Michael [(unclear)] Jacob [(unclear)] Tim And even if he went to hit me back I know pretty much it’s not gonna hurt me, not gonna offend me or do anything to me but I could turn round and and (unclear) him (unclear) and I think sometimes that’s what you do (.) like the other day, locking him in the cage Jamal was it (unclear) Tim I think that’s barbaric locking children in a cage Michael Who put ‘im in the cage? Jamal Wasn’t me you fool, why you [saying] Tim [I never] said – who said it was you? Jamal You just went ‘locking him in the cage’ Tim Excuse me at what point did I say it was you? At what point did I say it was you? Jamal You said like locking ‘im in the cage and [(unclear) ] Tim  [It’s barbaric] (.) and at what point did I say it was you? (.) did I say it was you? Jamal Yeah Tim No I didn’t (unclear) Jamal ((louder)) You looked at me and went ((carefully)) ‘like locking him in the [cage’ ] Tim [Yeah ] you actually walked past him (.) for me that’s as bad Jamal No it isn’t Tim yeah it is (.) not standing up for [him ]

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Jamal  [I thought] ‘he’s locked himself in the cage’ I’m thinking ‘what’s he doing in there’.

Just for the record, I don’t think Abdou did lock himself in the cage. Thursday 23rd October—Susan Eating a packed lunch in the minibus in between a football match and a trip to the golf driving range. The boys stayed on the bus to eat their sandwiches because it was too cold, they said. At one point Jamal bounded out of the back door and bounced (Tigger-style) around to the side window where he threw a play punch at someone inside. As he did so, he swung his other hand behind his back and dropped his empty drink carton. Then he got back in the bus. I was outside and saw this but decided not to act. It was not my place to tell him to pick it up and so the only thing I could have done would have been to pick it up for him. But that is not particularly a good idea either, as (a) I would have felt like his mum and (b) he may have seen me someone who clears up after him and (c) it would signal that dropping litter is OK because someone else will clear it up. I was dithering about whether or not to mention it to Michael, or just ignore it when something happened in the back of the bus and Tim and Michael started dealing with it. I don’t know what it was. Then we all got back in the bus and just sat there. Tim didn’t start the engine. I wondered what was happening for a few moments but no one else seemed to be wondering. Tim looked out of the side window from the driving seat and saw the litter. He asked for the person who had dropped it to own up. Silence. He seemed to know there was no point continuing along this line, so instead he asked if anyone was willing to go out and pick it up. One of the girls said she would go because she couldn’t take the argument that would ensue if no one did it. Tim thanked her and as she got up to go out of the bus Jamal shouted after her that it was her drink carton anyway. He didn’t need to have said anything. He didn’t need to have pushed the blame on to her, as no one was interested in who had done it, but he did so nevertheless. This practice of blame-pushing intrigues me. Again, it is a way of creating a reality using words, that may work if there nothing to suggest the contrary. No one except me saw Jamal drop his drink carton, and he

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didn’t know that I had seen. So things could have turned out very differently if it had mattered. And I would have been in a very tricky position. Would I have ‘snitched’ on him (as the YP say)? I honestly don’t know. I think it would have depended on the circumstances [Method note 3]. Method 3 As with several of the incidents already discussed, there is no single correct way to approach this kind of situation. My instinct would have been to remember my role as an observer, and act as if I hadn’t seen the incident, especially if there was no immediate impact on other people. I’d try to reassure myself that this would still have happened if I wasn’t there, so the outcome would be the same. I’d feel uncomfortable, but I think it would be the best course of action. However, if someone else knows that you have seen the incident, this changes everything, as then your (lack of) actions does have an effect on other people.

After the golf session We walked back to the bus and into the middle of an argument between Tim and the boys. Tim was very, very angry. It transpired that Jamal had got to the bus first and instead of waiting for Tim and the key, he had managed to force the newly fixed side window (broken a couple of weeks before) open and had climbed through it in order to open the door for the others from the inside. Tim was so angry (the window had cost £300 to fix) that he told Jamal he had to find his own way home. I imagine he was calling Jamal’s bluff, but Jamal set off walking, and Tim let him go. Everyone else got into the bus amid cries of protest about making Jamal walk. (It is a very long way.) They put forward the arguments that he didn’t have a bus pass and he didn’t have any money and would have to walk miles home. Jake asked to be let off the bus so that he could walk with Jamal. Tim started up the engine, and the protests got louder. The YP were united against Tim. Tim drove off, saying that he knew some of the YP had money on them today and one of them had £60, so why didn’t they give some to Jamal for his bus fare: Who would give Jamal his bus fare? Silence. Complete silence. The bus drove past Jamal. Still silence.

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Tim stopped the bus just ahead of Jamal and made the point that the YP weren’t as concerned for Jamal’s well-being as they made themselves out to be. Tim called out to Jamal as he walked past the bus and asked him if he wanted to get in. Jamal looked expressionless at him for a second and then a big broad grin spread across his face and he nodded and walked across to the bus. As he got in everyone (mostly the boys) made the case loudly that they had supported him. Tim made it very clear to Jamal that none of them was willing to give him a bus fare. But Jake wanted Jamal to know that he had been willing to walk with him and said so. Jamal said he didn’t believe him. I was sitting across the aisle from them both and Jake said to Jamal ‘Look at Susan.’ They both turned to look at me. I thought ‘Oh God what spot is he going to put me on now?’ ‘Susan’, he said, ‘didn’t I want to walk with him? Didn’t I ask to be let off the bus?’ I felt relief. I looked at them both and said ‘yes, he did.’ That was it. He just needed that evidence. Wednesday 5th November—Rob Yr11 class At one point during the class Tim asked what their plans for retirement were. Abdou said that he wanted to go ‘back home’. Jamal picked up on this, laughing at the idea. Michael tried to clarify what he meant by this by asking if he meant Africa, and he did. Tim asked where in Africa he was from, asking if it was [country]. But it turns out he is from [country]. Tim and Michael were both supportive about this, with Tim agreeing that ‘home is in here’, pointing to his heart. This gave him an opening to discuss Abdou’s application to college, which they were completing today. He was basically making the point that to have any hope of having money in retirement, you really needed qualifications, and college was the place to start. As they were writing something on their books, I asked Danielle what she was planning to do next year. She said she was hoping to do an apprenticeship as a nurse. She wants to be a nurse or midwife. I told her that my wife is a midwife, but she didn’t seem that interested. …

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There was some confusion as to what the YP should be doing this afternoon. One teacher offered to do a session with the Yr10s on bullying as she had found a PowerPoint presentation about anti-bullying week which is in a couple of weeks. The class was Bethany, Stacey, and Megan. Another teacher was also in there. They had quite a good discussion about bullying, and when that was finished the first teacher asked if they’d like to draw some anti-bullying posters. I asked if I could record the session, and they were fine about it. A highlight had to be Stacey’s bold design decision … Extract 5.3 Fuck bullying [Ongoing conversation between the teacher and other students as to the location of some pens] Stacey I might put (.) ey I might put ‘fuck bullying’ Teacher they used to beStacey I might put ‘fuck (.) bullying’ Teacher really? Stacey yeah Teacher I suppose it’s eye-catching in’t it? Stacey yeah Teacher I’m not sure it’d [win a competition] Stacey [part of the posh ] ones innit? Teacher pardon? Stacey apart from the posh ones (2s) ((affected ‘posh’ voice)) ‘oooh that’s a disgrace’

Tuesday 11th November—Susan From a personal point of view, today was harrowing and draining (there has been a lot going on these last few days). I feel like I keep dipping into this world and then leaving it only to dip back into it again. But it is not that easy to leave emotionally and mentally, even if you leave the physical space. Sometimes the things I observe keep me awake at night. These lives affect me, even though I don’t have a clue in all honesty what they are really going through [Method note 4].

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Method 4 This is a genuine concern in studies of this kind. Although we were both very aware of the fact that we were visitors in this world, and that we bore no responsibility for the well-being of these young people outside our own interactions with them, we naturally came to care about them as individuals. I have no doubt that we didn’t know half of what was going on in their lives, but some of the things we did know were enough to keep them in our thoughts as we went about our day-to-day lives away from the project. I’m not for a second looking for sympathy—this was our choice and we knew we were free to leave at any time; it was the YP who often had to face up to difficult situations on a daily basis, and the staff who had to help them cope. But it is something to consider when planning to undertake this kind of research—it can be emotionally demanding.

One of the girls doesn’t feel she has a relationship with the relative she lives with and this relative wants to send her into a care home. There is more to this than I have written here. Suffice it to say that she has been through horrible things. She comes across as aggressive, rude and unapproachable much of the time but I am realising that this is part of her survival strategy. She is possibly one of the most ‘vulnerable’ YP at the centre (not sure what I mean by ‘vulnerable’), yet she doesn’t project this. She doesn’t ‘perform’ an identity that enables an onlooker to suspect that she is vulnerable. Or does she? Perhaps her aggression and spikyness is in fact a sign of this for someone who has the appropriate knowledge? To me it appears that she doesn’t tend to reveal many hints about this particular aspect of her life experience at the Learning Centre. To me, she appears to be doing a good cover up job most (but not all) of the time. But my understanding of what she performs is related to the knowledge that I bring to this interpretation and I am aware that I have no knowledge about the typical ‘performances’ of those who are coping with difficult relationships in which they are potentially extremely disempowered. I set off on this project seeing all social acts and interactions as performances (for me there is no singular ‘real’ or ‘authentic’ version of anything outside of the moment), and I am becoming more and more convinced of this, and of the significance of making it explicit that how we, as researchers, understand identities or performances is only just one possibility of many.

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Monday 17th November—Susan It was a fry-up for lunch. Bacon, sausages, beans, eggs, tomatoes, all manner of breads and toasts. Jamal had sausage in a bread bun with ketchup. I sat next to him because it was the nearest available space. He had already finished eating (he didn’t have much) and was rapping some lyrics about violence and death, stabbing and killing and the like. Tim sat down opposite us and told him in no uncertain terms that those kind of lyrics were not dining table lyrics and in fact were not the kind of lyrics he should be producing anywhere. Tuesday 25th November pm—Rob In class, Jamal was showing Abdou how to make ‘blood’ (as in the gang sign) with hand shapes. He actually spelt it backwards. He asked me if I was blood or crip. I explained I didn’t live around here. ‘Yeah, but which would you be? Which sounds better? OK, which colour do you prefer, red or blue?’ I said blue. Jamal was pleased I’d chosen his side. Thursday 27th November—Susan I coaxed Abdou into completing a word list (see Chap. 4) we had started last week. He wasn’t keen on describing the word ‘bloodclaat’ and it was putting him off doing the rest of the list. I said he didn’t need to explain it if he didn’t want to, but if he knew what it meant, he could give me an example of a context when it would be used. In the end he worked through the whole list, without any resistance but showed some discomfort when Michael came over to see what he had said for ‘yardie’. Michael said that Abdou didn’t know what a yardie was and Abdou said he did. They batted this back and forth a few times until I asked Abdou how he knew one: what were the signs that told him someone was a yardie. I was trying to help him, giving him the chance to say how he saw it, and I made it clear there wasn’t a right answer, but he got a bit defensive and entered into a playful argument with Michael about how he ‘just knew’ and that he ‘didn’t have to say’. Michael challenged him again, saying that if he didn’t say that meant he didn’t know and so Abdou said it would be ‘skin colour’. Michael laughed: ‘skin colour!’ he exclaimed ‘you don’t know what a yardie is man!’ Michael then said to me that probably for Abdou the one thing that would signal a yardie for him would be the way

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they speak (i.e. patois-influenced). He didn’t think Abdou would be able to identify one from their physical appearance, mannerisms etc. Tuesday 2nd December—Susan I arrived at Meadow Cross to find that Yr11 were about to sit a mock English exam that morning that would last two-and-a-quarter hours. When Tim told me that, my first thought was ‘how are they going to get through that?’ From what I have seen, almost all of them struggle to sit for 45 minutes without expressing and/or demonstrating: (a) a desire to leave; or (b) a desire to sleep; or (c) that what they are experiencing is ‘long’. ‘Longness’ can go hand in hand with (a) or (b) and is done in a variety of ways, some of which are: (i) through protest with a short grumble verbalised out loud to no one in particular, often protesting against a request to write more than a couple of sentences; (ii) by the YP’s eyes glazing over and giving the impression that their thoughts are elsewhere, or nowhere, but certainly not in the classroom; (iii) by playing with their phone or listening to music through their phone with earplugs. This is an ‘illegal’ activity in the classroom and so the phone has to be held under the table and the giveaway sign is the YP’s head, which hangs forward and down; (iv) by stating they are going to walk out or leave, and sometimes following this up with a physical enactment of the activity of leaving, which usually stops when they get to the classroom door; (v) by refusing to do the work set through stating this verbally (‘I’m not doing it’) and/or with physical actions that indicate the refusal such as leaning back and folding arms. Usually the YP does the work (or some of it) eventually. I have heard Jamal say ‘It’s not happening’ in this context, which is interesting for the way in which it disguises agency.

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Yr11 class The lesson was chaos. The Y11 boys were verbally bouncing off each other, bickering and bantering and not cooperating with the teacher’s requests to think about the task in hand. At one point the teacher looked at Jamal and said that although she didn’t know what ‘bombom or whatever’ meant, she would appreciate it if he didn’t use it. He laughed. It took me a couple of seconds to work out what she was talking about. She meant ‘bomba’ and apparently a lot of the teachers/adults don’t know what this and other words mean, and so tend to ignore them when they are said in class. Jamal seems to know this and plays with his advantage occasionally. Tuesday 9th December—Susan When I got there it was almost lunchtime. I walked through the door to see Jamal filling taco shells with minced beef. He looked at me and grinned and said ‘you’ve just come for the scran!’ ‘I know’, I said. ‘I’m not even supposed to be here. Glad I came, the food looks good!’ He laughed, I think at his own comment rather than at my response, and carried on with cooking. This was a minor breakthrough for me. I’m starting to notice now that the YP are initiating interactions with me, rather than waiting for me to do it, but I think this is the first time Jamal has directly and explicitly talked to me (rather than to anyone or no one) and done it in a non-serious, joking way. Thursday 11th December—Susan On the minibus returning from an athletics trip. Back on the bus going back to the Centre, we were driving away from the Athletics Centre when Tim had a minor panic about Jake, whom he couldn’t see in the rear view mirror. ‘Where is he?’ he asked, worried we had left him behind. Jake put his index finger to his lips to indicate that no one should answer. ‘Is he on the bus?’ asked Tim? ‘who?’ shouted someone. ‘Big Jake’ said Tim. ‘which one is “big Jake”?’ someone asked. ‘The one that’s big’ said Tim. ‘is he on the bus?’ Tim had slowed the bus right down and was clearly contemplating turning around when it was revealed that Jake was sitting right behind him. ‘Nice to know you care, Tim’ he said. It was a lovely moment. Tim took it in good humour and we drove back to meadow Cross with Jamal bigging up his talents on the track. His attempts to talk things into reality is fascinating. On the bus he

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was saying how fast he was, how he was the fastest runner and was ‘rapid’ and beat everyone. On the track Michael was the fastest closely followed by Jacob. Jamal was probably the third fastest today in practice. Verbally though, he was trying to do something different. Change things. Put himself on top. I didn’t hear anyone respond to his attempts. They didn’t even tell him he was chatting shit. Perhaps he was only trying to convince himself. I think this practice of bigging himself up is something that only Jamal does in Meadow Cross. I haven’t heard the others do it, but he does it regularly ‘I’m a ninja’; ‘I’m a crip’; ‘I’m tough’ etc. What I have noticed is that if Abdou tries to do something similar (e.g. when he claimed he had had a fight a few weeks ago) he gets told he is chatting shit. Tuesday 16th December—Rob I tried to catch Jamal as he was walking past to do a word list. ‘I ain’t no snitch’ he said [Method note 5].

Method 5 I love this incident, as I can picture the way Jamal was walking, and how he didn’t break stride or pause for a second as he perfectly demonstrated how he viewed his own participation. There is so much meaning packed into that short utterance, about how he viewed me, the project, and his own world. However, despite its eloquence, the statement illustrates the problem we often faced in getting people to talk to us. We both soon learned to choose our moments carefully, and we started to become aware of who might be willing and in what circumstances. The result of course is very ‘unbalanced’ data (from a variationist perspective at least), but this is unavoidable and should not be seen as a problem. It’s something to be aware of, but you can’t let it become an issue.

Thursday 8th January—Rob Art, Yr11 Starting a new project on mosaics. First part of the lesson was being told about Gaudi. Jamal arrived late, earplugs in, music loud. Sat down in his own world. Michael sorted him out and forced him to engage. The whole class generally worked well. There were interesting conversations, but I didn’t feel comfortable just getting my recorder out for some reason. Sometimes the moment feels right, sometimes it doesn’t [Method note 6].

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I was hoping Michael had his, but no sign. The conversation got onto being gay somehow, with Jacob stating quite clearly that he hates gays. Jamal and Abdou seemed to agree. The teacher and Michael both pushed them on this, but Jacob just kept saying that he hated them. Then the teacher asked Abdou if he was scared of gay people, and he said he was, which the teacher saw as a brave thing to admit. Michael started asking what they would do if they had a son who was gay. Jacob and Jamal seemed to be saying they would disown him, but Abdou said something along the lines of he wouldn’t want him to be gay just because it would be hard for his son. Then he said he wouldn’t mind his daughter being a lesbian. But Jamal didn’t seem to want this either. Method 6 This sounds particularly vague and unhelpful, but the decision to record or not really does often come down to intuition. However, the intuition is developed through the ethnographic process—spending enough time in a context to be able to judge the likely outcomes of particular actions. Of course the single most consistent aspect of life in the PRU is its unpredictability, but you do start to gain a sense of how certain behaviour might be perceived. Both Susan and I were fundamentally cautious though, constantly aware of the need to not ask too much and risk damaging relationships.

They had a long break. I watched a bit of pool—Jake, Jacob, Jamal, Jenson, Abdou. Jamal was sitting down, so I took a gamble and started asking him about social groups. It’s a gamble because I always feel like I have one opportunity with Jamal—if I pitch it wrong, and he declines, then I can’t go back for a bit [Method note 7]. But he agreed, and was happy to be recorded. I started asking about what kind of social groups there were, building on a previous conversation with Jake about roadmen and hoodrats. It was a nice example of how little I know … Extract 5.4 Gwop boys Jamal Rob

Gwop boys Who’s that?

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Jamal Gwop [ boys ] Jacob [((laughs))] Rob Who are they? Jamal People from Rob wop? – how d’you you say it again? Jamal ((with emphasis)) Gwop boys Rob Why wop boys, where’s that come from? Jamal Gwop Rob Gwop? Jamal Yeah. People from Rob Yeah, why – okay. And then, is that boys and girls as well? Jamal No, gwop boys. Rob Just boys. What about (.) any others? Jamal Moshers. Rob And who are they, what are they like? Jamal Just like heavy metal kids. Rob And (.) what about you, what are you? Jamal Gwop boy Rob You from ? Is it only just place, but not – surely not everyone from ? Jamal Not everyone Rob Just what, what – what’s the difference then? Jamal Just gwop boys. Rob What makes someone a gwop boy? Jamal Huh? What makes someone a gwop boy? Rob Yeah Jamal Someone who got gwop Rob ((laughing)) and what’s that? Jamal Skrilla Rob Huh? Jamal Skrilla . ((shouting towards others)) Yo Abdou, this guy don’t have a clue what I’m talking about. Abdou What did he do? Jamal I said, uh, ‘gwop boys’ and he went ‘what are gwop boys?’ ‘people who got gwop’, and he said ‘what’s gwop?’, and I said ‘skrilla’, and he said ‘what’s skrilla’? Abdou You just tell him ‘peas, peas’ (.) you must know what peas are Jake Money

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Jenson Dough. Abdou ((loudly)) Yo money, man, money! Jamal Spendooly Abdou ((loudly)) Dollars! Jacob Gold, coins (.) notes! Method 7 Almost every individual necessitated a different approach. We soon learned who we could pester, who we could bargain with, who not to approach in certain situations, and who we could ask only once. Again, this awareness can only be developed through effective ethnography.

Tuesday 13th January—Susan Bethany and Megan were taking on Jacob and Jake at pool. Jamal was hovering about around the pool table. I looked over and saw him apparently sticking posters and notices back on the notice board. It struck me as odd. It is not the sort of thing I would have expected Jamal to be precious about. Then Tim, who had seen me looking, said that he was watching him too, because what he was actually doing was taking small amounts of blu-tack from each corner of the notices to roll into balls to throw at the Yr10s. That sounded more like it! Tuesday 20th January—Susan Yr11 class—trying to identify work placements. The YP weren’t cooperating. I am referring here to the boys not Shanique, who seemed to be getting on with the task and didn’t contribute to the disruption/non-cooperation. The non-cooperation was not necessarily deliberate, but they weren’t listening and kept interrupting. One example which was symptomatic of the whole lesson was Tim’s very clear instruction on what to write in the box on the form that said ‘school or organisation’. He stood at the front of the class and said that everyone had to write ‘Manchester Secondary PRU’ in that box. Then he went to the white board and wrote it up on there. Over the course of the next 5 or so minutes each of the boys in turn asked what to put in that box. Some of them asked more than once. None of them appeared to have been listening to anyone else. By the end of it Tim was banging his forehead against the

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whiteboard and the teacher was looking at me and rolling her eyes. The discussions about where to consider going for work experience were not much better. The boys couldn’t see a distinction between a specific place (e.g. the Hilton) and a type of job (e.g. housekeeping) and refused to talk about the latter, insisting on naming specific businesses that they wanted to go (or not go) to. Abdou was particularly difficult, stating that he didn’t really want to do it, but if he did then doesn’t want to get up early and he doesn’t want to work 8 hours a day. The teacher pointed out that was the nature of ‘work’, Jamal said he wanted to go and work in the Mayfair Hotel in London. The teacher asked him how he was going to get there. He seemed to have no concerns about the distance or the expense. The upshot of the discussions were that: Abdou wanted to work in a cinema or a youth club, but was told that neither of those were feasible and that he should consider carefully what he thought he would be doing in a cinema, because it certainly wouldn’t be watching movies. He seemed a bit surprised at this, asking what else was he likely to be doing then? Jamal wanted to work at the Hilton first of all then changed this to London—Mayfair. The teacher asked him which aspect of hotel work did he want to do, and he said cleaning the bedrooms. This surprised everyone. The teacher said that housekeeping was very low paid and hard work and had he really thought about this properly. He hadn’t thought about having to clean shit out of toilets, and he said that he wouldn’t do that but then said he’d like to learn how to make beds (!). At this point I don’t think anyone was taking him seriously. His final bid was for a work placement in the sport and leisure industry, but he wasn’t specific about which part of this industry. Jake had at one point wanted to work in an office (in the law profession) but has since changed his mind and was easy to please. Tim suggested he might like to work in some area of the media and he was happy with that. Shanique was torn between childcare/nursery and catering. But said that she didn’t need experience in catering as she bakes cakes all the time, so she would prefer a placement in childcare. Jacob was looking for easy options, such as his uncle’s shop. He said that would suit him fine as he wouldn’t actually need to turn up. The

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teacher said she would be doing spot checks and he would need to be there. He started to reconsider applying for a placement at all. Tim and the teacher were at their wits’ end by end of this first session, but were taking it light-heartedly and teasing the YP for their lack of listening skills and their visions of what working life entailed. Thursday 22nd January—Rob Class. At one point Stacey started talking about her journey to school and said that the bus driver had kicked her off early because she didn’t look like the picture on her bus pass. Tim asked if she had been ‘chatting baz’. This is a term that Stacey and Tim seem to have come up with as a variant of chatting shit. Could this be an example of how new words are brought into use? [Language note 2] When she said she hadn’t been chatting baz, Tim took this seriously, and asked her about times, bus no. etc, then he would report it. When he pressed Stacey for information, she then said ‘It might be because I banged his daughter’(!) It turns out that she had had some kind of confrontation with this girl, and ended up going round her house to ‘bang her out’. She didn’t know his name though. Tim took this information in his stride and said that it still shouldn’t happen, just because there was some kind of personal issue.

Language 2 I have since found out the likely source of this phrase. Urban Dictionary has it as rhyming slang: Baz > Barry > Barry White > shite. Therefore, ‘Chatting shite’. However, I was probably right in that it was a shared term between Tim and Stacey, as it must surely have come from Tim in the first place, as he would have needed to explain who Barry White was.

I asked Stacey today about what social group names she was aware of … Extract 5.5 Group names Stacey Like there’s a scally Rob Yep

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Stacey There’s erm, a chav Rob What are scallys? Stacey What are scallys? Like (.) oh they’re really bad like they look just look minging d’yo – ((laughing)) you know what I mean don’t you? (.) You know what I mean don’t you? (.) There’ a chav (.) that spea:ks like I do ((laughs)) erm Rob Is it – does it matter where they’re from, or is it just – how d – likeStacey It don’t matter it’s (.) how they speak and (.) and (.) how they speak and (.) how they dress and (.) d’you know what I mean? (.) What else? (3) Rob I dunno what else, what otherStacey An emo (.) an emo is someone who dresses a::ll in black (.) and a mosher (.) [that’s] the same. Rob [right ] They’re the [same alright] Stacey [what else? ] Rob Erm (.) I don’t know what other names are there? Are there … (.) what are you? Stacey Me? (3) I’m just normal ((asks Shanique what she thinks she is, no answer, thinks some more)) Stacey bit chavvy

Wednesday 4th February—Susan Yr11 class. The teacher praised Jamal, encouraging him by reminding him that he is on for a C+ in GCSE English, but that he needs to keep things up if he wants to achieve this grade. And Jamal was on fire again today. He is very good at interpreting poetry and ‘reading’ metaphor. Tuesday 24th February—Rob A very lively early afternoon at Meadow Cross today. As I went in, Jacob, Bethany and Stacey were cooking. I got such a lovely ‘hiya’ from Bethany, but they all said hello one way or another. I spent the time hanging around, just watching them cook really.

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When lunch break started, the other Yr11 boys came downstairs, and Jamal just walked straight past me without even a nod. It’s funny how this happens, it’s so unpredictable. But saying that, I’m not even guaranteed a ‘hello’ from my own 14-year-old when I see her in the morning. With everyone together, it all suddenly seemed quite tense. Hard to pinpoint, but something just felt a bit uneasy. Everybody was still very lively, and maybe that was it. The play-fighting and the banter was all just a little more intense than usual. At one point, most of the YP were outside, and there was a lot of shoving going on. Jamal and Abdou seemed to be in the thick of it, as did Bethany and Stacey. Even Shanique seemed to be involved, getting into a shoving match with Jamal. To me, it looked like it could properly kick off at any moment, and I’m sure Tim would have put a stop to it if he’d been there, but he was still off. Another staff member was filling in, but she didn’t seem too concerned. Joy was elsewhere. Queuing for lunch, Bethany seemed to be winding up Jake. He then turned around and shoved her very hard, I thought he was going to hit her. A staff member stepped in, but it was so close to boiling over. After lunch, as the boys were hanging around the pool table (not allowed to play), Jamal strutted up to me as he does, right into my face. I wasn’t really paying attention, so just stood there and ignored him, but it looked like I had deliberately stood my ground, leading Michael to say— ‘Look Jamal, he didn’t even flinch. No-one’s scared of you.’ I’m glad I stood my ground [Method note 7]. Method 7 This happened by chance—I hadn’t deliberately stood up to Jamal, and I actually think that had I been paying attention, I would have reacted and moved away. The situation represents the fine line we were often treading, trying to negotiate a balance between asserting ourselves and yet still staying on the right side of the YP. There were only a few individuals with whom I felt this way, and they tended to be the most dominant (e.g. Jamal), the most vocal (e.g. Jacob, Stacey), and/or the most unpredictable (e.g. Luke at Ashbourne).

Wednesday 4th March—Susan There was notably none of the usual bullying today [a recent issue for Meadow Cross], but it was Abdou’s birthday and a staff member told me

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that if they get half a chance the boys will do ‘birthday bangs’—i.e. punch Abdou. She said that if something like this is being planned the boys have to create a space that is free of adults, so they wait until all the staff are sitting down at the dining table eating their lunch and then they go on the attack behind the dividing wall, in the pool table area. Abdou must have had a sense this was about to happen and was hanging about in the dining area with the adults to avoid being ‘attacked’. Joy seemed unaware of what was happening and shouted at him to go away since he had finished his lunch. She had systematically done this with each of the YP as they had each finished eating and had therefore unwittingly contributed to creating the perfect situation for ‘bangs’ by banishing all the boys to the other space. (I was told that the boys had done something similar to Abdou last week and he had ended up in tears, so although it was supposed to be ‘fun’, it wasn’t.) The ‘bangs’ as such didn’t happen, but Abdou only narrowly missed being locked in the staff toilet. They had dragged him and were trying to lock him in when they got stopped. Tuesday 10th March—Susan ‘Unity Arts’ class—Music Jake was called away for a meeting with a member of PRU staff who helps with college applications, and when he came back he pushed the door hard behind him, causing it to slam. Joy asked him to ‘try again and do it properly’, but he didn’t do it in the way she was expecting and continued to stand in the room shutting the door hard. Jamal pointed out to him that what Joy wanted was for him to go back outside and come back in again. After about eight attempts he did this but still shut the door hard and at this point Joy took him outside and he didn’t come back in. One down. Tim appeared in the room in place of Joy. The music teacher asked the YP to choose an instrument from the suitcase and play with it. The noise was almost unbearable. Jenson picked up two maracas—beautifully hand carved calabash gourds with wooden handles and started banging them together, rather than shaking them independently. He got more and more aggressive with them and eventually one exploded. I couldn’t believe what I had just seen. He wasn’t making music, he had a look of aggression on his face and appeared to be enjoying smashing the two as hard together as

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possible. Ideally he should have had a punch bag, but as this was a music lesson, then a set of sturdy drums would have been about the only thing that was going to stand up to his treatment of them. Perhaps he liked the noise he was making. I don’t know what made him think it was okay to do what he was doing and the teacher was visibly upset and dismayed. … There is a lot of talk/interaction/dispute/negotiation about talk in the classrooms. The YP are regularly being ‘trained’ or pulled up (depending on how you see it) on their talking practices in class—they talk at the wrong time or about the wrong thing or just too much, and sometimes they are told they are not talking enough. And the YP in turn tend to use silence as evidence of no wrong-doing, as Jake did earlier when he refused any blame because he hadn’t said anything: talking can land you in trouble. But so can looking like you are not listening (e.g. when you look distracted or asleep.) It’s a tricky business being in one of these classrooms. Shanique seems to have it nailed: she says nothing and stays under the radar, but that is only because the boys create distractions of considerable magnitude. She has it nailed because of how her interactional patterns relate to theirs. … Shanique had done some baking in the lesson before lunch. She had made a cake and some things that looked like a hybrid between a biscuit and a bun. There was some confusion in the afternoon break amongst the people eating them about what to call them. No one seemed to be sure. Helen took one, which had been described by Michael as a biscuit, and bit into it screwing up her face as she chewed, but saying nothing. Joy was eating one and said with a smile ‘Shanique these are like “rock stone! (stuon)”’. Michael and I laughed and she looked at me and ‘Sorry Susan sometimes it just comes out’. I don’t know why she was apologising for the Jamaican term, and I said I loved hearing it and sometimes it even made me want to be there. Michael and Joy agreed and Joy said that she hadn’t learned her Patwa in Jamaica, she’d learned it in England (although she had spent her early years in Jamaica). I said I learned it in Jamaica but couldn’t speak it anywhere near as well as she could and we laughed (a) at the fact that I even knew a Jamaican proverb about ‘rockstone’ and

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(b) at my pronunciation of it: ‘Rockstone a river bottom never know sun hot’ i.e. ‘rok stuon a riba batam neba nuo sun hat.’ Joy said that she used Patwa in Meadow Cross with the YP who claimed to understand it (namely Jacob and Jamal) to get one over on them for fun. ‘Susan,’ she said, putting on a serious face for a moment: ‘when I speak Patwa they don’t understand a bloody word!’ At that point Jacob started remonstrating nearby about how he had been told off for doing something over by the pool table and Joy called him over and asked him ‘we yu se?’. He understood that and replied in a similar vein, but stumbled over the words: Mi walking deso … an … an … an di pikni … pikni … di pikni [he didn’t complete the sentence and burst into laughter]. He laughed heartily. He knew he had made a mess of it, and then walked off. ‘You see,’ she said to me, ‘They can’t do it. They have to use English. I would have said “mi en waak deso an di pikni dem …”, but they can’t do it.’ I asked her if she thought the Patwa phrases that I heard the YP use were set phrases and she said yes. She explained that to her mind the YP have some knowledge (some YP have a lot more than others) of some well used Jamaican Creole terms and phrases but none of them speak or understand Patwa as it is spoken in Jamaica. Tuesday 17th March—Rob Jenson continued to bounce around, getting in the face of Shanique. Tim saw that I had seen and asked if he was getting over the top. I said he was a bit. Tim explained that he would get more and more hyper until ­something happened and he would get upset. He’s seen it before apparently, and this is simply Jenson’s way of (not) dealing with an issue. Tim seemed unsure what to do, as there was only a certain amount of slack he could give. Then it transpired that he had had the college placement girl in tears. Within 5 mins he had been sent home. Tuesday 24th March—Susan Yr10 class The girls were intermittently making clicking noises without moving their mouths and so Joy couldn’t see or hear who was doing it from where she was sitting and kept wrongly accusing them. Eventually Bethany

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went too far with her talking and Joy said that if she said one more word she would be sent out. Bethany said ‘sorry?’ and Joy took her out. Bethany tried to say that she hadn’t heard what Joy had said, but to no avail. Stacey and Megan looked at each other across the classroom in horror/ astonishment. They seemed to think this was a bit harsh, believing that Bethany was going to be sent home, but she then came back in with Joy and they both sat back down as though nothing had happened. I think this is a lovely aspect of PRU life. There rarely appears to be any grudges held when the YP get into trouble. The pattern tends to be that something flares up, the YP gets told off, there is a moment of protest or disagreement and when all has been said, the moment is left behind. No grudges. Normal conversation between the adult and YP is reinstated immediately. This is how it was when Joy and Bethany came back into the room. Mackenzie wasn’t so lucky. He carried on talking over Rachel and got sent home by Joy, with no option for negotiation. She told him to leave. ‘Go home?’ he asked. ‘yes’ she said, ‘go home’. He got up and walked out of the room with an air of nonchalance ‘see you in a bizzle’ he said to Bethany as he walked through the door. Wednesday 6th May—Susan Yr 10 class Only Mackenzie was there at the start of lesson and the teacher set him off writing a descriptive piece in the style of a blog on what he hated or loved about winter. It was a question from a past exam paper and the teacher gave him the book Of Mice and Men open at the beginning of Chap. 4 to use as an example of good descriptive writing. Mackenzie wasn’t interested so he just sat there, but he was quiet and calm and wasn’t protesting loudly. He was just not doing anything. Then Jenson arrived and the teacher left the room to have a ‘chat’ with him and Tim, saying the chat was necessary and had to happen before he could come into the class. They disappeared and Joy came in and stood by the window watching to see if any more of the Y10 were coming into view down the road. I sat with Mackenzie and we talked about winter. He said he didn’t know what to write, and so I suggested that he didn’t write but we

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just talk about it and so we did and gradually he started to write it down [Method note 8]. We talked about how cold winter was and the horrible things like waiting at a bus stop in the dark and the freezing rain and getting splashed by passing traffic. He wrote that. Then he said that although he hated being cold, he loved putting his cold hands under the hot water tap and getting ‘that tingling feeling’. What he had just said to me was great—it was just the kind of thing that he could write down and use lots of descriptive language (the language of GCSE English). So I encouraged Mackenzie to write down what he had just said to me, and he did it but he did it as briefly as possibly. He didn’t write it down the way he had said it to me. The language was different, shorter, less ‘chatty’, less descriptive. There was no feeling in it. When he had said it to me, he had acted it out with gestures, tone and facial expressions that conveyed a sense of earnestness and emotion, but I didn’t get any of this from the sentence on the page. I think part of this huge shift in ‘translation’ is a result of the desire by Mackenzie (and many YP) not to write any more than they have to. So even when there is no challenge in having to formulate a sentence because they have the words to hand (they were his words which he had just spoken), he chose to write as little as possible: his goal (brevity not description) doesn’t match the GCSE requirements or the goal of the teacher. Method 8 This incident illustrates one of the most valuable types of interactions we had with the YP, at least from our perspective. It was quite rare to be able to get this sort of uninterrupted and natural one-to-one time with an individual. Usually, there were other distractions, or the situation was set up by us. But here, Susan was able to share some quiet and reflective time with Mackenzie, during which he felt comfortable enough to actually share some feelings. I can only recall a handful of these incidents over the year.

PE class. The class should have been going to a primary school today to teach the children football, but the weather was very bad (wet and cold) and the

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school didn’t have an inside space large enough so the teacher had postponed the trip until next week, when only the Yr10s would be able to go as the Yr11s would be in an exam. There was some discussion about how the Yr11s (Jake and Jacob) would do this practical part of the course which was a requirement of the Level 1 qualification. The teacher said he would need to take them to an after-school club. Jacob said that the teacher would be happy about this as he’d make extra money. He was asked what he meant and it transpired that Jacob (and many others in the class) were of the opinion that each time the teacher took them to do coaching somewhere, he got paid and they did all the work. He put them straight—explaining that it was all part of the same job and if he took them to an after school class or any class at any time there was no money attached. They were disbelieving, finding it hard to recognise why he would do this. … In the last 10–15 minutes before lunch it was the regular Wednesday football match between the boys and the staff. Jamal looks very small. I haven’t noticed just how small before, but in a gym with four men and the other three Yr11 boys he appears almost child-like. He is very very slim and about a head shorter than anyone else. He looked different today in other ways too: He was wearing straight-legged (almost tight) jeans, blue, slightly faded, rather than his usual tracksuit bottoms. And his shoes were different too. They weren’t ‘running trainers’ (e.g. Nike Huaraches) but navy blue Adidas originals (or something similar). They were very nice. I knew a little about them because I’d been thinking of buying a pair myself. I’d never have thought Jamal would have liked the same shoes as me. It just goes to show that shoes, like language, mean different things in different places, because in my world they are unlikely to signal the same thing as they signal to Jamal. I wonder if he would die a death if I turned up in mine? One thing that I noticed by its absence was the lack of ridicule, disdain or mirth at Abdou’s expense. I had been expecting Abdou to get a grilling from his team mates because his football skills are not good in comparison with the others, but I didn’t see any criticisms, or ‘boying’ towards him at all. They played as a team.

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Thursday 7th May—Rob I headed upstairs to ask the teacher if it was okay if I came in to his lesson. He said that was fine as long as I would be able to lend a hand when needed. Obviously I was more than happy to do this, as I prefer being of some use in the class, but I think it’s the first time this has been said. I sat next to Stacey, with Jenson sitting in front (the only two in). Tim was also in there, and after a while the ICT support teacher arrived also. Stacey was her usual chatty self, but she actually looked like she was about to start some work. Then she got distracted and didn’t really get started after all. Instead she commented that the ICT support teacher looked like the character Neil from the TV show Inbetweeners, and then spent some time trying to find pictures of him online to show everyone. Tim was in and out of the classroom at this point, trying to find some work of Jenson’s that had been mislaid. During this time Jenson started throwing little bits of rubber around the room, but especially towards the teacher when he wasn’t looking. Stacey joined in, going so far as to actually cutting up pieces of rubber with some scissors in order to throw them. This kind of thing always puts us as observers in a very awkward position—it’s not our place to tell them not to do it, but I’m sure the teachers half expect us to [Method note 9]. I usually end up pretending I haven’t seen it, but if it’s too obvious I do some kind of half-hearted chastising. The teachers were clearly getting a bit annoyed, and started threatening to get Tim. Method 9 This is a perfect example of a reccurring challenge we faced—how to react to low-level disruptive behaviour. From the teachers’ perspective, they are probably expecting us, as adults, to intervene. In this case I was sitting with Stacey, so obviously knew what was going on, and my lack of action might well have signalled complicity to their eyes. However, as always, there is the consideration of not wanting to damage relationships with the YP, not simply because of the risk that individuals might not engage with us, but because some of them had the capability to really disrupt the project if they felt so inclined.

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After lunch the boys started playing football but Abdou didn’t want to and just sat in the corner by the television talking to us (me, Tim, Michael Joy) over on the big table. Abdou: ‘Put on the TV so man can watch Jerry innit’ [Language note 3] Language 3 This is a great example of the ‘man’ pronoun documented in work on MLE (e.g. Cheshire et al. 2011; Cheshire 2013). We didn’t hear it a lot, but it was certainly there in a few of the (male) speakers (see also Chap. 7).

Jamal then came out of the gym hall especially to find Abdou, and was almost pleading with him to come and play with them saying if he doesn’t want to play he can just stand over with them instead. The two of them have a very complex relationship. Jamal spends most of his time ribbing/ bullying Abdou, often very aggressively, but he misses him when he’s not around. It was good to see Abdou standing his ground, probably because he had the backing of Tim and Joy who would telling him just to take it easy and rest before the exam (that afternoon). Joy started laughing about his habit of falling asleep in the afternoon. Abdou: ‘I’ve not fell asleep for time’. I wandered over to the pool table, and Bethany asked if I wanted a game. I said yes, and we started setting up, only to find there was no white ball. Bethany didn’t know where it was so told me to ask Joy. Usually she would have done this herself but I went and asked, only to find that she too was banned from the table! She just smiled when I came back and told her what had happened. Wednesday 13th May—Susan We had lunch and the Yr10s prepared to leave to allow the Yr11s to do their exam in peace and quiet. Stacey was washing up her plate and I was drying up next to her. She looked over her shoulder, saw me and said:

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Stacey Safe Susan? Susan Yeah. You? Stacey What? Susan Are you OK? Stacey I say ‘safe’ and you’re supposed to say ‘safe’ back: ‘Safe Susan?’ ‘Safe. You?’ Susan Oh, I didn’t know. This was a lovely moment. I wondered if someone had recently told her this very same thing that she was now telling me. Tuesday 19th May—Rob Class. The session was going to be used for a university student on work placement to talk about the project she had to do for her course, which the YP were going to help with. It was basically some kind of audit of the centre in relation to issues raised in the youth forum. She had produced some questionnaires which she was going to ask the YP to use to interview staff. Obviously I picked up on the potential for us, and asked if I could record the session. The main issue that came up was whether the YP should be allowed to go to the shop. This has been an ongoing issue throughout the year, with Joy especially dead set against it. The student was explaining that if they put a reasoned argument together, then perhaps they might be able to persuade the staff to change their mind. Part of this reasoned argument would involve gathering some facts as to how long a trip to the shop actually takes. When it became clear that she was suggesting, with Tim’s approval, that some of them time themselves going to the shop right now, they all seemed keen to do it. There was some great negotiation. Firstly, they all wanted to do it. Then Tim said that as Jacob had been the first to volunteer, he should go, along with one of the girls. Bethany then immediately ruled herself out, not wanting to go with Jacob, which left Stacey and Megan. Tim tossed a coin and it came down in favour of Stacey, so she was given the choice to either go or to nominate Megan. But Megan then said she wasn’t bothered and didn’t particularly want to go anyway. This was the interesting bit, as they were all dead keen at the beginning, but then when the attention was on them it suddenly became cooler to not be interested after all. Being keen is not cool. But Stacey said Megan

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should go so that was decided. They went straight away, with Tim timing it carefully. A few minutes after they set off, it started raining extremely heavily. It was a successful trip, albeit a very wet one, with Jacob jogging back through the heavy rain, leaving Megan walking at a normal pace getting drenched. Again, it’s back to this determination to look cool(?) at all times. At least I presume that’s what drove Megan to walk so normally through what was horrendous rain. Friday 19th June, Celebration evening [The Celebration Evening is an annual event at which staff and students from all the learning centres get together in a central city venue to mark the end of the year. Each centre is allocated a large round table in a hall, and one by one the members of each centre take the stage and give out awards. Most of the YP (and staff) get dressed up, and each centre tends to organise a meal out to a restaurant beforehand. Susan and I had decided that we should attach ourselves to one centre each, so I was with Ashbourne and she was with Meadow Cross]. Susan The meal didn’t feel at all stressful. The staff all seemed relaxed and the YP weren’t making things difficult as they have sometimes done when they have been taken out as a group –e.g. on sports afternoons. Tim told me that it would have been impossible to take the group out for a meal at the beginning of their time at Meadow Cross other than to a place such as McDonalds. So they start with those kind of restaurants and over the two years build up to taking them to restaurants where behaviour codes are perhaps a bit more strict. Jacob was his usual ‘showman’ self, perhaps even playing up a bit more than usual, but in a way that comes across to me at least with humour. He almost seems to be laughing at himself for his exaggerated gestures and ‘performances’. It’s done in a nice way, and he’s not arrogant. At the meal he stopped the conversations around the table by waving his arms around and declaring that he was going to make a speech. He cleared his throat in an exaggerated and dramatic way and when he had got everyone’s attention he made a lovely—mostly off the cuff—speech to thank each of the staff in turn for everything they had done for him. He was

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laughing all the way through it, but it came across as heartfelt. When he finished we all clapped and I took the opportunity to use the silence he had created around the table to thank all the YP for their help with the project. I explained why Rob wasn’t there (he was at the meal with Ashbourne) and I told them that although they had thought some of our questioning and conversations with them had been odd or peculiar, they had helped us enormously and we couldn’t have done the project without them. I gave them the certificates and the vouchers and they all seemed pleased, spending a few moments to read the certificate. The event itself was strange for me, I found it bewildering and ambiguous. I don’t know if this really matters so I won’t go into too much detail but will just list here some comments about my observations and thoughts on the night. Essentially this was an award ceremony, or at least that was what it had been set up as: seating arrangements had been organised around round tables in a very large and hall and had been labelled for each Learning Centre. There was a stage at the front with microphones, and there were decorations on the tables. There were speeches, certificates and prizes (vouchers) and a short film/interlude (?) which had been made by one of the centres. There were refreshments (tea and coffee) outside along with displays of some of the YP’s artwork (but written work was absent.) And then there were cigarette breaks taken whenever anyone felt like one (so this entailed a steady flow of YP coming in and out of the hall during the presentations), there were jeans and jogging bottoms. There was attire worthy of a nightclub. And and there was a raffle (a free one for the YP only with raffle prizes that most raffles can only dream of.) So the event was not a ‘typical’ awards ceremony. It didn’t quite fit the format. This makes it somehow easier to make sense of the awards themselves, which also didn’t quite fit the format that you would normally associate with a presentation evening: The ‘awards’ from what I could tell, were not about ‘winning’ but about ‘progression’. The YP were not being measured against each other in terms of talent (the awards were not for pupils who were exceptionally talented and the best in the group at an academic subject), but rather the YP were first being measured against themselves (how much progress they had made) and then against each other in order to award prizes to

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those who had progressed the most. Progression in academic subjects was measured but so too was attendance and effort. There were other awards for personalities, attributes and social skills. Some of the learning centres took an approach to handing out their awards which ensured that all the YP received something, although one of the centres that did do this forgot one of the certificates, which left one of their YP on stage with no award. In some ways this was worse than handing out a few selective awards. The language of the speeches was interesting. Some of the speakers chose to be more direct than others about the kind of year they had had with the YP in their centres. Some of the staff chose not to mention the kind of year they had had at all. Knowing what I know now, I suspect this ‘absence’ speaks volumes. Those that did mention the year, tended on the whole to present a positive version, alluding to but partially disguising the fact that there had been difficult times: Some talked about the YP en masse as being ‘troubled’ or ‘experiencing difficulties and obstacles to overcome’ and this somehow came across as apologetic, or an excuse. The comments were mostly couched in metaphors and I guess if I had been listening to this a year ago, I wouldn’t have read into it what I do now. I don’t know if that is a better thing or not, but it is a difference perhaps worth noting. Everyone there could presumably read between the lines. And this points more or less to my problem and the ambiguity I felt with the evening: Like the language of many of the speeches, what was being performed at the event did not fit very closely with what I had observed as the daily routine. Parts of it did (the voucher/reward system) but other parts didn’t—the congratulations and applause (from the staff mostly because the YP didn’t tend to clap) for the YP for (for e.g.) their attendance rates. Monday 22nd June—Susan Yr10 class Jenson spent much of his time doodling on a paper towel. He wrote his name and strong black letters and then in the corner of the paper towel wrote ‘bitch’. Over the course of the lesson he drew a pistol and a face. He then started doodling directly onto the table and got sent out for five

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minutes for that. Michael went with him, and so too did the teacher momentarily. I was left in the room with Stacey so I asked her how she had hurt her leg. She had been limping this morning and was now sitting with it raised up on a chair. She told me a lovely narrative (which I wish I had recorded) about how she had gone to a takeaway on Friday night and paid £6 for a kebab which was ‘hanging’ [ˈæŋɡɪn] [Language note 4]. It was so bad that she said ‘hanging’ about four times to emphasise how horrible it was. She said she hadn’t been able to eat it so had gone home to bed without eating. She woke up in the night feeling sick and had managed to get to the bathroom to vomit, then went back to bed. I was left wondering how this related to her leg, so I asked. She said that when she woke up in the morning her leg was hurting and she has no idea how she did it. Language 4 Hangin’ is a good example of a local (Manchester/Northwest England) word that continues to thrive. It’s almost always heard with the local pronunciation of ‘ng’ in which the sounds aren’t coalesced (so [ŋɡ] rather than just [ŋ]).

Monday 13th July—Susan Last day We handed out the Year 10 vouchers and certificates and bottles of wine for the staff while everyone was still sitting at the dining table after lunch. The YP read the certificates. Jenson read our names on the certificates and expressed surprise that Rob and I were ‘doctors’. Rob explained that we weren’t medical doctors. I am sure I have had this conversation with Jenson (and others) before. Then Stacey asked me if I had ever smoked weed. Jenson remembered that we had all spoken about this last week and he told Stacey so. I asked them if they could remember what I had said (I am getting frustrated now with the repetition of conversations, and am beginning to really appreciate how patient the teachers are.) Jenson could remember, but Stacey didn’t remember the conversation about weed at all. Rob had just left Meadow Cross when Stacey announced her surname was wrong on the certificate. She hadn’t noticed this immediately, and it

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was only as a passing remark that she mentioned it, but all the staff jumped on it and said it needed to be changed. I said I would text Rob and ask him if he could print another one out so that I could pick it up and get a new certificate to her today. She said it didn’t matter. Her actual words were ‘allow it, just allow it Susan’. But both Michael and I insisted that it did matter, she had to have the right name on the certificate so that it matched her job applications and her CV. She accepted this and then watched me as I texted Rob to make sure I had spelled her name correctly in my text. Rob printed the new certificate and I went to pick it up at the university and bring it back to her. I didn’t leave to go to the university straight after lunch as I helped wash up and ended up in a long conversation with Joy. So when I finally did leave, Stacey was on a break between Maths and English, which worked out nicely because I was able to give her the certificate. She was very grateful and said thank you twice. She took it out of the plastic bag that I had carried it in (it was raining) and checked it over: ‘let me check it’ she said, ‘yes that’s right this time.’ She ran off with it and I asked her if she wanted the bag to keep it dry, but she said she was going to give it to Michael to put somewhere safe, she wasn’t going to take it home today. I got the impression that it meant something to her. This is nice, because bits of paper on the whole don’t mean very much to the YP in this ‘school’ context. … Joy and I were talking about the effects of silence. We had been talking about how Joy uses silence with the YP when their behaviour has got to the point where she feels language is no longer any use: when she has talked and explained and told them so many times that they need to change something they are doing that is not acceptable and they continue to do it and ignore everything she (or Tim) has told them. Then she stops talking to them. She stops saying good morning and all the normal everyday jokes, niceties, interactions stop. The YP can’t stand it. It really bothers them, she said. They don’t know how to deal with it. …

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In the morning break, after science, one of the teachers was packing away for the summer and bringing a lot of bags and paperwork downstairs to load into his car. He saw me sitting in the dining area and said hello, following up with: ‘I’ve left my boys upstairs and I’ve got to carry all these bags and folders out to the car. That’s racist that!’ (see Chap. 6) then he saw Stacey and said ‘What’s up Stacey. I’m coming down with it. Oh that sounds like I’m getting a cold, I mean I’m rolling with it, with the kids. I’m getting the hang of this now. It’s great.’ It was very funny. I think Stacey wondered what on earth he was talking about, but he was simply playing with the words we had been talking about last week at Ashbourne (when I had done a word list with him). They had made a lasting impression on him, and he was having fun with them, he said. He mentioned ‘juk’ too, but I can’t for the life of me now remember how he fitted it into the above narrative. Michael laughed and laughed. ‘You’re getting it man’, he said.

5.3 Ashbourne Friday 5th September—Susan Youth forum. This is a weekly session where Yr10 and Yr11 come together around the main/dining table and have the opportunity to express their opinions on aspects of the way the Learning Centre is run. It is led by Anna who has an agenda and it feels a bit like a meeting, but Table 5.2  Staff and students at Ashbourne (p. 149) Staff and role Anna David Nick then Matt Val Various teachers

Students Coordinator Coordinator Youth worker Caretaker

Alesha, Leah, Shannon, Georgia, Kane, Luke, Caitlin, Nathan, Daniel, Callum

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it’s informal and a bit messy. It didn’t flow today for several reasons: (a) technology let Anna down and she was delayed because the printer wouldn’t print the new timetables. There had been error on the timetable and a subsequent mix up with the week’s sessions and the group had gone out to do sport on Wednesday when they should have gone today (Thursday); (b) Luke kept saying ‘gay’, inserting it into sentences and talking over Anna, apparently for no other purpose than to test the boundaries [Language Box 5]. Anna finally asked David to ‘exclude’ him from the table and talk to him. They both came back and Luke stopped saying ‘gay’ for the rest of the session; (c) the boys got animated over how rubbish they thought BTEC sport was and Anna was unable to get a sentence out. She tried many many times and started to look quite exhausted. In the end she said she was going to record her voice and just play it back on a loop until they stopped and listened. They stopped and listened then. The boys (mostly Kane) said they disliked BTEC sport because you had to write too much, and didn’t do enough actual sport. Labelling muscles on diagrams was not a good thing. Playing football was. Language 5 Several times we found the word ‘gay’ to emerge as noteworthy. It seemed to be one of the words that staff pulled the YP up on when they used it in a non-standard way—to mean ‘rubbish’ or ‘lame’. The issue clearly isn’t confined to this context, as evidenced by a poster on the wall in Meadow Cross describing when it is ‘ok to say “gay”’ (the poster can be found here: http:// itspronouncedmetrosexual.com/2012/04/even-better-flowchart-when-itsokay-to-say-gay). This is similar to the non-standard use of the word ‘racist’, which was regularly used simply to mean ‘unfair’, in the absence of any race/ethnicity element.

During lunch, Luke said something about him being ‘Zeus’ whilst at the same time flexing his left arm and squeezing his left arm muscle with his right hand. I didn’t understand and asked what he meant, and as I asked I realised that the arm muscle action used simultaneously

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with the word Zeus, must mean ‘strong’. (This is interesting because materially he is unlikely to be exceptionally strong. He doesn’t resemble Zeus to my mind—his muscles are not visible—but this is probably not important for his message. He is enacting/performing strength with words and actions. It isn’t necessarily about being strong, it is about performing strength. One is materially/physically real, the other is created in interaction.) It was too late to stop asking the question and he just looked at me as if I was the dimmest person on the planet then turned away. Wednesday 10th September—Rob I spent a while this morning hanging around the pool table with Luke, Nathan and Shannon. [One of the boys] was being pretty obnoxious, and made some kind of comment to Susan who was sitting nearby. I didn’t catch it, but it was clearly negative/derogatory from the way he said it. Susan dealt with it well, and, on getting clarification from David, actually got an apology from the boy. I find him extremely hard work. He has a negative influence on the group, and has turned into a bit of a bully now he’s in Yr11 [I knew him as a much quieter individual during my pilot study, when he was in Yr10]. He often makes apparently quite nasty, confrontational comments, and the more impressionable ones (e.g. Nathan) lap it up. He started glaring at Susan later on in a completely bizarre way. With me, he blows hot and cold. He actually asked a bit about the project today, and then started talking about uni, MMU, and that he’d like to go there. He even asked advice on how many years at college he’d need. Then later the ‘Nobert’ nickname came out again [during the pilot study, he and Kane took it upon themselves to start calling me ‘Nobert’], along with comments about me being bald. It’s so hard to show that something doesn’t bother you without making it look like it does! Although I must admit I’m not overjoyed at the nickname as these things can quickly get picked up. I just ignored both comments really [Method note 10]. Then later I got an unprompted high five as we walked past each other. He’s an odd one, and generally not in a good way.

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Method 10 This is one of those situations where you simply have to deal with it the best way you can at the time, but with the overall aim of ignoring the negative comments, just as one would advise a child to do if they were being called names at school. The danger of course is that you then legitimise the namecalling by seemingly treating it as an acceptable thing to be happening. In this instance, the ignoring/laughing it off did the trick. I think the worst approach would be to react with any sense of frustration, or to show that it had upset you. However, as linguists, we do have the option to question the use of a particular word as interesting (perhaps genuinely), which is likely to defuse the situation to an extent.

Went to classes after lunch, Susan with Yr11, me with Yr10. Only three Yr 10 in there. Some had been sent home this morning, two girls for smelling of weed, one boy for squaring up to a teacher. Susan During the lunch break I had another couple of incidents with [the same boy as before]. I had been in the building a while, but is seemed as if he had only just noticed. He saw me, demonstrated recognition in his face and then walked towards me saying: ‘You look weird. If I met you on a dark night I’d bundle you up and throw you in the boot of a car.’ He thought it was funny but it didn’t have a reference for me and I’m not sure it did for anyone else who may have heard either. I asked David later what the reference for the comment was, and if he knew he didn’t let on, but I could see him thinking. This boy frightens me a little bit, because he doesn’t seem to operate by the same rules as others [Method note 11]. Method 11 There is no doubt that some of the YP we were dealing with were unpredictable and volatile. We were unlikely to prompt any particular aggression, given our roles there, but there was every chance we could be in the wrong place at the wrong time, or misjudge the timing of asking questions. In this situation all you can do is remain passive, unobtrusive, but alert, remembering that no data is worth risking the breakdown of relationships with individuals.

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Nathan uses ‘live’ a lot—‘that’s live’ [Language note 6]. David brought it to his attention when Nathan used it as he was playing pool. Nathan denied it. Then said it again and three or four witnesses stopped him from denying it again. He capitulated. This is interesting. I don’t think there is much point in asking the YP about what they do with language in the abstract. I think the most effective way of learning from them would be to capture their speech first, so that we can play it back to them and then ask them about their language use with the recordings to hand. Language 6 ‘Live’ meaning ‘good’ was quite common, although I heard it much more in the pilot study the previous year, especially among one particular group of boys. It’s potentially an example of the transient nature of much of the slang we came across (see also Chap. 6).

The YP are asking if both Rob and I are married, and then asking about children. This conversation however then sparked the question from Callum, to no one in particular—he just threw it out into the air as he moved across the room to do something else: ‘Why are you looking at our language then? Why don’t you just look at what your own kids are doing?’ Hmm. That’s a can of worms that. Thursday 11th September—Susan I left the Centre today feeling somehow more part of it, more like I was beginning to blend in and less like a spare part, or different in some sense from everyone else. I am aware that I feel like an outsider and that this is reinforced by the character of the interactions/relations between me and the YP. And this character now feels like it is shifting and I am feeling a little less like a stranger. I had managed to negotiate Luke successfully today. But I am slightly wary of him, especially since David mentioned that part of the thing going on with Luke is that he is trying to establish himself as top dog in the Centre.

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Thursday 16th September am—Rob David was off sick, so I was greeted with ‘ah good, another body’ by Anna. I feel it’s good to be valued as useful in some way, as then the arrangement is not so one-sided. But this actually brings in an interesting point—what is our role there? [Method note 12] I know I made an effort to be useful last year [in the pilot study], and I’m doing it again. But useful means useful to the teacher, as a kind of classroom assistant. But then are we being seen by the YP as teachers? That won’t be good for gaining their trust.

Method 12 This issue was dealt with in more detail in Chap. 3. It represents a real balancing act on the part of the researchers, and is a situation that any schoolbased ethnographer will face. There is no right or wrong way to go about it, but it is essential to keep that balance of appeasing both staff and students at the same time. Ultimately, I would say that the relationship with the YP is more important, as damaged relationships with staff members are potentially much easier to repair.

I made an effort to say hello to all the YP as I saw them. Most replied. Although there’s a new girl who just looked bemused. Not sure of her name yet. Science class. They were dissecting sheep’s eyes today, which Luke was excited by. The idea was to slice the eye open, squeeze out the lens, look at the retina, then try to separate the iris. To be honest, they were all quite mature and responsible about it, and did what was asked. Mid-task, Leah asked me to help unroll her latex gloves slightly as her hands were already dirty. A tiny thing, but it’s nice that she asked. She’s been harder to connect with this time, compared to the pilot study when I thought we got on very well. … After break I decided to stay with science, as it was Yr10 doing the same task. Not so calm and organised this time. At first, a couple of the girls were just sitting there with earphones in. Nick (youth worker) said to take them out. One girl didn’t even have anything playing, she just had

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them in. I remember Leah doing this last year—she always had earphones in, sometimes not even connected to anything. Why? Is it just habit? Is it because it looks good? Is it because they are showing disengagement? I say it was less calm, but they all had a go at the task. Nathan simply launched into slicing the eye open, squeezing all the insides out, then stabbing it repeatedly with the scalpel. He ended up by squeezing what was left into his hands. But the others were fairly sensible. ‘Catch up’ lesson for Yr10 afterwards, which today meant watching the end of a film. It was a standard Hollywood film, but with no intention of any discussion. An example of them just being kept occupied? Thursday 18th September—Rob The afternoon activity was a trip to a climbing centre. I wasn’t going to join, but it turned out they needed an extra body for belaying [holding the rope taut]. I belayed for Leah. I hadn’t spoken to Leah much this time around, despite getting on with her quite well in the pilot study. I think in some ways this shows the imbalance and differences in the ways we experience the same events. To me, Leah was an important person, someone I had thought about a lot in relation to the project, and someone I wanted to re-engage with. To Leah, I was some bloke who hung around and occasionally asked weird questions. I wasn’t even sure if she remembered by name (she definitely knew it last year). Anyway, we were paired together, and proceeded almost in silence, but then just as she was about to start she turned, looked me in the eye, and with a completely straight face said ‘If you fucking drop me Rob, I swear I’ll burn your fucking university down.’ Wednesday 24th September—Rob Yr10 class One funny exchange from the lesson. Staff (mainly) were talking about going to the cinema. IT guy [a temporary IT assistant] was recounting the time he went to watch a Halle Berry film with his daughter, he said he likes Halle Berry. ‘What, so you’re into older women?’ said Callum ‘Halle Berry is about my age’ ‘No, she’s about 70 man’ ‘No, she’s my age’ ‘Halle Berry? Off British Bake Off?’3

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Tuesday 30th September—Susan Yr11 class The teacher had a powerpoint slide with the learning outcomes written on it in exactly the right format so the YP just had to copy this onto the sheet. There were probably no more than 20–30 words in total, but most of them were long and unfamiliar to the YP.  During this task there was a lot of swearing, mostly variations of ‘fuck’ and mostly from Leah and Shannon. I didn’t hear Luke say very much at all: ‘What the fuck!’; ‘For fucks sake’; ‘What the fuck’s that?’; ‘Have we got to fucking write all that?’ Nick didn’t bring the girls into check and the teacher doesn’t have the time to pick them up every time they swear because he wouldn’t get any teaching done. This task took an age. Or so it seemed to me. Tuesday 7th October—Rob Yr10 class The teacher was handing out coloured pens for an activity and she asked Daniel what colour he wanted, to which he replied he didn’t care. So she presented a purple pen and said ‘there you go, purple is a nice Emo colour’. Daniel was appalled and said ‘that’s a bit fucking judging’. He then carried on along the lines of ‘you can’t fucking say that.’ Then other people joined in, especially Nathan. Someone made the point that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. Nathan then said ‘because when you see Daniel, you think he looks like an Emo, and he probably is to be fair, but you can’t say it’. The teacher apologised (although not very sincerely it has to be said) but everyone carried on. Nathan started saying it’s the same as people assuming he likes chicken just because he is black and black people like chicken. David was just smiling and shaking his head at this, saying it’s nothing like that. This whole discussion carried on for a few minutes with Daniel genuinely offended, and Nathan enjoying the attention. Thursday 9th October—Susan Staff off sick or elsewhere, lots of YP absences, David seems keen for me to be there for classroom support. This was good news for me. As Rob

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says, it is good to feel you can be useful. It all became clear what was going on when one of the heads of the PRU arrived: the ship needed to be running without hiccups this morning, despite the unusual conditions (Anna absent, Nick possibly still sick, YPs extremely thin on the ground but drifting in one by one over the course of the morning …). This scenario makes little sense to me. This is a PRU Learning Centre—a space which, as a far as I can tell is not known for its harmonious and serene routine. Its reason d’etre suggests it would be difficult to achieve that. Stability and routine there may be, but it is more likely to be one of regular episodes of precariousness and volatility. So as an outsider, I am not clear why there is a need for pretence. I may be misunderstanding something very important here. … A conversation about food and dieting. Alesha said that she had heard that if you ate in front of a mirror naked it would make you sick and that was a way of keeping your weight down. Appearance again. She is very concerned about her ear, which has been ripped by an earring and she now has an earlobe that has a noticeable slit in it. She said she is going to try and get an operation that will replace her earlobe with a new one. In the meantime she said, she thought she would just cut off the damaged part of the lobe that was making her lobe an unusual shape with a pair of scissors. I hope she doesn’t. Tuesday 14th October—Susan During a controlled assessment for Yr11, all three girls working quietly Towards the end the teacher came back in and was talking quietly to me about events at Meadow Cross this week. Leah heard Abdou’s name mentioned (a teacher was whispering on the other side of the room, so she must have been listening very closely) and looked up and announced that she knew him from ‘a project last year’, that she didn’t like him and that he was ‘purple’. She repeated ‘purple’ a few times for emphasis: ‘he’s fuckin purple’. Neither of us knew what she meant and we asked simultaneously. ‘He’s so black’, she said. ‘He is so black he is purple.’ ‘Be careful’ warned the teacher, ‘that could be seen as racist.’

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Thursday 23rd October—Rob Sitting around waiting to go out on a trip to the Sealife Centre. This was one of the fairly regular trips that were broadly educational in some way. Alesha was flicking through a free newspaper on the table, and other people were milling around. She got to a story mentioning a rape case and asked ‘Who’s that rapist footballer?’ I knew the story she was referring to and answered with a name. She asked who he had raped and I told her that it was a young woman who was very drunk and therefore couldn’t give consent. She immediately decided that the young woman must be lying in order to get money. Whatever the situation really is, I can’t help thinking it’s sad that this is the initial reaction of 15/16-year-old girl, that this is how her version of reality works. … As we all made our way out of the Sealife centre and met up with Alesha, Leah, and Catlin, who were waiting outside while some of them smoked, it struck me how little impact this whole trip out had actually had on any of them, especially the girls. It just seems that nobody was talking about it, and none of the staff seem to be trying to encourage discussion about what they had just seen. It was as if that’s done now, finished. But then what was the point? This isn’t meant as a criticism of the staff—anyone who has taught in almost any context will be familiar with the feeling of simply needing to fill the time with something vaguely useful on occasions. But it did seem like something of a wasted opportunity. After Sealife we were heading out for some food in a different area of the large shopping/dining/entertainment complex. On the walk over I was chatting to David, and I asked why Georgia was not joining us. I was told that there had been an incident in one of her classes which had culminated in Georgia calling the teacher a ‘dumb cunt’, although she was by all accounts spurred on by Leah [Language note 7]. It seems that he teacher had then simply said something along the lines of ‘that’s it I’m leaving’ and walked out.

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Language 7 ‘Cunt’ is generally viewed as one of the most taboo swearwords in British English. In the centres, it doesn’t have any special importance. My impression is that we heard it far more in Ashbourne than in Meadow Cross, but this might be due to the fact that two of the Ashbourne girls in particular used the word a lot (Leah and Georgia). Both commented on the fact that ‘daft cunt’ is one of their most-used phrases.

When we got back to the bus there was a spare seat next to Luke at the back. I went to sit down and he just glared at me and said ‘fuck off you’re not sitting here’. I made light of it and sat down, but he carried on, saying ‘there’s loads of seats over there why the fuck do you have to come and sit next to me’ [Method note 13]. I debated whether to move, but I really think if at all possible it’s best to stand your ground with Luke, so I just sat down. Fortunately, Nick on the other side was backing me up, and Luke lost interest.

Method 13 This is a difficult situation, but one that is almost inevitable in this particular context, particularly in the early days of a project, when people are testing boundaries. In this particular incident I was lucky in that Nick backed me up, but even if he hadn’t done so, I had already made the decision to stand up to Luke. As always, the key is to be polite but firm, and make a joke of it if possible. I’m not sure that I would have reacted in exactly the same way with everyone, and I certainly wouldn’t have done so if I’d been aware of a particular issue that might have impacted the YP’s state of mind at that particular moment. But in this case, it seemed the right thing to do. And as expected, Luke quickly lost interest.

Friday 24th October—Rob Georgia and Alesha were both sitting at the table getting on with some English work. When Leah asked Alesha what she was doing and realised

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that she was continuing with some work that she had done at home Leah said ‘did you do that at home? You psycho’, which was an interesting reaction to the idea of somebody actually doing some homework. I sat with Georgia for a bit to see what she was doing. Her work was quite good, although she did keep shouting to Anna for some help. I offered to help myself, but she didn’t seem too convinced. She did ask for my advice at one point, but in the middle of my explanation she then simply shouted for Anna again. She said that she was aiming for a B in English, and I used this opportunity to ask if she had any plans for next year. She says that she wants to go to college, because she wants to be an English teacher in ‘a project’ (PRU). … All in all, the last two days at Ashbourne have been quite productive, at least from a networking/familiarisation point of view. Having said that, we are at a completely different point at the project in Ashbourne as we are in Meadow Cross, as I can’t at the moment see the easiest way to introduce the idea of recording. I’m sure individuals and small groups would be happy to be ‘interviewed’ and recorded, but that’s not nearly as good as what we seem to have going on at Meadow Cross. Wednesday 12th November—Rob This afternoon was a trip to the Football Museum in Manchester. Due to a mix up as to which door we were supposed to go into, we arrived at the entrance to the museum in dribs and drabs. The woman behind the counter didn’t seem particularly impressed with the clientele she was faced with, but the YP seemed equally unimpressed with her. Leah asked if there was a toilet, and the woman replied that there was, but we should wait for the rest of our group before we go in. I managed to catch Leah’s eye as she started the inevitable ‘I only asked for a fucking toilet, why can’t I go to the fucking toilet, who the fuck does she think she is?’ At that point Luke came in looking as sulky as ever. He simply walked past everyone and tried to walk past the counter, when the woman said he would have to wait. He just turned around and glared at almost like a caricature of a stroppy teenager. He slouched back, still staring. …

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When we got back I ended up hanging around the kitchen area where David was making a cup of tea, and Alesha, Leah, and Georgia were chatting. Leah was continuing a conversation I caught the tail end of earlier, when she was trying to work out if you should say ‘I’m going for a lay down’ or ‘I’m going for a lie down’. Anna told her she should asked me as I’m the expert, to which Leah replied ‘just cos he works at a fucking university doesn’t mean he’s a fucking expert’, which made me laugh. Tuesday 25th November am—Rob Around the pool table, explaining to the boys why I was there and what the project was about. Nathan said didn’t I think it was prejudiced, looking at their speech, thinking they spoke differently because they were in PRU.  Luke joined in saying ‘Yeah, because we’re in here so we’re automatically chavs’. I explained about us going into other schools too, that we were just interested in his age group, and that the PRU set up allowed good access and time to talk to them all. Later I explained that in many ways it was the opposite of prejudice, as we were trying to raise awareness and acceptance of the way young people speak. They didn’t seem convinced. Might be something we need to be aware of [Method 14]. Method 14 This is a predictable reaction to research within a particular community, especially when the people within that community have a sense of being the victims of social inequality. It’s obviously very important to prevent participants feeling objectified, exoticised, and ultimately exploited, which is what I sense was beginning to happen here. In addition, however much we convince ourselves we are doing the research for the right reasons, this can be hard to explain without sounding patronising. My insistence that we were trying to help could easily be (mis)interpreted as the oversimplistic ‘you speak in a way that disadvantages you, but don’t worry, I think it’s fine, and I’m going to tell people that’. Again, there are no hard and fast rules about dealing with this, but we must all be aware of how our research is actually perceived, especially by the people involved, and not just how we view it.

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Tuesday 9th December—Rob Break. Watched a bit of pool. Nathan and Daniel were discussing someone they all seemed to know, maybe a boy from another project. At one point Nathan said that this boy had autism, ‘But not the bad kind, the good kind that makes you do crazy shit like phone the police and say there’s a fire’. After break, Yr10 didn’t seem to have science, so they carried on with their cooking evaluation. I sat at the table by the kitchen work surface next to Alesha who was playing a game on her phone. I recognised the game and made some comment. She asked if I had it on my phone, and could she play it. I let her, and she showed me the different levels. It was a nice moment. When she gave my phone back she saw the picture of my eldest daughter I have as a background. She asked if that was my daughter, and I said it was one of them. ‘You’ve got more than one? Then why have you only got that one’s picture?!’ I said she was my favourite. ‘You can’t say that!’ She then proceeded to tell Val what I’d just said. I said I was joking and explained that my kids, especially the eldest are always taking selfies on my phone and setting them as backgrounds, and that I couldn’t be bothered to change it back. She asked how many kids I’d got. Thursday 18th December—Susan I decided quite early on that this was not going to be a good research day. I had brought the word lists thinking it might be a good opportunity to get lots of these done, but this wasn’t an ‘academic’ day. It was, to all intents and purposes, Christmas. No work. No one was in that frame of mind. Besides, the clash of music and the sound level hurt my head [Guitar Hero at one end, loud Christmas and chart music at the other]. David told me later that he sometimes finds it hard with the music too, but their approach is to make the space ‘comfortable’ for the YP, so that they are able to feel at home, and free enough to sing and dance if they wish too. This is in contrast to Meadow Cross where I have only ever heard music played once, and that was turned off when Tim couldn’t take it any longer. The YP at Meadow Cross still manage somehow to sing/rap and dance (albeit in short bursts), with or without music technology, but I suspect if they were given a choice they would like music. The problem would be: which kind? I imagine that could cause arguments at Meadow

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Cross. Perhaps at Ashbourne they have found a way of managing the differences in musical taste amongst the YP. Mostly it seems that the girls are in control of the music. And the boys are in control of the pool table. This seems to work out fine. … There was a bit of scuffle at the pool table between Daniel and Luke. Daniel playfully lurched at Luke with a flying kick and caught Luke’s hand. Luke walked off doubled up and screwing up his face, saying that his hand was broken. Everyone ignored him (there was a lot of noise, so no one may have heard him.) When Luke continued to look like he was in pain, Daniel showed concern and asked if he was alright. He continued to say his finger was broken. Daniel lost interest. Luke came over to me and said he had broken his finger. I asked him to make a fist. He said he couldn’t. I asked if his finger was swollen and we compared it with his other hand and it wasn’t, but he said it was and continued to try and convince me it was broken. I suggested we went and got the first aid box and tied his ‘broken’ finger to the one next to it. He said, no it was alright, and walked off. A few minutes later he tried the same thing with Matt, who went through a similar procedure with him, and concluded that he had probably bent it backwards and that there was nothing fundamentally wrong with it. Then Rob came over and Luke held up his hand to him, indicating that it was damaged. Rob asked him what he had done. ‘Ginger cunt’ he said simply, as if that was all the explanation that was necessary. And perhaps it was, now that he had realised he wasn’t going to be able to make people believe it was broken. Tuesday 13th January—Rob Yr11 class. The beginning of the lesson was supposed to be independent study from the work books, but the YP were having none of it. The usual questions about the timing of the lesson/break had already started. Luke in particular was determined to do nothing, except complain that science was boring. Leah started asking why they needed science at all, saying when would she ever need it. The teacher asked what she wanted to do for a job, to which she replied ‘hairdresser’, so he started listing the ways science was important. Alesha also expressed her complete lack of interest, and when she was told she had to do an exam in it, she said she wasn’t

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going to. Leah then commented about the fact she’d got a G in a recent test, so what was the point. The teacher reminded her that they had discussed her doing the higher paper at the beginning of the year because she was working at C level. The teacher soon got frustrated with the lack of effort and declared that independent study was over, and that they would start with the lesson proper. He collected in the worksheets, and told them to get their books out. At this point, Luke got his little PS Vista game thing out, and put his earplugs in. The teacher said he had had enough, and asked him to leave, meaning Matt (youth worker) had to go with him. This caused Alesha and Leah a great deal of displeasure, as they wondered why he got to go out and they didn’t! As far as they were concerned, getting removed from a class for bad behaviour is the better option. The lesson started, and continued in a fairly unstructured way. They were supposed to be learning about the Doppler effect and red shifting. Alesha and Leah could not have been less interested. Alesha simply sat on her phone, and Leah moaned. Then Kane arrived, with a packet of pistachio nuts and a Lucozade (presumably breakfast). He sat where Luke had been. Leah gave him the blow-by-blow account of why Luke wasn’t there, and Alesha again said how unfair it was that he got to leave. Another staff member came in at this point, presumably to replace Matt. At break time I tried to elicit some social group names from Luke and Nathan while they were playing pool. … Extract 5.6 Hoodrats, roadmen, and chavs Rob Are there any other groups of kids you can tell me about? Nathan Huh? Rob What other groups of kids, what about kids who (.) hang around, outside on the street Nathan They’re just the badmans (.) the g-star [raws ] Luke [ Just kids] like Nathan yo Nathan Innit. Badman I was bad boy since I was fucking eleven Luke Nathan is the bad boy here Rob You ever heard the term hoodrats?

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Nathan Yeah, but nobody’s a hoodrat in [here] Luke [nah ] Rob Where – who are th – who are hoodrats? Nathan Fucking one of them (unclear) Luke ((putting on voice—stereotypical ‘Manc’)) the ones with no fucking [(unclear) ] Nathan [yeah innit] the ones who are tramps as well who stink (.) but wear that fucking, all they ever wear’s the same tracksuit (unclear) Luke (unclear) Nathan no but not washing it either [though (unclear) just fucking] wearing the same shit every day Luke   [yeah just keep wearing it ] Luke yeah then they wear the same boxers for like two weeks at a time Nathan ((makes noise of disgust)) it’s like how hard is it to change boxers? Luke ((about pool game)) did you just hit that? Nathan (unclear) you can buy them for like three for a pound Rob What about roadmen? Nathan What? Rob Roadmen Nathan What? Rob You ever heard the term roadmen? Nathan Roadmen? Luke Roadman. ((mumbling)) Well that’s like a gang banger innit? Something like that Rob hmm. (.) Chavs? Who are chavs? Luke Yeah Rob Who’s that? (.) Like what sort of people I mean? Luke No-one in here Rob no, [no] Nathan [no], there’s no chavs in here Luke Shot Nathan

Luke was back in class after break, but lasted 5 minutes before being sent out again for the same misdemeanour. This time Alesha openly asked

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why she couldn’t go too, and pointed out that she was on her phone with her earplugs in, but the teacher ignored the question. After getting absolutely no interest from any of the YP all lesson, the teacher was surprised by Alesha suddenly asking an intelligent question to do with red shifting, showing that she had understood at least some of what had been going on. He was delighted, and said ‘great question, really good. Now, would you like me to answer it, to explain?’. Alesha simply looked up and said ‘Nope’ then went back to her phone. And that was it. That was the one spark of interest all lesson. Friday 16th January—Susan Mock college interviews, arranged by us in collaboration with centre staff. Four of the regular YP were absent (Alesha, Shannon, Georgia, Luke), so our intentions to capture six mock interviews today were scuppered. We almost only had one interview as Kane was adamant initially that he wasn’t going to do it, leaving only Leah. The shortage of Yr11s (and Yr10s) was possibly due to big police activity in the area this morning. David told us that the police were raiding several houses simultaneously, and that this would undoubtedly affect some of the YP’s families [Method note 15]. Anna wasn’t expecting some of them in now that she had this news. No amount of planning on our part could have predicted this, and it is instances like this that make it clear why the Centres need to operate in the flexible way that they do.

Method 15 This is an example of how things that are entirely out of our control (and that would perhaps not normally be considered in a mainstream school ethnography) can affect the project. More importantly, it provides a glimpse into the world in which we were working. I made the point in Chap. 2 that many of these YP had a lot going on in their lives outside school, and this is a good example of that. Obviously, there are no ways to guard against this—you simply have to be flexible, while at the same time admire the resilience of the YP and the staff, who often have to deal with the fall-out.

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Thursday 22nd January—Susan [One girl] drifted in at morning break having missed English and Maths. The teacher was despairing, because he has to see these YP through their GCSEs and if they aren’t present for his lessons then his chances of helping them to get good grades are severely reduced. He told me that it is not necessarily that she is flippant about the hours she keeps at school, but there are many other things going on for her too, not least she has an unstable home life. At the moment the house has no front door. Daniel came storming through to the kitchen area from the pool table cursing Nathan for being ‘fucking disgusting’: ‘He’s just snorted his fucking drink all over the place, it’s fucking disgusting man! Snorting tea from his nose. I don’t want to see that. There should be a fucking line somewhere.’ He said this as he stepped across the line on the floor that demarcates the Yr10 classroom from the social/dining space by a change in the type of floor covering. I wouldn’t have noticed this if he hadn’t looked down at it. Having turned around to face the direction he had come in, he appeared to be making sure his toes were over this very visible, material line. I have no idea if he was seeing the classroom as a different space, a space that separated him from the ‘disgusting’ actions of Nathan and his (accidental) tea-snorting, but that is how it looked: As if he was putting his body somewhere else, moving himself away into a different space without spilled/spat-out/snorted tea. Nathan defended himself, saying that it had been an accident, that he had laughed and the tea had just come out. He made the point that he wouldn’t know how to intentionally make tea come out of his nose. It was a good point and David didn’t tell him off, other than to ask him to behave more sensibly, and went off to investigate the extent of the mess whilst telling Daniel to watch his language and not to over-react to things. Wednesday 25th February—Susan Shannon told me she was arrested during the half term for swearing at a policeman: ‘Section 5’ she said semi-knowingly and half questioning, as if she expected this to make sense to me. ‘And then I got de-arrested’. ‘I didn’t know they could do that’, I said. She looked puzzled. So was I. Nothing more was said, but I would have liked to have known what had happened in more detail. What did she say to the policeman? I strug-

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gle getting detail from Shannon. She uses language quite minimally, unlike for example, the other Yr11 girls. Alesha, Leah and Georgia can all talk for England. Shannon is a bit out on a limb. I don’t know how the other Yr11 girls feel or how Shannon feels about them, but she doesn’t sit and talk to them. I see her mostly hanging around the pool table with the boys. It may be for this reason that she is quiet and says few words, but even when I have gone through word lists with her, her responses are minimal. Monday 2nd March—Susan Val (caretaker) turned up at 12:50 after everyone had eaten. (She had been at home waiting for the gas man had now been so she had rung David and asked if she needed to come in and he hadn’t hesitated—yes— quick as you can. The place did look like a bomb had hit it—dirty cups, plates, baked potatoes, grated cheese, spilled coffee, abandoned cups of tea.) Alesha voiced her mock disgust at the late arrival of Val with her usual cheerful playfulness: ‘what time do you call this? I’ve had a crap lunch because you weren’t here. I’ve eaten cold beans. Cold beans. The potato was cold too. Even the salad was cold. I’ve had to eat cold beans. I won’t get over that.’ With David under pressure to ‘fill’ a lesson from nowhere, I offered to talk to the Yr10s about banter and boying [Language note 8 and Method note 16]. It was worthwhile. They had had a lot to say and mostly said it over the top of each other, so I’m not sure how audible it will be. There was some choice language too. David said I might need to use a few ‘bleeps’ when I listened back to it. They disagreed and agreed about the terms: chatting shit was and also wasn’t the same as banter; boying and doming were the same, but nuances made them slightly different for some of the YP. One boy inadvertently ‘did’ banter by standing up, putting his back to the others and pulling down his trousers as he bent forward, showing them his bottom. It related to something that had been said immediately beforehand. After he had pulled up his trousers and sat back down and Caitlin had recovered from laughing she said to me ‘that was banter’.

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Language 8 Banter was big in the centres. In fact, banter was big everywhere in mainstream popular culture at the time. Yet the banter in the centres, particularly in Ashbourne, seemed different to how it was perceived elsewhere—it was more nuanced somehow. It was Susan who picked up on this initially, and she then spent quite a lot of time trying to get to the bottom of it, along with the differences between the terms ‘banter’, ‘boying’, ‘chatting shit’ and ‘doming’. Put simply, ‘banter’ seemed to refer to something that was funny, it was having a laugh; ‘boying’ was the practice of showing someone up, mocking them, ‘owning’ them; ‘doming’ was the same as boying but using only language (boying could use other semiotic modes); and ‘chatting shit’ was speaking rubbish, lying, or gossiping. For more details see Dray (2017).

Method 16 This was also an example of how to take an opportunity when it arises. Susan needed that time with the YP, yet she was not likely to have been able to arrange it herself outside of normal classes. Arguably, the same situation would not arise in a mainstream school, where every lesson seems to be accountable and planned in minute detail, but here, it was possible for Susan to be aware enough to take advantage of a particular situation.

I asked them about the time last week I had accidently ‘boyed’ Nathan according to Luke and this sparked a volley of comments on how Luke was a ‘social copycat’ (or similar term) and didn’t know how to engage in banter, to boy or to dome. There seemed a lot of consensus on this. Nathan on the other hand is the ‘king’ of banter. There is a relation between banter and the extent to which an individual is also a bit of a joker. So if Luke says something it is unlikely to be taken as banter, and most likely to be taken seriously, whereas Nathan could say the same thing and it could be read as banter.

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Caitlin said at one point that she was going to give up smoking (cigarettes, not weed) from tomorrow. I asked her whether that was banter or serious and how could I tell. ‘From my face, look at my face’ she said. Thursday 12th March—Susan Alesha offered to make me and one of the teachers a cup of tea whilst we were doing a wordlist. We both must have appeared a bit stunned, but said yes and ordered a black coffee (teacher) and a white tea (me). This proved a tricky order. Alesha huffed a little bit at the complexity of it and then wandered off, coming back immediately to check on sugar. We both said no, just black coffee and white tea. ‘How do you make coffee?’ she asked. ‘Put the coffee in a cup. Pour hot water on it.’ The teacher said. Then Alesha looked at me. ‘Teabag in a cup. Pour hot water on it. Add milk.’ I said. ‘Add milk to the coffee too?’ she asked. ‘No, no milk, the clue’s in the name. Black coffee.’ ‘Oh’ said Alesha as if it was all clear now. She came back with a more-than drinkable cup of tea and a black coffee that was so strong it made the teacher flinch a little but she drank it, explaining to me that she had recently suffered a bereavement and the YP were being very different with her at the moment. She was visibly touched by this display of kindness from Alesha. … I had some ‘who relates to who’ mapping conversations with Leah, Georgia, and Daniel. Some interesting points: • Ethnicity was absent in all three conversations, but gender was present: No one mentioned ethnicity as an identifying feature. But there is mention of girls acting/talking like boys. • There is a difference between being a chav and looking like one. • There are nuanced differences in items of clothing: There are different types of tracksuits, jeans etc and they say something about you. ‘Tracky bottoms’ vs. ‘track suits’; jeans that are ‘standard’ and others that aren’t. • Music is central to the boys’ identities, and important to the girls’. Their interests act as glue for the boys—Daniel made a comment about the pool table being the space where they all come together no matter how

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different they are. He says the pool table is the equivalent of the drinking culture of Manchester. Pool culture. • The girls expressed links/relations in terms of who they like, not what they like—interpersonal relationships are the glue for them. During my conversation with Daniel, Nathan put his head around the classroom door as Daniel and I were discussing whether Daniel needed to leave to go to a class: Daniel Nathan

Yeah I know, I’m going in a minute ((US accent?)) No you’re not you fucking bitch (.) [Fuck you!] Idiot! Daniel [((laughs))] oh fuck off Nathan ((Daniel gets up and starts moving towards Nathan. Nathan runs off)) Nathan Fucking baldhead! [Language note 9] Susan What’s that? Is that banter or boyin? Daniel No that is just Nathan being a prick Susan ((laughs)) okay

Language 9 ‘Baldhead’ is a Jamaican term used to describe a non-rasta—someone who has short, Western-styled hair rather than grown-out dreadlocks or an afro. It represents an outsider, a non-believer. The extent to which the YP know the term as anything other than a general insult is debatable. When we included it in one of the word lists (see Chap. 4), the vast majority of the responses were that it simply means ‘someone who is bald’. A few did seem to be aware of some kind of a Jamaican connection. Interestingly, when Nathan did this word list on March 2nd (ten days before this conversation), he said: ‘Probably means someone with a bald head. Never heard of it.’

[Background: There had been an incident earlier in the week which had resulted in one boy being excluded for three days for racist language, and Shannon and Nathan being exluded  for an afternoon for fighting]

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I mentioned to David how easy it was talking to Daniel and how articulate he was and David agreed wholeheartedly saying that talking to him was like ‘talking to an adult’ at times. I think he is right. I thanked them all for facilitating these conversations, and Matt said: ‘Susan, can I just ask you this: did anyone mention the word “mandingo”?’ I said no. And then asked what it meant in here, as I knew it as the name of an African tribe (ethnic group?). Matt laughed and started to ask me what I was talking about, but David stopped him and said that I was right, on the one hand, but the YP had, he suspected, come across it online, in a slavery context where it was used to mean a black/African male with a very large penis. He went on to explain to me how it had been Daniel who had started the whole thing off (and ultimately triggered aggression between Nathan and Shannon) by introducing the word to Nathan in a lesson on Tuesday afternoon. Nathan had found it highly amusing and so much so that he held onto it into the afternoon break and couldn’t help himself but do something with it. He chose to try it on Shannon (who is not in his year group and therefore wasn’t party to the initial hilarity it had caused in the Y10 lesson), suggesting to Shannon that she might like to go to a ‘mandingo party’. Three other boys joined in what they saw as a joke (including Daniel and possibly Luke but I’m not sure). Shannon responded angrily and aggressively and scared Nathan out of his wits with her threats to beat him up and aggressive stance. David said that Nathan seemed stunned by this and hadn’t known how to respond so had reacted with violence, throwing over tables and chairs, but fortunately having enough sense to recognise that if he touched Shannon she would have floored him. Apparently Shannon wouldn’t have hesitated to get physical if Nathan had thrown the first punch. Monday 16th March—Rob After break, Alesha said she didn’t want to go back to class so I cleared it with the teacher and suggested she come and talk to me. First she said no, but then she did anyway. We went into the room by the table tennis table. We actually chatted for about 25 minutes, including doing the word list (a standard sociolinguistic interview type wordlist targeting specific sounds) and talking about ethnicity. This was by the far the longest I’d talked to her, and she was getting quite chatty by the end. We talked

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about what she planned to do in the future (college > make-up artist) and the fact that she knew she was too lazy to get things done. Then I asked her about how long she’d been at the PRU… Extract 5.7 Alesha Rob Is it bet- how long have you been in- in the centre, when did you leave mainstream school? Alesha In… (.) about the start of year 8. Rob Did you? (.) Why did you leave main- why- why did you leave mainstream? Alesha Because I got kicked out, then I went back to get back in, and they put me back in but they put me in isolation so I left. Rob Why- ah, okay. Why did you get kicked out the first time? Alesha Fighting. Rob Oh right (.) you don’t seem like- you’d- you don’t seem like [the sort] Alesha  [Everyone says that.] ((laughs)) Rob Have you still got a t- do you still- would you still fight? Alesha I do. Rob Do you? Alesha That’s why I got kicked out of Rob Oh right, you were at as well (.) and you got kicked out of there for fighting? Alesha I don’t do it purposely (.) I’m just one of [those] Rob  [Just ] people wind you up? Alesha Mhm. Rob Girls? Alesha I’m a nice person til you(unclear)- oh I fighted boys as well in school. Got kicked out for battering a boy (..) Kicked out for battering a girl. Got kicked out for throwing girl down the stairs. Rob Did you? What had she done? Alesha We was arguing on the stairs, which was a bad move cos I knew I was going to throw her down.

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But she wanted to start the argument on the stairs, so (.) she went down (the) stairs. (3) I had a fight with a girl in P.E. one time, she tried to run away from me, but I caught her (.) in the P.E. hall. Rob What did you do to her? Alesha (.) Battered her. Rob (.) Badly? Alesha (3) There’s no point fighting if you’re not gonna do it properly, I don’t think.

Afterwards I went to see Anna to apologise for keeping Alesha out of class that long. She said it was fine, and that they’d had a heated debate in class about race. She said that it makes her so angry and sad that some of them seem to hold such racist views. I asked her about this, as Susan and I have discussed the apparent lack of discourse around ethnicity among the YP, but Anna thinks this is just because they have had it drilled into them that they shouldn’t use certain words, and that this doesn’t change what they actually think, which comes out in a discussion like this. I also had quite a long chat with Daniel. Daniel has always struck me as being very different from almost all the other YP. It’s not just that he is clearly intelligent (many of them are) nor is it just that he is usually extremely articulate, it’s just the way in which he engages with adults. He is able to maintain, and seems to enjoy having, quite serious conversations on almost any topic. The others tend not to do this, at least when I’ve been there. An example is when he got onto the topic of politicians and benefits. Extract 5.8 Daniel on politics Daniel: Like this morning, erm we was talking about – me my mum and my dad  – we was talking about what I should do, and then erm (.) like w- when I was putting my shoes on and everything (.) and my mum was like, ‘Oh why don’t you join the army?’ (.) And I was like, ‘Because I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna kill people, for...’ you know or (.) you know (.) it’s not

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justice when you’re killing somebody, as long as you’ve got, you know, green and fucking blue, green and black on, it’s all right you can kill people. But, you know, if I went down if I walked out there and assassinated Nathan, then I’m going to prison. You know and like also I’m doing that to protect somebody who sits on her arse and does nothing and my dad was like (.) ‘But she brings a lot of money in,’ and it’s just (.) it doesn’t go into things that need to be put, like he’s put- like George Osborne, he just, like, you know he distributes the money, don’t he, right? (2) ((with emphasis)) Where is it going? It’s going into (.) people’s back pockets – he’s paying people. We all know it, right, we’re not stupid; we all know he’s paying [fuckers] off. [(unclear)] being a turd. Rob [yeah ] Yeah. [Yeah ] ((Luke opens the door and looks in)) Luke What you doing? Daniel We gotta do this thing about my accent. Rob ((about the accent ‘thing’)) I did it with him last year actually. Yeah, no I agree, I agree. Daniel But, like, you know and then it’s just, like (2) ((coughs)) if it goes into people you know like, say (.) David Cameron’s bonus, Rob hmm Daniel gets his fucking bonus and it’s like (.) well (.) why does (.) why does he get a fucking million-pound bonus and people who really need money, like, you know fair play (.) if he doesn’t want people on benefits all the time, that’s fair enough, right? But what about people- he says, ‘Oh you know, we need to get everybody off benefits.’ What about people who are genuinely disabled and can’t work? ((describes personal circumstances)) and then, oh, apparently because, because we need help with money, we’re benefit cheats and you know, all this shit and it’s like, ‘Fuck off, man, like why should I, why should I go out and fight for something when it all comes down to it, you’re just criticising people who do that for you?’ So (.) why the fuck should anybody do that for you? (.) It’s just fucking stupid. (.) And it, like, really makes me angry:::

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Daniel is the only YP I could imagine having a conversation like this with. Monday 23rd March—Susan Shannon had been for an interview at a college just north of Ashbourne (very local) for a place on a Childcare course. She had been successful. She told us how she had been sitting in the interview with one of her ear phones in. It wasn’t switched on, she said, but it was in her ear and very obvious as it is white with a white wire that hangs down her front (it was in while she was telling us this, so we could see how obvious it was!) She must be just so used to it being there that she forgets about it. She said that she realised mid-interview and apologised, saying ‘oh shit sorry!’ At this point Luke joined in, telling her that ‘you can’t say “shit” in an interview’. Shannon said that she had been talking to herself not the interviewer so that made it okay. All of us were laughing and Anna looked at me and rolled her eyes heavenwards. It was a lovely moment. Shannon seemed momentarily happy and had no problem laughing at herself. Tuesday 21st April—Susan Yr11 class All the YP had their books on their tables. The teacher (and the other teachers/support staff too) always puts the books out with pens before or while the YP come into class. They don’t have to bring anything with them, but they do bring their phones and their headphones (which then get taken off them). They were asked to ‘get their books out’, which translated as ‘open them’ as they were already on the tables but closed. The teacher turned to write something on the white board but turned back to face the class to comment how nice it was to be in a ‘classroom’, saying ‘isn’t it better in a classroom!’ If you are a teacher I think the Yr11 room must be a much better space than the open plan area that the Yr10s use, with its limited technology, but I don’t know how much difference it makes to the Yr10s. In any case, none of them responded. … Yr10 class The teacher set then a task that was intended to test/reinforce what they had previously learned about BODMAS (formerly known as BIDMAS),

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the acronym for the order in which you do mathematical operations. i.e. 2 + 3 + 4 × 5 = 25 (multiply before adding). The task involved a series of maths questions with multiple choice answers, each written on a separate sheet of paper. The idea was to write your name on the paper and work out which of the options was the right answer and mark your decision next to your name and then pass the paper on to the next person to do the same. The teacher made it very clear that there was no point in just marking the same as answer as the person before you because it would probably be wrong. ‘Are you saying we are all dim?’ challenged Daniel. The teacher was at pains to point out that she wasn’t saying that, but she was saying that they should work it out for themselves. In practice very few of them did. Then one of the boys saw an opportunity to liven things up (my interpretation, he didn’t say this) and wrote ‘cunt flaps’ in large scrawl on a sheet of A4 paper and passed it on to Daniel as if it were one of the maths questions. Daniel made a big public deal out of it because it was written so badly that he couldn’t work out what the second word was and had to turn round to ask what it said. The teacher could see (as could I) from where she was standing and she started to go red, shouting loudly that they needed to destroy that sheet of paper right now. She insisted they got rid of it and the lesson momentarily went to ‘pause’ (it felt like we were all holding our breaths) whilst it got screwed up and put in the bin. The lesson resumed and nothing more was said about it. Tuesday 28th April—Rob After science, there was a birthday ‘thing’ for Anna. It was really nice, with Leah and Georgia busy putting up birthday banners and getting a cake sorted. They gave her a few presents (including a lovely framed montage of photos of her and YP past and present) and a card. She looked close to tears. The Yr10 boys were less interested, but did float by, away from the pool table for a minute or two. Thursday 7th May—Susan One of the teachers and I were talking after the lesson about the time of day that is best for maths, from a teaching point of view. The physical

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space and the time of lessons, I have noticed, matter for teachers in the PRU context. I don’t know if it matters quite so much in mainstream schools, but the difference between the time in the week (i.e. beginning of the week is better than the end), the time in the day (last lesson in the day is bad) and the character of the teaching space (limited equipment, open plan is bad) is all significant here. As is how a lesson sits in the rest of the day’s timetable. She said that Tuesday mornings tended to make for good maths lessons. But there was no perfect time: The main problem with mornings was that some of the YP either (a) hadn’t had anything to eat since yesterday or (b) had filled themselves up with high-sugar foods on the way to the centre and were ‘buzzing’. She told me about a boy at another centre (not Ashbourne or Meadow Cross) who turned up at his centre every morning with two family sized bags of chocolate buttons and a bottle of Lucozade for his breakfast and had such a sugar rush he tended to be more disruptive at this time of day. She said that he wasn’t given breakfast at home, but was given money instead to buy something on the way to the centre, and this was what he chose to buy. His breakfast was counterproductive for maths lessons. I got the impression that the teacher was unable to (or not in a position to) make any progress with changing this state of affairs. She was aware of it, and it was a specific case, but the point for me was that she is dealing with this kind of arrangement continually. Maths teaching doesn’t happen in a vacuum, and the dynamics in a class on any given day are an effect of the interactions between the bodies in the class, and to some extent this depends on what they have eaten (or not) for breakfast. Thursday 12th May—Rob At some point over lunch Leah and Georgia had a game of pool (a rare occurrence for Leah), with Georgia staying on to beat a couple of people. One particular stroke of luck on the table triggered a pretty typical and light-hearted exchange between the two while they were playing: Leah called Georgia a fat bitch, Georgia replied with ‘skinny cunt’ and then Leah finished off with ‘slag’. There was also a great incident where Leah was relaying to Georgia, but also anyone who is listening, a whole

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c­onversation that she was reading from her phone, presumably a text message chat or Facebook chat. She was speaking so quickly that I had no idea who was supposed to be speaking at any one time, but I wish we’d had it recorded if only for the use of quotatives (see Chap. 6). It seemed to be a mixture of plain old ‘said’ and ‘be like’ but they were coming so thick and fast it was incredible. I presume Georgia was following it, although I’m not convinced to what extent. I did notice Leah say at one point ‘John went to a party time ago’ which is a nice example of this use of ‘time’ that we see cropping up more and more [Language note 10]. Language 10 This use of time came up again and again: I haven’t seen him for time, I’ve not fell asleep for time. More perhaps with the MUBE-oriented (see Chap. 6) boys than others, but interesting to hear Leah saying it. It ‘translates’ into standard English simply as ‘ages’.

Wednesday 20th May—Susan [One of the boys] earlier this week threw a knife across the dining table from the kitchen in anger at being told by Anna that he couldn’t eat the toast he had just made because he was supposed to be in a lesson. The knife (a dinner/butter knife) had flown past Val’s ear and Anna’s head and gouged a hole in the wall inches from the TV screen. This hole was used in conversation today to ‘evidence’ the force with which it had been thrown. Callum hadn’t been impressed with the hole, saying that he could put his fist through that wall easily. He thought that it had been a brick wall the knife had gone through. He said that would have been impressive. David pointed out that no knife would ‘go through’ a brick wall. In terms of how the PRU allocates degrees of severity to inappropriate behaviour, knife incidents are rated extremely severely, and the boy is now excluded. Anna said he may not come back to Ashbourne next year [Method note 17]. He may either be put on an ILP (Individual Learning Programme) or sent to a different centre.

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Method 17 An example of how a single action can change an individual’s situation enormously (and, selfishly, can affect the project). The boy made some toast, Anna told him he couldn’t eat it, he threw a knife in anger. The result: he is now moved to a different setting for his final year of school, away from the friends and progress he has made here, and we simply don’t see him ever again. As with some of the situations described earlier, there is nothing that can be done to prepare for these situations, except perhaps gather the data while you can!

Friday 19th June—Celebration Evening—Rob I went to Ashbourne as arranged at 4.30. Anna and David were there, both looking smart, especially Anna. YP-wise there was Alesha and Shannon, both sitting at the table. Alesha looked stunning—jeans, white shirt, and perfect make-up. Shannon had also made a real effort—jeans, a white jacket and make-up. We were going to meet Leah there as she was working. We all sat around chatting, with Alesha making people laugh with her comments about how sad it was that this was her ‘leavers do’, and that all the people in her school could fit around one table! Conversation turned to last year’s Yr11s, most of whom I knew, and how the current Yr11s were when they were Yr10. Anna talked about Shannon fighting. It was almost like she was listing the people she’d fought with. At one point Anna mentioned the name of a Yr11 boy last year and Shannon said ‘Yeah, I remember head-butting that cunt’. It doesn’t look much written down, but at the time it was strangely hilarious. Both Anna and David looked at me and said that was one for me, and I said it was my favourite quote from her so far [Method note 18].

Method 18 It was always interesting to see how some of the staff interpreted our interests and needs in relation to the project. This is a nice example of Anna and David knowing exactly what I was interested in. This is why it’s so important for the staff to be on board in a context such as this—it makes it far easier to gather the data you need, and to have access to the situations that might be useful.

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No sign of Luke. David told me that he thought it had something to do with him having nothing to wear. He liked nice clothes, but couldn’t always afford them. So David called him. I overheard him say ‘There’s me, Rob, Matt, and then the girls. We need you to bring up the man tings’. He said he would come. Matt arrived, jeans, shirt and jumper and smelling very strongly of aftershave, then soon after, Luke arrived, looking sullen as usual in tracksuit, t-shirt and jacket. Then the taxi showed. They had clearly been hoping for an upmarket one, but this was just a tatty minibus. Alesha was appalled. The meal was good. It was at an all-you-can-eat world buffet type thing. Everyone behaved well, and there were no problems at all. It was just a nice meal out, with people chatting about all sorts. Obviously Leah and Alesha also had their phones out for most of the time too. At the end of the meal all the young people were presented with the various certificates they had accumulated over the year, along with some photos and personalised gifts. I also had certificates to give out from our project, and a gift card for each person. These were well-received, but I wish I’d made more of the occasion. It suddenly seemed so small in comparison with what they’d allowed us to do. The event itself was a lot more ‘separated’ than we had hoped—each centre was allocated a large round table and everyone pretty much stuck to their tables, limiting any mingling. I did go and have a chat with the Meadow Cross table, but it was almost as though I was not welcome due to my perceived allegiance to the Ashbourne lot in that context. It was in many ways an unusual evening, as the nature of the event seemed so alien to the day-to-day life of the centres. Certainly, the people I was sitting with (e.g. Luke, Leah and Alesha) seemed very uncomfortable and completely out of their depth in terms of what was expected of them. At one point Leah refused to go up to collect an award (too embarrassed) but then realised that she would stand out a lot more if she didn’t. It was strange to see this most vocal person who is usually so full of life reduced to hiding in the shadows, having to be encouraged and pushed by those around her. And although I didn’t know the people involved, I could see what appeared to be similar interactions happening on other tables. It made me wonder who this event was for—the young people,

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the staff, or ‘the PRU’ in general (i.e. the concept of the organisation, if not the specific people involved). Of course the answer is that it’s for all three, but in the order: PRU, staff, YP. Wednesday 1st July—Susan I got to Ashbourne at 1 pm, and walked in to a room full of people who looked completely different from usual on account of the [very warm] weather. Matt looked like he was going to the beach, David looked like he was going to the gym and Val looked like she was going off to play football. That gave the place a different appearance, but there was something else, and before I had worked it out, Anna apologised and said that there was only Nathan in. He was sitting around the corner in shorts and a t-shirt too, but looked the most ‘familiar’ of anyone in terms of what he was wearing. It was eerily quiet as there wasn’t any of the usual chattering, shouting and pool cues banging and even Nathan seemed to have run out of words. Apparently the day had started with 4 YP, but by 10  am three of them had asked to go home because they weren’t feeling well, after spending yesterday at Chester Zoo in the sun. Anna said they had ‘sunstroke’. I did some wordlists with Val and they led to some interesting conversations: The importance of context: Val mentioned on several occasions, unprompted by me, how she might use some of the terms in particular contexts, but only in very specific situations with specific people and for a specific effect. For example she said she would use ‘girl dem’ with the girls in Ashbourne a couple of years ago, but the girls this year hadn’t used that term so she didn’t use it any more, although she thought she still might if she was with a specific group of (female) friends for ‘fun’. She was very aware that context was important in determining whether or not she used a term, and that it wasn’t a simple matter of yes/no. Gendered forms: and then she asked me why I didn’t have ‘girl dem’ on the list. A very good question. I said it was because I hadn’t heard it, but that didn’t mean it didn’t exist. She thought about it for a moment

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and then agreed that she hadn’t heard it all this year, but confirmed that it did exist in practice—outside of Ashbourne, just not in Ashbourne this year. Tuesday 14th July—Susan Last day After lunch the YP got their certificates and vouchers from us for their help with the project and from Paul and Anna for their lesson and ­attendance points. Callum referred to the vouchers as ‘money’ (He asked Rob if he was going to give them all money) and it reminded me of the similar conversations I’d had a week or so ago with Stacey and Mackenzie independently at Meadow Cross. Stacey had seen it as ‘getting paid’ and they had both talked about it as ‘cash’, rather than vouchers. Rob explained to the YP a little bit about the project (again) and mentioned the book as one of the outcomes. The YP liked the idea of the book, and that they would be in it. Then we pointed out that they wouldn’t be named in it, and Caitlin couldn’t remember what nickname she had given when she had signed the consent form, and wanted to know so that she could find herself in the book. I’m not sure what to make of this, other than it was nice to know they were interested in being in a book (even if they would be disguised.) That made more sense to them/was more interesting to them than the notion that they have contributed to a project that will try to allay some of the misconceptions about young people’s language use.

5.4 Comment I included ‘Language’ or ‘Methods’ comments where I identified something as particularly noteworthy during the selection of the extracts. Reading the ‘Methods’ ones again now, I see that I could have included so many more. However, all of them fit into five identifiable and often-­ overlapping themes, which I summarise here in the hope that they might be of use to others embarking on similar research. Some of these observations echo or reiterate the points made in Chap. 4.

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Recognising Our Role I discussed our roles in detail in Chap. 3, and hopefully the details of the day-to-day events in Chap. 5 have illustrated some of the points I raised. Eckert (2000: 71) talks of the ‘normative and power-laden’ relationships that usually exist between young people and adults, and this is a reality that we, like her, wanted to mitigate as far as possible. Objectively, our ideal role would have been ‘impartial observer’, yet in order to gain enough trust to occupy anything approaching that position, we had to engage with people and make allies, thus endangering our impartiality. This isn’t a problem in itself, as much of the intrigue and joy of ethnographic research comes from those very connections and experiences, but it does present the kind of catch-22 situation that any sociolinguist will be familiar with, often in the form of the observer’s paradox: ‘To obtain the data most important for linguistic theory, we have to observe how people speak when they are not being observed’ (Labov 1972: 113). But it is no coincidence that the highlighting of the observer’s paradox is ascribed to Labov, a variationist. Ethnographers understand as a matter of course the inevitability that ‘humans doing research on other humans will affect the research participants in some way’ (Schilling 2013: 115). They appreciate that their own ‘cultural and interpretive capacities are crucial in making sense of the complex intricacies of situated everyday activity … and tuning into these takes time and close involvement’ (Rampton et al. 2015: 16). For us, it was a case of finding the balance between staying onside with all groups of people. Mendoza-Denton (2008) describes the tensions she faced with regard to associating with both the norteña and sureña girls in her study and how she negotiated a place in the middle ground. Our situation was similar in some ways, albeit not in relation to rival groups of young people, but to the differences in authority and status between young people and adults; we simply couldn’t afford to antagonise one group by overtly aligning with the other. To be fair, I’m sure most staff and some of the young people were able to appreciate the dilemma, but it didn’t stop us feeling like we were walking a tightrope every day. This tension was magnified when it came to witnessing low-level bad behaviour, as it put us in a potentially very awkward position. These were situations where we had to retreat into our impartial observer role as far as

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possible, and not get involved in any ‘side’. However, there is an unwritten societal expectation that as an adult in that kind of situation you will intervene in some way. I’ll admit that my own personal approach to such a situation (assuming it was low-level and not harmful or destructive in any way) was simply to intervene quite slowly and perhaps half-­heartedly until a ‘real’ teacher came along. I could live with the idea of people thinking I was somewhat ineffectual for the sake of the smooth running of the project!

Dealing with Confrontations These were few and far between, but we both experienced situations in which we felt we were challenged in one way or another. The threat was never to us physically (we didn’t feel in any danger) but rather to the roles we were trying so hard to craft and maintain, and perhaps to our selfesteem. Teenagers have always been particularly adept at making cutting remarks, but rarely, as an adult, do you find yourself in such a powerless position from which to react. More common than actual confrontations were situations in which we appeared to irritate certain people, either because of our questions, or simply our presence. From my perspective, my first thought in such situations was always the project—how might this situation affect the smooth-running of our research? This may sound selfish and somewhat insensitive, but by having this concern, the YPs’ well-being was actually even more strongly protected. Whereas I might have felt the need (a more selfish need in my opinion) to try to explore why a particular relationship wasn’t working had the project not been a consideration, the fact that its success was so central in my mind meant that I backed away from any potentially disruptive intervention in search of a resolution.

Knowing When to Approach Individuals For me, this is one of the most valuable aspects of an ethnographic approach. Whereas more traditional variationist methods would inevitably impose a certain time pressure on getting the data collection (recordings) done, possibly resulting in less than ideal approaches or requests, the inherent slowness of ethnography allows for a more measured way of

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doing things. The time we spent simply observing and interacting before we started recording, a key element of linguistic ethnography (e.g. Levon 2013; Snell 2015), was vital in understanding the moods, behaviours and attitudes of not only the young people, but also the staff. Situations which might have appeared to be ideal moments to gather data had we just arrived, proved to be anything but on closer inspection and with greater awareness. However, even with this knowledge, there was still a great degree of unpredictability in terms of whether someone was willing to engage at any particular moment. Our observations simply gave us the experience to swing the odds slightly in our favour.

Identifying Opportunities and Dealing with Practical Challenges Ethnographic research of this kind in some ways involves the giving up of control over the actual process of data collection. At least this is how it will feel if you are coming from a different sub-discipline of linguistics. In any area of sociolinguistics it is important to be flexible—to be able to deal with a malfunctioning voice recorder, a participant not showing up, an experiment not working—but rarely in those areas will there be the level of unpredictability that there is in a school-based ethnography. Any researcher is used to the feeling that without the engagement of these particular participants the project is in danger, yet this is magnified tenfold when you are dealing with such a volatile context. For us, it was important to get the staff on board, making sure they fully understood what it was we were trying to do and involving them in the process wherever possible. Among these staff were key individuals who went out of their way to help us (see Bucholtz 2011: 33) and then it was a case of learning (often by our own mistakes) to identify opportunities.

Ethical Concerns The standard ethical procedures and safeguards were put in place at the beginning of the project. Everything was undertaken with the full knowledge, support, and authorisation of the staff and management of the

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learning centres, and with the informed consent of the staff and young people. However, one issue emerged in the conversation with Luke and Nathan described above on 25th November in Ashbourne, where they questioned why we were so interested in them. The unintentional exotification of research participants is certainly something that we all need to be aware of as social scientists. Cameron et al. (1992, 1993) discuss the difference between research on social subjects (participants), research for social subjects, and research with social subjects. They make the point that the traditional ethical framework encourages research on subjects, deliberately maintaining a distance between researcher and researched. They argue for engagement with research on, for and with subjects as the most valuable (albeit complex) way forward. This was certainly the aim of the project discussed here, although I wonder to what extent we eventually achieved this. Interestingly, Cameron et  al distance themselves from research by subjects, seeing it as associated with action research, and subsequently ‘too removed from academic dialogues and too uncritical of participants’ perspectives to be of significant scholarly value’ (Bucholtz et al. 2016: 26). However, although not used to any great extent in this project, Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) is proving to be an incredibly valuable method in work am I am currently involved in with the Manchester Centre for Youth Studies,4 suggesting there is genuine benefit in taking a research on, for, with and by approach when working with young people. At an individual level, as with my conversation with Nathan and Luke, I’m not sure if it’s always possible to reassure participants that a project is anything but research on them. The power balance of school-based research is so inherently skewed due to the adult/adolescent relationship (Eckert 2000: 71) that it’s hard to see past that interpretation. But this doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to redress the balance wherever we can.

Notes 1. Business and Technology Education Council. 2. Susan was involved in a project in the same area of the city 10 years ago which looked at young people in youth clubs.

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3. The confusion is between Halle Berry the film star and Mary Berry, the 82-year-old food writer and TV presenter (co-presenter at the time of popular TV show The Great British Bake Off). 4. Manchester Centre for Youth Studies (MCYS) is a research centre based at Manchester Metropolitan University which has YPAR at its core. http:// www2.mmu.ac.uk/mcys/.

References Bucholtz, Mary. 2011. White kids: Language, race and styles of youth identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bucholtz, Mary, Dolores Ines Casillas, and Jin Sook Lee. 2016. Beyond empowerment: Accompaniment and sociolinguistic justice in a youth research program. In Lawson, Robert & Dave Sayers (eds.), Sociolinguistic research: Application and impact, London: Routledge. Cameron, Deborah, Elisabeth Frazer, Penelope Harvey, Ben Rampton, and Kay Richardson. 1992. Researching language: Issues of power and method. London: Routledge. Cameron, Deborah, Elisabeth Frazer, Penelope Harvey, Ben Rampton, and Kay Richardson. 1993. “Ethics, advocacy and empowerment: Issues of method in researching language”. Language & Communication 13, 2: 81–94. Cheshire, Jenny. 2013. “Grammaticalisation in social context: The emergence of a new English pronoun”. Journal of Sociolinguistics 17: 608–633. Cheshire, Jenny, Paul Kerswill, Sue Fox, and Eivind Torgersen. 2011. “Contact, the feature pool and the speech community: The emergence of Multicultural London English”. Journal of Sociolinguistics 15, 2: 151–196. Dray, Susan. 2017. “Identity matters: Language, practices and the (non)performance of rudeness in a Pupil Referral Unit”. Linguistics & Education 38: 44–54. Eckert, Penelope. 2000. Linguistic variation as social practice: The linguistic construction of identity in Belten High. Oxford: Blackwell. Labov, William. 1972. Sociolinguistic patterns. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Levon, Erez. 2013. “Ethnographic fieldwork”. In Christine Mallinson, Becky Childs & Gerard van Herk (eds.), Data collection in sociolinguistics, 69–79. Routledge.

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Mendoza-Denton, Norma. 2008. Homegirls: Language and cultural practice among Latina youth gangs. Malden and Oxford: Blackwell. Rampton, Ben, Janet Maybin, and Celia Roberts. 2015. “Theory and method in linguistic ethnography”. In Snell, Julia, Sara Shaw & Fiona Copland (eds.), Linguistic ethnography: Interdisciplinary explorations, London: Palgrave. Schilling, Natalie. 2013. Sociolinguistic fieldwork. CUP Snell, Julia. 2015. Linguistic ethnographic perspectives on working class children’s speech: Challenging discourses of deficit. In J.  Snell, S.  Shaw & F.  Copland (eds.), Linguistic ethnography: Interdisciplinary explorations, 225–245. London: Palgrave.

6 Manchester Youth Language

6.1 About the Chapter This chapter is primarily a description of the language we encountered during our time in the centres, along with some insights relating to issues of identity.1 I have chosen three areas to focus on: vowels, quotatives, and lexis, as these are all aspects of spoken language in which variation and possible change is both apparent, and often socially relevant. In describing the language I draw comparisons with MLE/MUBE, and investigate differences between speakers and groups of speakers, drawing on an ‘orientation scale’ which I introduce below. As the analysis in this chapter and the next was carried out by me alone, and having described the epistemological differences we were grappling with early on, it might be worth revisiting where I ended up in relation to issues of identity. I definitely remain within a so-called ‘third wave’ (Eckert 2012) approach to language variation and identity, albeit with excursions into related concepts and ideas. Absolutely fundamental to both this chapter and a third-wave approach in general is the understanding that ‘[linguistic] variation is not just a reflection of the social, but essential to its © The Author(s) 2018 R. Drummond, Researching Urban Youth Language and Identity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73462-0_6

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­construction’ (Eckert 2016: 70). In fact, I would go further than this and suggest that variation (and indeed language) cannot ‘reflect’ anything due to the fact that it itself is constructing and enacting the very realities we perceive. As soon as we talk of one thing reflecting another, we are setting up a situation in which there is separation between the two, as if there is an external something—be that a social hierarchy, an identity, a ‘reality’—whose characteristics are able to be represented and reflected in part through language. Rather, identities are created in context; they are ‘the outcome of social practice and social interaction’ (Bucholtz 2011: 1). Yet in order to study this effectively, we should not rely on interaction alone. Bucholtz and Hall (2010: 19) make the point that ‘[i]dentity does not emerge at a single analytic level … but operates at multiple levels simultaneously’. It is through interaction that individual features acquire social meaning, but it is through language contact and other mechanisms that the features are available to be used in the first place. Bucholtz and Hall (2010: 19–25) discuss their five principles which they see as fundamental to the study of identity (see also Bucholtz and Hall 2005). Although all relevant, three in particular speak directly to the approach taken here: • The emergence principle. Identity is best viewed as the emergent product rather than the pre-existing source of linguistic and other semiotic practices, and therefore as fundamentally a social and cultural phenomenon. • The positionality principle. Identities encompass (a) macro-level demographic categories; (b) local, ethnographically specific cultural positions; and (c) temporary and interactionally specific stances and participant roles. • The partialness principle. Any given construction of identity may be in part deliberate and intentional, in part habitual and hence often less than fully conscious, in part an outcome of interactional negotiation and contestation, in part an outcome of others’ perceptions and representations, and in part an effect of larger ideological processes and material structures that may become relevant to interaction. It is therefore constantly shifting both as interaction unfolds and across discourse contexts.

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The focus here, therefore, is very much on the (social) practices in which the young people engage, as it is within these that realities are enacted and performed. What I am interested in is variation at the level of the individual in the first instance, even if that variation is then looked at in terms of patterns with which to make sense of the social realities of wider groups of people. Relevant to this approach is the fact that social meaning does not reside in individual linguistic variables, but rather in the clustering of these variables along with other non-linguistic symbolic resources. Within studies of language variation, this broader focus usually takes the form of investigating either ‘style’ (e.g. Eckert 2000; Moore 2011) or ‘stance’ (e.g. Ochs 1992; Rauniomaa 2003; Kiesling 2009), or a combination of the two (e.g. Eckert 2008; Moore and Podesva 2009). Eckert (2016: 76) talks of the patterns of stylistic activity which we use as individuals as we negotiate our way through the social landscapes we inhabit, and which we then use to construct and reconstruct our own patterns to suit our own realities. The perception of social meaning, Eckert claims, involves a reverse process, whereby when we meet a new person we perceive a style—‘a combination of clothing, facial expression, posture, movement, speech, and so on – that helps us place this person in the social landscape’ (2016: 77). Crucially, the actual perceptions of individuals vary from person to person, with patterns emerging, as ‘people with similar experiences tend to have similar interpretations’ (p. 77). This emphasises the point made above, an important aspect of more recent variationist thinking, that individual variables never have a single meaning, but a broader meaning potential, with specific meanings emerging in context alongside other variables (both linguistic and non-linguistic). Put another way, the same resources can be used by different people to do different identity work (Bucholtz 2011: 11), depending on the context and the understanding of the social actors involved. These ranges of potential meanings are referred to as indexical fields (Eckert 2008; see also Jaffe 2016), and will play a part in the analysis below.2 Of interest in the discussion surrounding variability of social meaning in relation to linguistic variation is the extent to which speaker intent plays a part. Eckert (2016) questions and then dismantles the importance of the conscious/unconscious distinction (in terms of how aware a speaker is of a particular variable or variant) found in first-wave variationist ideas, p ­ ointing

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out how difficult it is to distinguish between the two anyway, even if it were useful to do so. Part of the reason such a distinction is of less value than is often thought is the fact that ‘style is not in the intent but in the intersubjective space between production and perception’ (Eckert 2016: 79), highlighting that the final outcome of stylistic practice is not determined entirely by the intentions of the originator. This theme also emerges in Kiesling’s (2009: 191) discussion of stance (see below), when he challenges the ‘unwarranted assumption’ of much variationist and pragmatic work that ‘the intention of the speaker is taken to be equivalent to meaning’. Certainly, if we take the view that realities are constructed in interaction, with styles and meanings emerging in that intersubjective space, then the question of intent becomes less important, especially with regard to meanings of particular variants. That is not to say that intent plays no part, far from it, simply that it is just one part of the meaning-making process. Stance-taking is a useful framework within which to view language variation, social meaning, and concepts of style (e.g. Jaffe 2009; Kiesling 2009; Jaffe 2016). Stance here refers to ‘the processes by which speakers use language (along with other semiotic resources) to position themselves and others, draw social boundaries, and lay claim to particular statuses, knowledge and authority in ongoing interaction’ (Snell 2010: 631). Kiesling (2009) shows how a stance-based approach complements existing variationist views by demonstrating how they are, in many ways, talking about the same ideas using slightly different terminology. Where ‘the Stanford group’, as Kiesling refers to them (e.g. Benor 2001; Eckert 2000; Mendoza-Denton 2008; Podesva 2007; Zhang 2005), discusses personal styles and personae, Kiesling sees them as repertoires of stances (p. 178). Similarly, when Schilling-Estes (1998) refers to the roles conversational participants play within interaction, this too is stance. This chapter takes the uncontroversial position that stance and style can operate within the same overarching theoretical framework.

6.2 Orientations Back in Chap. 2, I described my reservations in identifying communities of practice within the centres, and instead suggested that it might be useful to view individuals in terms of their orientation towards particular

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characteristics and social practices in order to gain a better understanding of life within the centres. I appreciate that there is a fine line between interpreting individuals’ relationships with particular social practices as membership of a CofP and interpreting them as an orientation towards that social practice, but as I explained earlier, the reluctance to commit to a CofP approach lies in the inherent restrictions of the PRU context. There is simply not the physical or metaphorical space in which to generate further meaningful groupings within the arguably pre-existing PRU CofP, so we are left with suggestions and hints of what might have been if the situation were more free and of a larger scale. Rather than identifiable groups, we can identify orientations towards particular social practices and attitudes. Having spent time observing, listening to, writing about, reflecting on, and analysing the day-to-day practices, activities, and interactions of the young people, there is one ‘orientational scale’ which stands out to me as one on which all the young people can be usefully placed. When I say usefully, I mean that by doing so, it allows us to better understand the ways in which the young people make sense of and engage with the world around them, and in turn uncovers some interesting linguistic variation. In taking this approach, I’m not trying to reduce these people to one-­ dimensional characters, neither am I suggesting that there aren’t alternative lenses through which to view the lives of these young people that might be equally valid. Most importantly, I am not ignoring the fact (alluded to above and throughout this book) that people’s identities are enacted through social practice. I am fully aware that any individual, at any given moment, might or might  not be enacting, performing, or ‘doing’ this or that aspect of their identity, but this does not mean that there aren’t patterns or tendencies of repeated behaviour which build up to create at least some degree of orientational consistency. The orientational scale in question can loosely be termed one of ‘urban/ street-style’,3 which incorporates aspects of music preferences and engagement, clothing, behaviour, attitude towards/proximity to a perceived ‘gang’ culture, and, to an extent, ethnicity. It also includes language, although I have tried to separate this as much as possible for reasons I will get back to shortly. In order to explain the scale, it might be useful to describe the two extremes by way of a prototype or exemplar individual from each end of the scale. The examples are deliberately exaggerated,

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and I don’t believe any of our young people matches either one (although they come close), but they serve as illustrations of the extent of the scale. At one end we have Malachi. Malachi is heavily into grime4 and dancehall,5 and is an accomplished low-level grime artist himself. He is connected to people who would describe themselves as belonging to gangs, and although he is quick to talk about his own exploits in how he understands that world (fights, weapons, drugs), his actual participation is minimal. Malachi wears tracksuits, trainers, and hoodies, but with style. Each item is branded and expensive, and represents quite subtle wealth. Malachi was born in the UK to a Jamaican father and a white British mother, although his peers are from various ethnic groups, including white British and black African. His speech is identifiably northern, with some features that tie him to Manchester specifically, but at the same time he uses unmistakable features of what is known as MLE or MUBE. At the other end we have Chantelle. Chantelle is into house music and RnB. She has no connection to the gang scene as such, although she is no stranger to low-level criminal activity through her friends and some members of her family. She is from a traditional white working-class Manchester background, with Irish ancestry. She wears skinny jeans or jeggings, trainers, and t-shirts, except when she goes out in the evening, when she wears a dress and high heels. Chantelle speaks with an unmistakably (and stereotypically) Mancunian accent. Malachi and Chantelle have been presented as male and female, respectively. This is a conscious decision, albeit one based on an observation that is not going to be addressed in any great detail here. The Chantelle end of the spectrum could just have easily been male—the stereotype I have described has an equally appropriate male form, in which the clothes are the main difference (tracksuits and trainers—often expensive, but lacking the nonchalant style of Malachi). However, the Malachi end is definitely more male than female, at least in my own experience. I can imagine a female Malachi, and I know they exist, but it just so happens that there are none in this particular group of people. You will notice that I have included language in the descriptions above, which clearly then makes any subsequent linguistic analysis in relation to these orientations somewhat circular (this person uses feature x, so she is towards the Malachi end of the scale; this person is on the Malachi end of

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the scale, so we would expect her to use feature x). But this is only the case if I were trying to ‘explain’ the linguistic variation by way of these orientations, which I am not attempting to do. Instead, I am simply describing the language used in the centres while at the same time exploring how it is used, alongside other semiotic practices, to enact identities. I am using the orientational scale described above as one tool to help in this endeavour. Having said this, I did prioritise aspects other than language when first placing individuals on the scale, on the basis that I wanted to see how language behaves in relation to this. This is a study into (socio)linguistic variation above anything else, so it is important to see how language fits in with other factors, rather than how other factors fit in with language. In other words, if someone’s music, clothes, gang-­relatedness, and so on marked them out as being Malachi himself yet the language was more Chantelle, he would be further towards Malachi on the scale than his language might suggest. This allows us to see more clearly any ‘discrepancies’ between language use and other semiotic resources. If language is given the lowest priority in determining position on the scale, then music preference and engagement is given the highest, ­playing, as it does, such an obviously important role in the lives of many of the young people here. All the young people identified with music in some way, and in many cases, this influenced other aspects such as clothes and attitude. The scale is of course subjective, but it is borne out of the ethnographic experience and conversations with the young people (including where they position themselves in relation to others—see Chap. 4). Figure 6.1 shows where each person sits on the urban/street-style orientation scale. To reiterate, this is not intended to represent groups as such (Alesha and Shanique, for example, to the best of my knowledge, have never met and may have little in common), but rather it represents orientations towards one or other extreme on a scale which I am suggesting might be of relevance in making sense of the sociolinguistic context. I have no doubt there will be variationists reading this wondering why I didn’t attempt to quantify the scale in some way so as to enable some proper quantitative analysis. It did cross my mind, and I could have done. However, I don’t believe it would have told me anything more than I gained via the process of thorough, and thoughtful, ethnographic observation and reflection.

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‘Malachi’ Abdou Jacob Jamal

‘Chantelle’ Adana Aiden Callum Jake Jordan

Alesha Alex Shanique

Kane Nathan Caitlin

Bethany Brady Daniel* Danielle Georgia Jade Jenson Leah Luke Mackenzie Megan Shannon Stacey

Fig. 6.1  The urban/street-style orientation scale (p. 198) (*Daniel does not fit the Chantelle stereotype in terms of music (he likes heavy metal), but he is still at this end in relation to Malachi)

6.3 Vowels and Consonants The intention throughout the project was to generate a description of accent features using tried and tested variationist procedures of acoustic analysis in order to compare with other accounts. Unfortunately, as was discussed in Chap. 4, the requisite calmness and lack of background noise to make recordings of sufficient quality was not always readily available. As a result, much of the recorded data we gathered, although rich and fascinating, does not lend itself to the kind of fine-grained analysis one would expect to find in a sociophonetic study. However, many of the recordings are usable, at least in part, and there is enough data to provide some insights. This section presents and discusses those findings, along with some additional auditory detail.

Acoustic Analysis Acoustic analysis was carried out on speech from 11 speakers. These individuals were chosen on the basis of at least some of their recordings being of sufficient quality, but also because they represent different positions on

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the urban/street-style orientation scale above. The recordings used come from two sources: spontaneous interaction in or out of classes and one-toone or small-group ‘interviews’ with me or Susan. Some of the tokens come from a traditional sociolinguistic interview-type word-list task during interviews with me. Tokens from each source are not separated in much of what follows, but they were identifiable during analysis, and any apparent style-shifting or context influence will be noted. Impressionisti­ cally, systematic style-shifting (in terms of vowel production at least) due to context was not particularly common; far more likely were swift stylistic moves within spontaneous interaction, which are often procedurally hard to capture. Of course, this mixing of token sources is a far cry from the kind of organised data usually gathered in the traditional, structured, sociolinguistic interview so common in variationist studies, and it represents the previously discussed ongoing tension between different approaches to sociolinguistic research. For all the criticism around the idea of sociolinguistic interviews (some of it made by me earlier in this book), and for all the arguments in favour of taking a more natural, ethnographic approach, few things are more frustrating for a sociophonetician than sifting through endless tokens of unusable quality. Proper acoustic analysis can be a fantastically enlightening tool in the study of language variation, but we must be realistic about the kind of data it needs. Trying to get adequate data for acoustic analysis in a learning centre is rather like a botanist attempting precise leaf measurements halfway up a stormy mountain rather than relying on the plants growing peacefully back in the lab. Acoustic analysis6 was carried out using Praat (Boersma and Weenink 2017). Clear tokens were identified and segmented manually, and a script was used to take F1 and F2 measurements at 20% and 80% of the vowel duration for diphthongs, and at 50% for monophthongs. These measurements were checked visually during the process, with any obvious misreadings either adjusted manually where obvious or discarded where ambiguous. This left 934 usable tokens from 11 speakers covering either 19 or 20 vowels for each speaker, resulting in an average of just over four tokens per vowel per speaker—not great, but enough to get the beginnings of a meaningful picture. All raw Hz measurements were then normalised using the modified Watt and Fabricius method (Fabricius et al. 2009) and plotted onto charts using ggplot2 in R.

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Fig. 6.2  Mean values for each vowel across all 11 speakers. Normalised using the modified Watt and Fabricius method (p. 200)

The mean values for each vowel across all 11 speakers are shown in Fig. 6.2. However, several vowels display potentially interesting variation between individuals, and these will be discussed below. The following description focuses only on those features which relate to a discussion of the emergence (or not) of a MUBE-oriented style of speaking, with reference to either MLE or the urban/street-style orientation scale mentioned above. In other words, features that behave predictably for the region and whose character can clearly be seen on the vowel chart (foot/strut, bath/trap, etc.) will not be addressed.

happy The happy vowel is of significance here, as it represents a particularly Manchester feature, typically realised as a relatively open and lax [ɛ] or

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[ɛ̈], especially in phrase-final position (Turton and Ramsammy 2012; Howley 2015). This contrasts with a more general shift towards [i] for this vowel in other accents (known as ‘happy tensing’, Wells (1982: 258)), and the use of [ɪ] in other northern English varieties (Hughes et al. 2013). Previous studies into lax happy, both in Manchester and in Sheffield, where it also occurs, have stressed the importance of social class in its realisation, with working-class speakers more likely to produce the most lax variants. However, as Kirkham (2015) points out: ‘“working-class” in this context typically means “White British working class”’ (pp. 613–614). Along with letter (see below), this lowered and centralised happy is often the source of stereotypical imitations of a Manchester accent (Howley 2015: 139). Realisation of happy in the speech of the young people ranges between [i–ɛ̈], although [i] was quite rare, so the vast majority are between [ɪ–ɛ̈]. The lax variant appears to be used more by speakers towards the Chantelle end of the spectrum, but there is variation within this. In order to provide more detail, I carried out additional analysis on phrase-final happy tokens from the 11 speakers above. As mentioned already, token numbers are small (between three and six for each speaker in this case) and have been gathered from a variety of contexts depending on what was available for each individual. These contexts have been classified as either ‘interaction’ (recorded spontaneous speech), ‘interview’ (a one-to-one or small-group conversation with me or Susan), or ‘word list’ (a read-aloud list of words as part of the one-to-one with me). I do not believe that the context in which the token was produced plays any significant role in its realisation, as the findings of the acoustic analysis match the impressionistic auditory analysis from other contexts. However, context details are included here for the sake of completeness and transparency. In measuring the relative backed and lowered position of happy, I am following the lead of Kirkham (2015) and Howley (2015) by using the F2–F1 value of each token. High front variants have low F1 and high F2, so F2–F1 will be large, while lowered and backed variants will have relatively high F1 and low F2, resulting in a low F2–F1. Formant values were transformed to the Bark scale prior to taking the F2–F1 measurement (using the formula in Traunmüller (1990)), with no additional

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­ ormalisation carried out, ‘because the F2-F1 measurement already repn resents a kind of normalisation, as it captures the relationship between formants as opposed to raw values’ (Kirkham 2015: 637). Figure 6.3 shows the variation in phrase-final happy among 11 speakers, presented in the order they appear on the urban/street-style orientation scale above. Once again, I accept the inherent potential circularity of the observation, but this does begin to illustrate the role of lax happy, a typically local feature, in the construction of a particular identity among the young people. Given its local salience, I would argue that its non-use is what is important here; by not using the local lax variant, individuals are perhaps distancing themselves from the traditional, white, working-class norm. The extremes are quite telling, with Abdou, Jamal, and Jordan contrasting strongly with Jade, arguably representing quite distinct and

Fig. 6.3  Boxplot of F2–F1 for 11 speakers in the production of happy, showing context of the tokens. Speakers ordered according to their position on the urban/ street-style orientation scale (p. 202)

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­ ossibly socially relevant realisations relating to the scale discussed above. p But Callum, Jake, and Alex are also interesting in the way in which they don’t fit the otherwise quite neat pattern. I believe there are plausible reasons for each of them to be slightly different, and I’ll deal with each in turn. There is no doubt, especially when we look at additional evidence from TH-stopping in the next chapter, that Callum is trying to be part of a world in which he doesn’t seem to naturally fit. Several things about Callum, family background, clothes, ethnicity, day-to-day experience, suggest he belongs towards the Chantelle end of the spectrum; however, he is very vocal and explicit in his engagement with grime, which is what pushes him up the scale. I will argue later in relation to TH-stopping that Callum appears to self-correct from [θ/f ] to [t] at a crucial point of an interaction in order to maintain his grime-oriented credentials by consciously using the non-local variant; perhaps happy is not so easy to manipulate in this way due to its arguably less salient, non-phonemic nature. Jake, although definitely part of the Abdou/Jamal group in the centre, has spoken before of having a separate life and a separate group of friends outside the PRU.  He sees the difference as one primarily of ethnicity, which he then relates to the way people speak (Extract 6.1). Extract 6.1 Jake and Rob Jake: And I used to hang about with, like, the type of people like Abdou and Jake and Jamal, and erm like (.) in if I was like, when I was in school I used to hang about with erm people like them, like, and they’d say like ‘Ah, are you going out with them black boys’ or something like that, and then when I like erm and when I used to chill with other people in and I speak to my mates like Abdou they’d be like ‘oh why you chilling with them white boys?’ or something.

In a later conversation, Jake and I are discussing the way Abdou had just said [tɹiː] for ‘three’, and how people speak differently in his part of the city. Again, ethnicity is the salient issue for Jake (Extract 6.2).

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Extract 6.2 Jake and Rob Jake: Rob: Jake: Rob: Jake: Rob: Jake: Rob: Jake:

Rob: Jake:

a lot of people- like the people from here speak differently to how people near mine, [or who I hang] about (with) [oh do they? ] Yeah. Like, people from (.) like, people from here in this area, or from this project? Th  is project, but this area, if you know what I mean. Yeah. Yeah. And they speak differently from people from (.) like (.) cos I’m like (.) kinda- ’s dead, dead different to like this area cos this is like a black community. Right. and there’s loads of different (.) it’s like multi- multicultural and is like dead racist so like if I’d spoken slang that people speak here like if I said like (.) like Abdou said [tɹiː] for three (.) if I said it there, they’d look at me weird and say ‘why’re you saying that? Really? Yeah, or ‘why do you think you’re black?’ that’s what they’d say.

What I’m suggesting is that like Callum, Jake straddles two different worlds to some extent, and he is very much aware of the perceived different expectations of his ‘white’ friends and his ‘black’ friends (Jake is mixed white British and Pakistani). Perhaps he too has less awareness of, or less control over, this particular feature.7 Ethnicity is something I will return to in Chap. 7. Alex, while not necessarily orienting towards a street/grime identity, is definitely attempting to distance himself from a local Manchester identity, and he is explicit about this in relation to the way he speaks. Some of this desire stems from the fact that he moved from another city as a young child, and he likes to focus on that difference. Extract 6.3 comes from a conversation in which I ask him about the way he speaks compared to his peers.

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Extract 6.3 Alex and Rob Rob: Alex: Rob: Alex: Rob: Alex: Rob: Alex:

Do you think you speak differently to them? Ah yeah, I know I speak differently to them. Yeah. What’s different? Everything. [Yeah  ] [The way] I say things, it sounds better. ((laughs)) Do you not like the Manchester… No. Cos, I know it sounds rude or anything, but usually it sounds like a crackhead, doesn’t it? ((Does impersonation)) ‘Hey, our kid, have you got a cigarette for me?’ I hate it. It’s nasty. Like just the way, yeah (.) that (.) when they’re saying a word, they’ll say (.) instead of saying, like, ‘me’ they’ll say ‘meh’ [mɛ], or, like, ‘I’m coming for you,’ ‘I’m coming for yoh [jɒ].’ It’s different.

letter Phrase-final letter ranges between [ə–ʌ̞] among these speakers, in line with previous studies. Stereotypically, Manchester speech is said to have an even more open and rounded vowel in this position, with [ɒ] mentioned in Hughes et al. (2013: 117). Turton and Ramsammy (2012) suggest this is an exaggerated realisation, and although there are one or two tokens here which approach that position, the roundedness is unlikely. I carried out additional analysis of the phrase-final letter data, following the same procedure as for happy. Figure 6.4 shows the variation in the production of letter among the 11 speakers, who are again presented according to their place on the scale above. As before, the higher the value, the less local the variants are. Despite Jade’s wide range of realisations, there is something of a clustering of the local variant towards that end of the spectrum, with Bethany, Daniel, Caitlin, and Alesha all joining Jade (unlike happy, when Jade was quite clearly the most extreme user). There is then quite a clear division between these four speakers and the other five, with Jordan displaying the least local variants on average. My tentative interpretation is again that rejecting the local variant is part

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Fig. 6.4  Boxplot of F2–F1 for 11 speakers in the production of letter, showing context of the tokens. Speakers ordered according to their position on the urban/ street-style orientation scale (p. 206)

of the linguistic process of creating this non-local, outward-facing, urban/ grime-oriented identity. It’s not precise—we can see that in the individual variation—but there is a clear tendency for individuals to use particular variants which they share with other speakers who hold observably similar interests and attitudes. What I am suggesting here is that happy and letter are very much involved in the performance of particular identities. Based on existing research (e.g. Baranowski and Turton 2015), the age and social background of the speakers8 would suggest they use a  lowered and backed happy, and a backed letter. Yet here, there is a clear distinction in both vowels between different speakers, primarily between those who appear to orient to a more traditionally Mancunian identity and those who orient towards a more urban/street identity. It’s not that non-backed letter

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Fig. 6.5  Mean values for each vowel across all 11 speakers, with the inclusion of two additional variants of letter and happy. Normalised using the modified Watt and Fabricius method (p. 207)

and non-lowered/backed happy are features of a possible MUBE; rather, they represent a rejection of and distancing from traditional (white) working-class Mancunian norms. This interpretation works for both white and non-white speakers, albeit for possibly different reasons. Figure 6.5 illustrates this difference, with an ‘urban/street’ and a ‘local’ variant of each vowel added to the chart from Fig. 6.2. For happy, the ‘urban/street’ variant is calculated from the tokens of Abdou, Jamal, Jordan, and Alex, and for letter, it is calculated from the tokens of Abdou, Jamal, Jordan, Callum, Jake, and Alex. The reason for not using the same speakers is that the focus here is on the variants themselves as two possible salient targets, rather than the extent to which individuals reach them (which is illustrated anyway in Figs. 6.3 and 6.4).

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goose goose is generally high and front for all speakers, consistent with changes reported in most varieties of English, including existing accounts of Manchester (e.g. Hughes et  al. 2013; Baranowski and Turton 2015), especially with regard to younger speakers. When reporting on the pilot study (Drummond 2018a), I suggested that one particular MUBE-­ oriented speaker had a particularly fronted goose, matching the extreme fronting reported in MLE, yet this is not the case here. There is extreme fronting, but some of the most fronted vowels were produced by those speakers who do not share any other MUBE-type features, suggesting that such a feature might no longer be the preserve of MLE/MUBE. There was insufficient data with which to methodically test the effect of phonetic context with regard to goose fronting, but there were enough fronted tokens of pre /l/ goose (particularly in the word ‘school’) to support the findings of Turton and Baranowski (2015), who showed that the blocking of goose fronting by /l/, which is found in other varieties of English, did not appear to occur in the speech of their working-class Manchester speakers. All of the speakers discussed here would have fallen within this socio-economic group.

price price is consistent with what would normally be expected for this part of the country. However, I had expected there to be more of a difference between price and like, where like includes only discourse marker or quotative ‘like’. It’s not unusual to find differences between an individual’s realisation of price and like (e.g. Drager 2009; Schleef and Turton 2016), and in the pilot study (Drummond 2018a), I thought I had found the beginnings of a pattern, with the two MUBE-oriented speakers producing a more monophthongised and open like, similar to the price reported in MLE (Cheshire et al. 2011: 163). However, although there were some differences between the vowels in some individuals, there was no consistency, either at the level of individual or possible urban/street orientation. Having said this, I was missing like tokens for three key speakers, Jamal, Abdou, and Jordan, simply because there were none in the recordings

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I was using. I then went back to listen out for discourse or quotative ‘like’ in other recordings, and sure enough there were almost none, especially by Abdou and Jamal. This is interesting in itself, but is clearly another topic, which will be dealt with, to an extent, in a later section.

mouth The fairly predictable depiction of mouth in Fig. 6.2 hides a fair amount of variation between speakers. There were not enough usable tokens across all the speakers to provide reliable measurements of trajectory length across multiple tokens, but both here and auditorily elsewhere, Jamal, Abdou, and Jake produced the most monophthongised vowels, thus closer to those reported for MLE (Cheshire et al. 2011: 158), with Jade, Daniel, and Bethany producing the vowels with more movement. This was also the case in the pilot study, with the two MUBE-oriented speakers producing much more monophthongised mouth.

face face for all speakers is mid-high and front with a relatively short trajectory. While it may be tempting to draw parallels with similar realisations for face in the MLE data, in actual fact, the face vowel around Manchester generally has these features already (Hughes et al. 2013: 117), although Baranowski and Turton (2015: 285) stress that it is diphthongal in the city itself, unlike some neighbouring areas.

6.4 Quotatives Some Background Quotatives are the linguistic mechanism for reporting ‘previously outwardly realized verbal action, i.e. speech … [and] inward, mental activity, such as thoughts, attitudes, or points of view’ (Buchstaller and D’Arcy 2009: 295–296). They are of interest here because they represent a recent and current change in English, particularly in relation to the speech of younger

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people. In addition, there are reports of a new quotative being used in MLE, so it seems apposite to investigate whether it is also being used in Manchester. The prototypical resources for such reporting are say for speech, and think for thoughts, attitudes, and opinions. For example: And I said ‘Do you want to come outside’, I said ‘You smoke?’ He said ‘Er, yeah’. [Bethany] And it’s not like I have to think to myself ‘Right don’t swear’. [Leah]

However, say and think are not the only ways in which we can report on this kind of external or internal dialogue. Alternatives include go and zero (no introducing word at all), as well as the increasingly ubiquitous be like, which is generally thought to have spread from American English (see Buchstaller (2014) for an overview). For example: Social workers got involved ‘She has to have a phone’ and Mum went ‘Fuck off, you buy her a fucking phone then’. [Shannon] I was like ‘Come outside and let’s have a one on one’. [Nathan]

Useful reference points for the apparently global increase in the use of be like are Buchstaller and D’Arcy (2009) and Buchstaller (2014). The first of these compares corpora of American English, British English (BrEng), and New Zealand (NZ) English, and looks at the social and linguistic constraints on the use of the various quotatives at a time when be like was beginning to emerge in BrEng and NZ Eng (BrEng data was collected in 1994–95, with the younger speakers aged 15–27; and the NZ data was collected in 1994–96, with the younger speakers aged 17–30). The second extends this by looking in incredible detail at the history and spread, both local and global, of innovative quotative forms, particularly be like and go. The underlying message from both these and other sources is that the use of be like as a quotative is on the increase, and this increase has taken place rapidly among younger speakers over the last 20 or so years.

MLE Similar to the findings described above, Cheshire et al. (2011) found an increased use of be like among younger speakers (ages 4–5; 8–9; 12–13;

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16–19), although say remained (just) ahead until the 16–19 age group of their North London data,9 who used be like almost three times as much as say. Within this group, say remained the next most-used, followed by zero, then go and think. However, they also report a new quotative structure: this is + speaker. For example: This is them ‘what area are you from. what part?’ This is me ‘I’m from Hackney.’ (Cheshire et al. 2011: 172) This new quotative is not frequent or common, representing only 5.3% of the total number of quotatives even within the group who used it most (8- to 9-year-olds in the North London data). However, it is worth considering as a clearly new structure that undoubtedly exists in the data, and one that was used by several people across both data sets. Interestingly, it tended to be used by the 8- to 9-year-olds in a mimetic, deictic way, perhaps reflecting the natural narrative style of that age group. However, this was replaced by a purely direct speech quotative function in the 16- to 19-year-olds. Clearly, the possible emergence of a similar quotative structure in Manchester’s young people would therefore be of interest, as is the patterning of be like and other quotatives in relation to those discussed by Buchstaller, and Buchstaller and D’Arcy.

Quotatives in the PRU Unfortunately, this is + speaker does not appear anywhere in the current data. More than this, I have not heard it at all during my time working with these young people, either during the fieldwork for this project in particular or in the previous and subsequent visits. I realise that as objective social scientists we shouldn’t talk of the absence or presence of particular features being unfortunate, as it raises the concern of subjectively seeking data that will support a particular hypothesis. However, on this occasion, I am happy to admit that catching an innovative feature at such an apparent early stage of its possible spread from London/ MLE would have been quite exciting. But this was not the case—it simply isn’t used within this group. It’s possible that the emergence of this is + speaker is just around the corner, but given that the London

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data is from 2007, this is looking increasingly unlikely. It’s also possible that it’s being used elsewhere in Manchester, just not among this particular group of speakers, but it still seems strange to have not heard it at all, even in my work with other young people. Perhaps, as Cheshire et al. (2011: 173) acknowledge, it is simply a ‘transient phenomenon’ after all. Clearly, further work, both in London and in other cities, is needed to determine if this is the case.10 Figure 6.6 gives an overview of the variety of quotatives used among the PRU young people. These numbers include speakers for whom there are five or more quotatives recorded and transcribed. As has been explained previously, the data is unbalanced in terms of overall quantity between speakers for a variety of reasons. It would be possible to argue that this variation in quantity is in itself an interesting and valid difference to explore, in the sense that quotatives will naturally appear more frequently in the speech of individuals who readily tell stories or recount experiences. However, given the other causes for unbalanced data in this context, I’m not in a position to comment in this particular 70% 60%

Frequency

50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0%

Girls (9) N=223

Boys (7) N=126

Total (16) N=349

MLE (25) N=1279

NECTE2 (8) N=293

say

24.2%

61.1%

37.5%

17.0%

17.0%

be like

36.3%

22.2%

31.2%

45.7%

40.0%

go

26.5%

7.9%

19.8%

7.3%

8.0%

zero

9.4%

6.3%

8.3%

12.5%

16.0%

think

2.2%

1.6%

2.0%

7.2%

9.0%

other

1.3%

0.8%

1.1%

10.3%

10.0%

Fig. 6.6  Quotative use in the PRU, separated by speaker sex and compared with MLE and a sample from the NECTE2 corpus (p. 212)

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case. Figure 6.6 separates girls and boys on the basis that there seems to be quite a different pattern, particularly with regard to the top three variants say, be like, and go. I’m hesitant to interpret this as a meaningful gender difference with such a relatively small and unbalanced sample, but there is clearly something happening here. My justification for even looking for a gender difference in the first place is the habitual separation of boys and girls in both centres, as discussed in Chap. 2, possibly resulting in different ways of interacting.11 Also on the chart are the quotative results of the closest age group (age 16–19) from the MLE data for comparison, along with those from a sample of the younger speakers (born between 196712 and 1993, data collected from 2007) in the NECTE213 corpus reported in Buchstaller (2014: 166). Two things stand out as being of immediate interest here. Firstly, the overall difference in the spread of variants between the PRU data and the other two sources, particularly the extraordinarily high use of say among the PRU boys and the relatively high use of go among the PRU girls. Secondly, and relatedly, the difference between the PRU girls and boys in terms of the spread of variants. I mentioned above that the sample is unbalanced in terms of quantities between speakers. This is especially true for the girls, one of whom (Jade) supplied 107 tokens. However, if Jade is removed from the data set, the numbers become even more intriguing, with the top three variants for the girls reordering as say (37.9%), be like (25.9%), and go (20.7%), thus matching the order for the boys. There is no obvious explanation for these two differences, so I turn now to the individual variation to see if there are any insights to be gained. Figure  6.7 shows the range of quotative variants used by each speaker, ordered by use of say as the overall most frequent. Straight away we can see that it’s not just any boys leading the say dominance—among the top four say-users are Jamal, Jacob, and Abdou, three of the boys who will feature so heavily in the analysis of TH-stopping in Chap. 7, and who are definitely towards the Malachi end of the spectrum. I must admit, there is no obvious reason why this should be the case; unlike TH-stopping, there is nothing to link the (over)use of say with this particular group of people and the social practices they are involved in, yet the coincidence is intriguing. I would like to tentatively suggest that the

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100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0%

say

be like

go

zero

think

other

Fig. 6.7  The range of quotatives used by each individual, arranged by use of say. Total number of tokens for each speaker in brackets (p. 214)

use of quotatives is indeed bound up somehow in a possible MUBE variety, with the predominance of say perhaps being indicative of its use. I realise this is again something of a circular argument, identifying individuals as possible MUBE speakers, and then subsequently naming variants they use as MUBE variants; however, there is no doubt that these individuals are sharing something at the level of social practice. Similarly, the people at the other end of the chart, who use say the least, are all among the least likely to use other MUBE-oriented variants, preferring more traditionally local variants (as has been illustrated elsewhere in this chapter) and sit at the Chantelle end of the spectrum. Clearly, more work needs to be done, but for now I am simply suggesting that say might be playing an as-yet undiscovered role in relation to a particular variety or repertoire of English.

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6.5 Lexis This section focuses on some of the words and phrases used by the young people during our time in the centres. Items included here have been chosen either because they were used frequently or because they were salient in some other respect. This salience might be due to them being used in a way that was unfamiliar to us, or because the item itself had an interesting background. More than any other area, this is most definitely a snapshot illustration of what was in vogue among these particular people at this particular time. Particular words appear to come into and fall out of use extremely swiftly among some young people, as evidenced by some of the differences even between my pilot study and the main study (discussed below). Each word or phrase is given with what we understand as the generally accepted definition, along with examples from respondent’s own explanations, an indication of who we heard use the word, and some illustrations from recorded instances where relevant. Differences in use are noted, as well as the extent to which a word or phrase appears to be misunderstood. All the data comes from observation/field notes, recordings, and the word-list activities,14 in which we talked people through a list of eight items (we had 12 lists in all, made up of words and phrases we had heard in the centres). They are presented here in alphabetical order. Allow It (Verb) /əˈlaʊ ɪt/  Leave it, let it go, don’t worry about it. This wasn’t heard very often, and it tended to be the same group of boys (Jamal, Jacob, Jake, Abdou) who used it, along with Stacey. Jacob is talking about whether he would hit a woman if she hit him first: If I can dodge it then I’ll allow it but if she connects I’m bangin’. Bait (Adjective) /beɪt/  Being obvious or acting suspiciously when the situation demands a bit more secrecy or subtlety. Stacey explained: If I say something quiet and don’t want people to know and someone comes along and says it dead loud, then they’re being bait. In the process of looking for a recorded example of bait in use, I came across the following interaction (Extract 6.4). It’s too good to simply isolate the relevant sentence from, so I provide it here in full, as it not only

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serves to illustrate a few of the words described in this section (and quotatives from earlier), but it also demonstrates some of the issues discussed elsewhere in the book. For me, the highlight comes at the end, when Susan demonstrates perfectly how we are always on the lookout for ­interesting bits of language usage. Here, Stacey is explaining to Susan why it is that she had to sit by herself in maths classes. Extract 6.4 Stacey and Susan Stacey:

Susan: Stacey: Susan: Stacey:

Susan: Stacey:

 eah, but I- I only gotta work on a room on my own for English Y and Maths because (.) wait what was it? I was sat in a room yeah, and in an exam and then Mackenzie said summat so I threw a rubber at his head ((laughs)) when I say ‘threw a rubber’ yeah it slapped him and he moved back a bit innit, so- so- so he chased me round the room … In the maths lesson? Yeah- no, in a maths exam. Oh right, oh. So he chase- tried to chase me, so- so I tried to pull him to the floor, messing obviously cause it’s banter innit me and Mackenzie I mean and then the gone ‘oh it’d be quieter if you’re not in here’, so I said ‘shut yer mouth you daft bitch’ and she went ‘(ah) I don’t want you in here’ I said ‘well guess what I’m not moving so are you gonna move me yourself?’ and she come over to move me and I said ‘fuckin’ put your hands on me mate and I’ll absolutely level you’ I said I’m not arsed. Oh, so that’s why you’re now in a- in a [different classroom?  ]  [Yeah (.) but I’m not arsed], if she puts her hands on me I’ll twat her in her face (.) and then I come out here with Mackenzie yeah, and I was going sick, and I said to Tim yeah, I said ‘Tim you better keep that thing on a lead’ I said ‘cos she’s fuckin’ pissin’ me off’ and she come down the stairs and she went ‘ah that thing’s me by the way Tim’ I said ‘shut your fuckin’ mouth now cos I’ll absolutely put you on the floor’ and then she went ((growling sound)) and then she tried to raise her voice yeah so I said ‘raise your voice again and I’ll make sure you don’t speak’ so so Mackenzie grabbed me yeah and dragged me out here so I said- I was going sick yeah and I went

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to go to her car yeah cos I was gonna take her car out yeah, like, the windows and Mackenzie grabbed me and pinned me to the floor and I was like ‘oh fuckin’ hell’. It’s a good thing though, wasn’t it, [that he stopped] you, don’t you think? [yeah, yeah  ] I was fuming I was like- I wanted to kill her, I went back in to try and kill her man and Mackenzie was like not having any of it. Really? Yeah I was fuming (.) I brought that (unclear). So in a way Mackenzie was- I mean Mackenzie was what? Calming you down? Not calming me down like (.) obviously he knows (that) when I get mad yeah I get mad and no fucker’s calming me down, so he had to pin me ((laughs)) on here ((hits picnic table)) and wouldn’t let me go and stood in front of the door and that so I couldn’t get in and then were there I could see her in the window yeah like you know laughing going like ((laughs)) she was going, she was like ‘ha she’s going sick’ so I said ‘are you fuckin’ dumb mate’ and obviously I’ve gone round the front and the door- door’s open in the front innit, so I’ve come in yeah absolutely fuming and (yo- I) I was gonna grab her yeah and Mackenzie has got me and then said ‘let’s do a dance’ and ((laughs)) fuckin’ dragged me out man so it didn’t look bait. Oh so it didn’t- what was that word you used then? Bait. Bait? like, bait is like (.) d’you know when like, I don’t know like, someone says to you (.) like you do summat but dead discreet? mm-hmm Yeah bait is like (.) it’s not discreet.

Bare (Adjective) /beə/  Very, a lot. This was very common at both centres, used by most, if not all, of the young people at one point or another. My Dad’s got bare facial hair. [Abdou] Cos I use bare slang and swearing [Stacey on why her accent is ‘chavvy’ (her description)]

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Dead (Adjective) /ded/  Boring, rubbish, or shit. ‘Semi-dead’ can be used to describe something as ‘not that bad’. Used by most, if not all, of the young people. Shit school that innit, dead school. [Jake, discussing different schools]. Dead is also used as the more common (mainstream) adverb meaning ‘very’: That’s dead good that. Interestingly, the first meaning tended to be used more by speakers towards the Malachi end of the scale discussed earlier, and the second meaning by people towards the Chantelle end. But this was only a slight tendency. Dutty (Adjective) /ˈdʊti/  This was used to mean two different things, depending on the speaker. All seemed to realise it comes from a (Jamaican) pronunciation of ‘dirty’, yet some saw it as a derogatory reference to a person, usually a girl: That girl’s dutty; A dutty bitch, while others used it to mean ‘good’: That’s well good – that’s dutty that. I might have either my green wellies or some dutty creps [trainers/sneakers], depending on what the weather’s like. [Jamal] Danielle made the point that it was a ‘boys’’ word, and of the 10 (out of 23) who said they wouldn’t use it, 8 were girls. Incidentally, all the non-users apart from Shanique were white, which perhaps has something to do with the word’s continued association with Jamaican culture (e.g. Sean Paul, a Jamaican reggae/dancehall artist is well known for his 2002 track Dutty Rock). Having said this, the word was used very frequently in the pilot study the previous year, particularly among a certain group of (mainly white) boys. While almost all the young people in the main study knew the word, it was not used nearly so often this time around. Live (Adjective) /laɪv/  ‘Good’, opposite of ‘dead’. That party was live. ‘Semi-live’ is sometimes used to mean ‘alright’. Again, used frequently by most speakers. Long (Adjective) /lɒŋ/  Something that requires effort, is boring, or will take ages. It refers to more than just time, the effort aspect being central. We heard it a lot, most commonly during lessons: This is long (usually lo::::ng). People can also be long: You’re long you = you’re taking ages. Of the 23 people asked about this word, 22 said they knew it, and 20 said

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they used it. Only Daniel didn’t know it, and he, Adana, and Luke didn’t use it. Macca (Adjective) /ˈmækə/  Rubbish or shit. It can also mean ‘dead’ (see above) or ‘boring’. It’s often used in the phrase chatting macca, that is, talking rubbish. Nine of the ten people who were asked about this word knew it, and five of them said they used it. He was chattin’ macca about the Taliban and all that. [Jamal] Man (Plural Mans/Mandem) (Pronoun) /mæn, mænz, ˈmændem/  Although still used as a pragmatic marker in the sense of leave me alone, man, man was also used as a pronoun in the same way as described in Cheshire (2013), with the understanding that it could mean ‘I’ or ‘he’: Man’s tired; Man threw a bat. Man was chatting shit about (unclear). [Jacob] Mandem was used, but rarely, and tended to refer specifically to a group of friends, for example: I’m going out with the mandem. Most of the young people who were asked about ‘man’ gave the more standard explanation of it as a pragmatic marker: Chill out, man, and this is the way it was used most often. Those who used it as a pronoun also tended to be those who seemed more comfortable explaining mans and mandem (e.g. Jacob, Jake, Abdou, Callum), with others distancing themselves from the words. For example, Shannon said that she had heard the boys use mans but not the girls, and she couldn’t explain what it meant. Peak (Adjective) /piːk/  Shame, bad luck, embarrassing, gutted. When something bad happens to someone, it can be described as ‘peak’: That’s peak, that. This word was on a list that we didn’t get around to, so there is no information as to the extent it was known. We did hear it quite regularly, although not as much as I heard it during the pilot study. Ra (Interjection) /rɑː/  Ra is an exclamation to express surprise, excitement, shock, annoyance, and so on. A Jamaican word (along with ‘rass’), Susan noted in her diary that it was common in her study in the youth clubs ten years earlier. All ten of the young people who were asked about this word said that they knew it, and only Luke said he didn’t use it. Ra! Shut the fuck up I told you man. [Caitlin]

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Interestingly, ra was the example used by Jordan to explain how some words which ‘belong’ to certain ethnicities can be used by anyone, while others can only be used by people ‘who match the ethnicity of where they are from’. He was saying that ra is a word that he uses, even though he’s not Jamaican, although he thinks he pronounces it differently: I don’t say it like a Jamaican guy do I, I say it like a normal white person.15 Racist (Adjective) /ˈreɪsɪst/  Another word with two distinct (yet somehow related) meanings. On the one hand, it was used in its standard meaning of describing discrimination or prejudice based on race or ethnicity. However, it was also used to describe general (perceived) unfairness, regardless of whether this had any connection at all to race or ethnicity. For example, we heard it being used to describe a difficult maths problem that the teacher had written on the board and asked them to solve: ‘that’s racist that’ [Nathan]. While this use can arguably be quite amusing when the context clearly has no possible connection with race, at least two staff members expressed their concern to us about the word being used in this way. They both felt that it was a ‘dangerous’ term to use given the likelihood that it could be misinterpreted by people who might overhear and not be aware of the context. We heard it being used mainly by boys, but at both centres. Stush (Adjective) /stʊʃ/  Someone who loves themselves, is full of themselves, or who is ‘up their own arse’. Can be used for girls and boys. I’m not like one of them stush girls, you know, like what do their hair, their make-up and everything. [Shannon]. All 23 people who were asked said they knew the word, but 9 of them said they didn’t use it. Sick (Adjective) /sɪk/  A very common adjective, usually meaning ‘good’: Those trainers are sick. The word still retains its more standard meaning, to feel queasy, often within the phrase he/she/it/something knocks me sick. It can also mean angry/mad/crazy, as in I went sick at her (see extract 6.4 above). She was going sick so I said ‘Are you fucking dumb mate?’ [Stacey]

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Time (Noun) /taɪm/  Although still carrying the standard meaning, it’s the grammatical structure that’s of interest. Used in phrases such as I haven’t seen you for time, or He hasn’t been here in time, it essentially means the same as the informal ‘ages’, to refer to a seemingly long period. This was used frequently, and did not appear to be isolated to a particular group. I’ve had braces for time. [Bethany] I’ve knew Caitlin for time. [Callum]

6.6 Summary and the Elephants in the Room In this chapter I have tried to provide a description of certain aspects of the language that was used by the young people during our time with them, comparing it where appropriate to descriptions of MLE or a possible MUBE. In the process I have attempted to make some links between particular linguistic features and what I see as relevant social factors. These social factors revolve around what I have called the urban/street-style orientation scale—an admittedly subjective scale, although one informed by a great deal of ethnographic work. In making these links I have tried to explore the role of the language in the enactment of particular identities. The linguistic description is variationist in nature, although it lacks the statistical analysis one might expect. This lack of statistics was a conscious decision based on the criticisms I myself have levelled at some aspects of variationist analysis earlier in this book. After everything I have said, it would somehow feel irresponsible to add any pseudo-objective and pseudo-scientific weight to what is at best a very messy and unbalanced data set. Statistical analysis has its place (it will be used in the next chapter, when the data is that much more ordered), but it shouldn’t be forced onto unsuitable data purely because ‘that is what we do’. I have used the tools of sociophonetic analysis as best as I can in order to add a particular dimension to the description of the language, and to hint at areas for future investigation. I have indicated patterns where I think they exist, but I am not about to claim to have provided the authoritative account of the speech of young Mancunians based on a small selection of recordings selected from months and months of fieldwork. I have however, I hope,

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provided a useful account of the language of this particular group of people, along with at least some findings that may be compared and interrogated alongside other groups of people.

Elephants In writing this account, I can’t help feeling there are three important topics that appear to have been neglected. These are three social factors that would normally be a fundamental part of any kind of variationist study: region, gender, and ethnicity. I will end this chapter by briefly explaining why they are largely missing from the analysis.

Ethnicity Ethnicity has been mentioned in this chapter only a few times, first in relation to the orientation scale (in which I described Malachi as mixed black Jamaican and white British), and then in some of the comments made by the young people, notably Jake and Jordan. The reason I haven’t addressed it more fully thus far is mainly because I don’t believe it is playing the kind of explicit role that can easily be picked up in this kind of analysis. If there are linguistic differences relating to ethnicity, the link is indirect; nobody is speaking this or that way because they are this or that ethnicity, and I don’t believe the young people are routinely enacting ethnicity through their speech. However, ethnicity is still important, and I will discuss it more fully in the next chapter in relation to another linguistic feature, TH-stopping.

Gender Again, gender has been touched upon briefly, but not in any significant way. This is not to say it isn’t important, but space is limited and I have chosen to focus on other aspects that, to me, emerged as more relevant in the context at the time. Superficially, I can say that the street-/urban-/grimeoriented end of the scale I described earlier is indeed populated by boys

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rather than by girls, suggesting the addition of masculinity to the other characteristics as something that might be useful. This is perhaps to be expected given the male-dominated world of grime and dancehall, two genres of music I mentioned as contributing to that scale. All I am prepared to say for now is that in this group of speakers, it is boys who are far more likely to move away from a traditionally local way of speaking, towards a more ‘urban’ variety.

Region Region has been mentioned in passing, and comes up in some of the extracts. I mentioned earlier in Chap. 2 that the young people often don’t go to the learning centre that is nearest to where they live, making region difficult to account for, particularly as our focus is so explicitly on the centres themselves. However, often they do go to a nearby centre, and it just so happens that many of the group in Ashbourne in the year we were there lived relatively locally. But due to the fact that we are still talking about different geographical locations within the city of Manchester (i.e. a relatively small area), any differences in speech are likely to be less about geographical distance, and more to do with other cultural/social factors, which will hopefully be picked up in other ways during the process of analysis. In other words, the fact that an individual lives in place A is less immediately relevant to his/her language than the fact he/she likes this music and hangs out with these people. It might be that his/her music/friends/opinions/attitudes are influenced by where he/she is from, but then region simply becomes a part of what we do have access to through the ethnographic work.

Notes 1. Part of  this introduction is based on  work which first appeared in Drummond (2018b). 2. Good (and relevant) examples of studies which look at the multiplemeaning potential of the same linguistic feature include Moore and Podesva’s (2009) account of tag questions and Pharao et  al.’s (2014) research into the realisation of /s/ in urban Danish speech.

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3. I realise that by invoking the concept of ‘street’ I am touching upon a complex area with which I do not have the space (or possibly understanding) to fully engage. At a superficial level I am drawing on the idea of ‘the symbolic power of street culture, which is often understood as authentic, defiant and vital, in other words “cool”’ (Ilan 2015: 3). 4. Grime is a style of rap music that developed out of early 2000s East London which has similarities to US hip hop, but is specifically British in style, with its musical roots in UK garage, bashment, jungle, and dancehall. 5. Dancehall originated in Jamaica and developed out of reggae, although the (rapped) lyrical content is very different, with a tendency towards profanity, violence, and misogyny. 6. Acoustic analysis is the process by which we measure particular frequencies within the soundwaves of speech. Using specialist software, we are able to use these measurements to get a sense of the ‘position’ (or quality/ nature) of vowel sounds. See Thomas (2013) for an introduction. The description and analysis assumes that introductory understanding. 7. It should be noted that all the tokens from both Jake and Callum in Fig. 6.3 come from a one-to-one context; however, this lax variant is consistent with additional auditory analysis of more spontaneous contexts. In other words, I don’t believe this lax realisation was part of any situational style-shifting. 8. Baranowski and Turton (2015) do not investigate ethnicity, focusing only on white British speakers. However, I am unconvinced as to the role of ethnicity in traditional variationist terms anyway, a topic I will address shortly in relation to TH-stopping. 9. Cheshire et al. (2011) report on findings from two studies, one which gathered data from young and old speakers in both inner (Hackney) and outer (Havering) London, and one which gathered data from a variety of inner-city North London areas, with a focus on young people. 10. In actual fact, two other researchers working on MLE in 2016–17 have also reported that they have not come across this variant either (Shivonne Gates p.c.; Christian Ilbury, p.c.). 11. This could be seen as an example of precisely the sort of top-down researcher-imposed categorisation I discussed in Chap. 4. The danger is that if we simply divide the sample into male and female by default, we might notice differences that we then explain as being due to sex or gender, even though it is us who created the categories in the first place. We should only identify categories if there is a valid reason for doing so, that

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is, if we have other evidence (ideally from observation) that the groups are behaving or interacting differently. 12. Some of these speakers are clearly not ‘young’ in comparison to the speakers being discussed here, but they are ‘younger’ relative to the corpora. 13. Newcastle Electronic Corpus of Tyneside English 2. 14. See Chap. 4 for more details. 15. This excerpt is discussed in more detail in Drummond (2017).

References Baranowski, Maciej and Danielle Turton. 2015. Manchester English. In Raymond Hickey (ed.), Researching northern Englishes, 293–316. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Benor, Sarah Bunin. 2001. The learned /t/: Phonological variation in Orthodox Jewish English. In Tara Sanchez & Daniel Ezra Johnson (eds.), Penn working papers in Linguistics: Selected papers from NWAV2000, 1–16. University of Pennsylvania Department of Linguistics. Boersma, Paul, and David Weenink. 2017. Praat: Doing phonetics by computer. Version 5.4.10, Retrieved July 2015. Available online at: http://www. praat.org/ Bucholtz, Mary. 2011. White kids: Language, race and styles of youth identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bucholtz, Mary and Kira Hall. 2005. “Identity and interaction: A sociocultural linguistic approach”. Discourse Studies 7, 4–5: 585–614. Bucholtz, Mary and Kira Hall. 2010. Locating identity in language. In Carmen Llamas & Dominic Watt (eds.), Language and identities, 18–28. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Buchstaller, Isabelle. 2014. Quotatives: New trends and sociolinguistic implications. Oxford: John Wiley & Sons. Buchstaller, Isabelle, and Alexandra D’Arcy. 2009. “Localized globalization: A multi-local, multivariate investigation of quotative be like”. Journal of Sociolinguistics 13, 3: 291–331. Cheshire, Jenny. 2013. “Grammaticalisation in social context: The emergence of a new English pronoun”. Journal of Sociolinguistics 17: 608–633. Cheshire, Jenny, Paul Kerswill, Sue Fox, and Eivind Torgersen. 2011. “Contact, the feature pool and the speech community: The emergence of Multicultural London English”. Journal of Sociolinguistics 15, 2: 151–196.

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Drager, Katie K. 2009. A sociophonetic ethnography of Selwyn Girls’ High. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Canterbury. Drummond, Rob. 2017. “(Mis)interpreting urban youth language: White kids sounding black?” Journal of Youth Studies 20, 5: 640–660. Drummond, Rob. 2018a. The changing language of urban youth. In Natalie Braber & Sandra Jansen (eds.), Sociolinguistics in England. Palgrave Macmillan. Drummond, Rob. 2018b. “Maybe it’s a grime [t]ing. TH-stopping among urban British youth”. Language in Society 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1017/ S0047404517000999​ Eckert, Penelope. 2000. Linguistic variation as social practice: The linguistic construction of identity in Belten High. Oxford: Blackwell. Eckert, Penelope. 2008. “Variation and the indexical field”. Journal of Sociolinguistics 12: 453–476. Eckert, Penelope. 2012. “Three waves of variation study: The emergence of meaning in the study of sociolinguistic variation”. Annual Review of Anthropology 41: 87–100. Eckert, Penelope. 2016. Variation, meaning and social change. In Nikolas Coupland (ed.), Sociolinguistics: Theoretical debates, 69–85. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fabricius, Anne, Dominic Watt, and Daniel Ezra Johnson. 2009. “A comparison of three speaker-intrinsic vowel formant frequency normalization algorithms for sociophonetics”. Language Variation and Change 21: 413–35. Howley, Gerry. 2015. The acquisition of Manchester dialect variants by adolescent Roma migrants. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Salford. Hughes, Arthur, Peter Trudgill, and Dominic Watt. 2013. English accents and dialects: An introduction to social and regional varieties of English in the British Isles. London: Routledge. Ilan, Jonathan. 2015. Understanding street culture poverty, crime, youth and cool. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-1-137-02860-0. Jaffe, Alexandra. 2009. Stance: Sociolinguistic perspectives. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jaffe, Alexandra. 2016. Indexicality, stance and fields in sociolinguistics. In Nikolas Coupland (ed.), Sociolinguistics: Theoretical debates, 86–112. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kiesling, Scott. 2009. Style as stance: Stance as an explanation for patterns of sociolinguistic variation. In Alexandra Jaffe (ed.), Stance: Sociolinguistic perspectives, 171–194. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kirkham, Sam. 2015. “Intersectionality and the social meanings of variation: Class, ethnicity, and social practice”. Language in Society 44, 5: 629–652. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404515000585.

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Mendoza-Denton, Norma. 2008. Homegirls: Language and cultural practice among Latina youth gangs. Malden and Oxford: Blackwell. Moore, Emma. 2011. Variation and identity. In W. Maguire & A. McMahon (eds.), Analysing variation in English, 219–236. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Moore, Emma and Robert Podesva. 2009. “Style, indexicality, and the social meaning”. Language in Society 38, 4: 447–485. Ochs, E. 1992. Indexing gender. In A. Duranti & C. Goodwin (eds.), Rethinking context: Language as an interactive phenomenon, 335–358. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pharao, Nicolai, Marie Maegaard, Janus Møller and Tore Kristiansen. 2014. “Indexical meanings of [s+] among Copenhagen youth: Social perception of a phonetic variant in different prosodic contexts”. Language in Society 43: 1–31. Podesva, Robert. 2007. “Phonation type as a stylistic variable: The use of falsetto in constructing a persona”. Journal of Sociolinguistics 11: 478–504. Rauniomaa, Mirka. 2003. “Stance accretion”. Paper presented at the Language, Interaction, and Social Organization Research Focus Group, University of California, Santa Barbara, February. Schilling-Estes, Natalie. 1998. Investigating ‘self-conscious’speech: The performance register in Ocracoke English. Language in Society 27: 53–83. Schleef, Erik and Danielle Turton. 2016. “Sociophonetic variation of like in British dialects: Effects of function, context and predictability”. English Language and Linguistics. Snell, Julia. 2010. “From sociolinguistic variation to socially strategic stylisation”. Journal of Sociolinguistics 14, 5: 618–644. Thomas, Erik R. 2013. Phonetic analysis in sociolinguistics. In Janet Holmes & Kirk Hazen (eds.), Research methods in sociolinguistics: A practical guide. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Traunmüller, Hartmut. 1990. “Analytical expressions for the tonotopic sensory scale”. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 88, 1: 97–100. Turton, Danielle and Maciej Baranowski. 2015. “Absence of a blocking r[ʏɫ]?: The presence of /u/-fronting before /l/ in Manchester”. UKLVC, University of York, 1st–3rd September 2015. Turton, Danielle and Michael Ramsammy. 2012. “/ɪ,ə/-lowering in Manchest[ʌ]: Contextual patterns of gradient variabilit[ε]”. Paper given at the 20th Manchester Phonology Meeting, Manchester, 24th–26th May 2012. Wells, John. 1982. Accents of English 3: Beyond the British Isles. Cambridge: CUP. Zhang, Qing. 2005. “A Chinese yuppie in Beijing: Phonological variation and the construction of a new professional identity”. Language in Society 34, 4: 31–66.

7 TH-Stopping, Ethnicity, and Grime

This chapter explores (and challenges) the role of ethnicity in the language of the young people at the two learning centres by focusing on a particular feature, TH-stopping, which has strong associations with black varieties of English. More than anywhere else in this book, this is where insights from the two approaches—variationist sociolinguistics and interactional sociolinguistics—come together.

7.1 TH-Stopping and DH-Stopping TH-stopping is being used here to refer specifically to the realisation of voiceless /θ/ as [t], with DH-stopping referring to the realisation of voiced /ð/ as [d]. DH-stopping is much more widespread than TH-stopping, occurring in any position, for example, them [dem], brother [ˈbrʌdə], with [wɪd], and in a wide range of varieties of British English, including Liverpool (Watson 2007) and London (Cheshire et al. 2008). TH-stopping can also occur in any position, for example, three [tɹiː], Much of the material in this chapter first appeared in Drummond (2018). It is reproduced here with permission from Cambridge University Press. © The Author(s) 2018 R. Drummond, Researching Urban Youth Language and Identity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73462-0_7

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birthday [ˈbɜːtdeɪ], youth [juːt]; however, it is much less frequent in British English, and is generally only found in quite specific varieties that originated elsewhere, such as West Indian Englishes and Creoles (e.g. Wells 1982), Jamaican Creole (e.g. Cassidy 1961), British Creole (e.g. Patrick 2004; Sebba 1993), and Irish English (e.g. Hickey 2007). The notable exception is Liverpool English (e.g. Watson 2007), although this, like its influencing Irish varieties (Honeybone 2007), tends to quite clearly use dental stops [t̪]. Perhaps due to its infrequent nature, I am not aware of any studies of TH-stopping within broadly UK varieties of English outside those of Liverpudlian and Irish. Where it is mentioned, it is done so in passing or to make the point that it is not frequent (e.g. Cheshire et al. 2008: 14; Baranowski and Turton 2015: 303; Dray and Sebba 2011).

TH-Stopping, Ethnicity, Culture and Music The link between spoken language and ethnicity is complex, and variationist thinking on it has changed considerably over the years (see Fought 2013 for an overview), with recent focus much more on the concept of ‘ethnolinguistic repertoires’ (Benor 2010) rather than on the more bounded ethnolects. However, whether we see language as reflecting ethnicity or whether we see it as contributing to the social performance of ethnicity (which in turn is a facet of the performance of identity—see discussion below), the links between phonological features and particular ethnicities remain. TH-stopping is associated with various varieties of English, which are in turn associated with particular ethnic groups, for example, Chicano English (Mendoza-Denton 2008) and Polish American English (Newlin-Łukowicz 2013), with a particularly strong association with speakers of black varieties of English such as African American Vernacular English (Rickford 1999; Thomas 2007) and British Creole (Patrick 2004). However, the link between TH-stopping and black cultures goes beyond the language varieties themselves and emerges in other social practices such as involvement with certain music genres. In the US, TH-/ DH-stopping (primarily DH-) has been noted, alongside other linguistic

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features, as being part of Hip Hop Nation Language (HHNL) (Alim 2006) or Hip Hop Speech Style (Cutler 1999, 2003). In these and other studies, hip hop is seen as being the story of the street, with a focus on the African American experience (Alim 2006: 122), and of life in the ‘hood’ (Pichler and Williams 2016: 14) or ‘ghetto’ (Roth-Gordon 2009: 65). Pichler and Williams (2016) bring the study of HHNL to the UK, showing how a group of four young men use specific linguistic features to index cultural concepts (Silverstein 2004) that serve to authenticate their identities in relation to hip hop culture and what it represents. Although hip hop is clearly relevant in the UK, there also exists a uniquely British style of rap in the form of grime, a music genre that developed out of early 2000s East London, and one which, while sharing similarities with US hip hop, actually has its musical roots in UK garage, bashment, jungle, and dancehall. Alongside dancehall, grime emerged out of black cultures (Drummond 2016), but unlike its musical cousin, it is arguably cross-racial (Dedman 2011: 519). Linguistically, grime traditionally draws upon (and likely feeds and reinforces) MLE.  TH-/ DH-stopping in general is prevalent in both MLE and grime, but TH-stopping specifically can be seen by glimpsing at some grime track titles and lyrics: Grime is a road ting (Bugzy Malone), It’s not a ting to draw the ting if you wanna swing (Skepta), That’s a mad ting (Lady Leshurr and many others), Now you could get a box on some MMA ting (Potter Payper). The fact that all these examples are of the word ting is not coincidental, and will be discussed later.

7.2 Ethnicity I am approaching the concept of ethnicity from within the view of identity described earlier in Chap. 6, and on the understanding that although I will separate it at one stage of the analytic process as a way of exploring a possible effect, it makes little sense to view any aspect of identity as independent of any other (Bucholtz 2011: 2). I am specifically distancing myself from the idea of ethnicity being a meaningful mechanism by which to pre-­group individuals in this kind of study (or any kind of study of social life; see, e.g., Brubaker 2004). This is nothing new (see, e.g., ­Mendoza-­Denton 2008;

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Madsen 2013; Kirkham 2015), but it does need to be stated, as much variationist work has tended to inflexibly group people in this way almost by default (see previous discussion in Chap. 4). As with any other aspect of identity, ethnicity will be treated as being of interest if it emerges as something being enacted within particular interactions or across particular contexts. I do provide (largely) self-reported ethnicities for each individual (Table 7.1), but I do this partly in order to then challenge the assumptions that such a blunt, non-intersectional, macro approach makes. By taking the focus away from ethnicity as something separate and discretely measurable, I am trying to align this part of the study alongside work such as Rampton (2011), Madsen (2013), and Kirkham (2015). However, unlike these studies, there will not be a refocusing onto issues around social class, for reasons I will discuss shortly. Up until now I have largely  resisted describing the ethnicities of the young people explicitly (above and beyond a visual description of skin colour), as I don’t think it has been particularly relevant to the discussion so far, and I didn’t want to falsely prioritise one social factor over another. There is a danger that as soon as an individual is identified as ‘black’ or ‘Asian’, then this description supersedes all others, and I didn’t want this to be the case. On the other hand, I haven’t hidden people’s ethnicities, and have described particular individuals in this way when appropriate to the discussion. As mentioned in Chap. 4, this was one aspect on which Susan’s approach and my approach did not agree. As a variationist, almost by default, I wanted to establish the ethnicity of each person so as to see how it interacted with language, yet Susan saw no point in this, and wanted to Table 7.1  Self-reported ethnicities for each individual (p. 232) White British

Mixed white British/black Caribbean Black Caribbean Black African Mixed white British/Pakistani

Aiden, Alex, Bethany, Brady, Caitlin, Callum, Daniel, Danielle, Georgia, Jade, Jenson, Jordan, Kane, Leah, Luke, Mackenzie, Megan, Shannon, Stacey Alesha, Jacob, Jamal, Nathan

Adana, Shanique Abdou Jake

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see how (and if ) ethnicities were enacted in practice. Now that the project is over, I can say that while I find it impossible to ‘ignore’ ethnicity (which is what I came to see an alternative approach as apparently asking me to do, even if this is not what was intended), it has been hugely enlightening to distance myself from the assumptions I was routinely making with regard to its link with language. It is from this enlightened perspective that I discuss the role of ethnicity in this chapter.

7.3 Data and Analysis The data presented here comes from a wider set of recordings (and participants) than the vowel data discussed in Chap. 6. This is simply because the auditory analysis carried out in relation to TH-stopping does not require the same quality of recording as the acoustic analysis carried out on the vowels. As before, the recordings come from multiple contexts; however, where possible, each speaker’s total includes at least some data from a one-to-one meeting with me or Susan in which the young people were either alone or in pairs. The purpose of this was to try to ensure at least some sense of comparability, albeit in a limited way. Data collected from some mock college interviews was excluded on the basis of this being a very different context in which only a few participants were involved. Not all of the data we recorded is suitable for this type of phonetic analysis, so what is presented here represents a large sample of the total. As the analysis progresses throughout this section, the data set is made more specific and is reduced.

Quantitative Analysis Table 7.2 provides a contextualising overview by showing the results of the auditory analysis of all 886 tokens of (TH) from the speech of 25 participants. This represents a mean rate of just over 34 tokens per speaker; however, there is some variation in the total for each individual, mainly due to the methodological issues mentioned in Chap. 4 (attendance, cooperation, etc.).

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Table 7.2  Overall results of the auditory analysis for (TH) (p. 234) Variant

Initial

Medial

Final

Total

[f] – [f]ink, you[f] [θ] – [θ]ink, you[θ] [t] – [t]ink, you[t] [h] – I [h]ink [ʔ] – no[ʔ]ing Unclear Total

417 53 30 3 0 32 535

181 7 4 0 4 11 207

113 13 1 0 0 17 144

711 73 35 3 4 60 886

Preliminary auditory analysis of the (TH) variable was carried out at the time of transcription of the audio using Elan by the transcriber (one of the two researchers or one of five employed transcribers), who highlighted some of the more obvious variants as they occurred. More careful auditory analysis was then carried out by me to check those tokens already identified, and to identify all other instances of the variable. Tokens that were unclear even after repeated listening due to poor recording quality or overlapping speech were marked as such and discarded from further analysis. The only other issue that emerged in the process was the difficulty in discriminating between [f ] and [θ] on occasions. Sometimes, it was clearly one or the other, but other times, the two were almost indistinguishable. Here the field notes and prolonged observation helped, as both Susan and I had noted several times in our day-to-day observations the almost complete absence of [θ] in the speech of any of the participants (the difference is of course much easier to distinguish with additional visual cues). As a result, I was predisposed to identifying genuinely in-between tokens as [f ]. This is potentially problematic in a study of TH-fronting specifically, but as the main focus here is on TH-stopping, I feel satisfied with the process. Figure 7.1 shows the distribution of the 819 [θ, f, t] (TH) tokens among 25 speakers, ordered from the right by frequency of [t]. [h] and [ʔ] tokens have been removed due to very small numbers and limited obvious relevance to the analysis, as have tokens that were unclear. Two things immediately stand out from the chart: (1) that fronted [f ] is by far the most frequent variant among the group as a whole, accounting for almost 85% of the total and 100% of the tokens for four of the speakers;

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Percentage use of each (TH) variant

90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20%

Jamal

Jacob

Adana

Abdou

Callum

Jake

Mackenzie

Aiden

Stacey

Alesha

Shannon

Nathan

Shanique

Luke

Megan

Leah

Jordan

Jade

Jenson

Georgia

Danielle

Caitlin

Daniel

Alex

0%

Bethany

10%

Speaker [θ]

[f ]

[t]

Fig. 7.1  Distribution of the 819 [θ, f, t] (TH) tokens, ordered from the right by frequency of [t]. Twenty-five speakers (p. 235)

(2) use of [t] is very limited, both in terms of overall frequency (5% of the total) and in terms of distribution among speakers (9 of 25). Multiple logistic regression analyses1 were carried out using Rbrul (Johnson 2016), including individual speaker as a random effect. Rbrul is a variable rule program in the mould of Goldvarb (Sankoff et al. 2005), but incorporates mixed-effects modelling. The result is a model which ‘can still capture external effects, but only when they are strong enough to rise above the inter-speaker variation’ (Johnson 2009:365). Rbrul expresses coefficients in log-odds rather than in factor weights, although both are given in the analysis presented here. The first analysis was carried out on the data presented in Fig.  7.1, except that those speakers with fewer than 10 tokens (Danielle, Jenson, Megan) were excluded. These exclusions resulted in 800 tokens from 22 speakers being entered into the model, with 35 realisations of [t]. The dependent variable was (TH), with the application value as [t] and the non-application values as [f ] and [θ].

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Table 7.3  Independent variables for the regression analysis (p. 236) Variable

Description

Centre Sex Ethnicity

Ashbourne or Meadow Cross Male or female Black African, black Caribbean, white British, mixed white British/black Caribbean, mixed white British/Pakistani Musical tastes were gathered from interview and observational data, and resulted in a range of combinations. For the purposes of the model they are divided into rap, grime, dancehall (RGD) or other (e.g. rock, heavy metal, house) Did we observe the individual rapping, in or out of class? Yes or no A broad measure of the relative formality of the context. Generally, breaks and lessons were informal and ‘research meetings’ were formal. Meetings in which several young people or a whole class were involved were deemed to be informal The primary person or group to which the individual was speaking at the time: anyone, mixed, pupils, voice recorder (speaking directly to recorder as if it is someone), researcher, staff The sound immediately before the word initial ‘th’ or after the word final ‘th’: fricative, liquid, nasal, pause, stop, unclear, vowel Position of ‘th in the word: initial, medial, final

Music

Rapping Formality

Interactants

Surrounding sound Position

The independent variables are described in Table 7.3. Each independent variable was included based on the plausibility of it playing some kind of role in the observed variation, informed by previous studies or by experience of the context. It should be pointed out that two of the tokens in particular are ones that might normally be excluded from traditional quantitative variationist analysis on the basis of their context of use not being natural to the speaker. Both were used in the process of describing someone else’s speech, so in that sense they did not ‘belong’ to the speaker using them. However, this highlights a problem with traditional variationist research, as it begs the question of where to draw the line. Yes, these examples are clearly not occurring as a natural part of these speakers’ repertoires (at least not in these instances), but excluding them necessitates the implementation of a cut-off point for other less clear examples. Rather than get into a situation whereby the researcher decides what is

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Table 7.4  Regression analysis (Rbrul) of the effect of linguistic and social factors on the realisation of voiceless ‘th’ – 22 speakers with > 10 tokens (p. 237) Factor Formality p < 0.01 Raps p < 0.05 Position p < 0.05

Informal Formal Yes No Initial Medial Final

Log odds

Tokens

Response proportion

Factor weight

1.229 −1.229 0.544 −0.544 0.907 0.129 −1.036

227 573 241 559 489 186 125

0.137 0.007 0.116 0.013 0.061 0.022 0.008

0.774 0.226 0.633 0.367 0.712 0.532 0.262

Not Centre, sex, ethnicity, music, interactants, surrounding sound significant Model Tokens: 800; log likelihood: −107.391; degrees of freedom: 6; intercept: −4.015; overall proportion: 0.044

and isn’t ‘natural’ for a particular individual, I’m taking the approach that all language is data, and if it occurred, it is part of the linguistically constructed reality of that moment. Table  7.4 shows the results of the ­regression analysis, illustrating those factors which emerged as statistically significant in the model. Before looking at the statistically significant variables, it is perhaps worth looking at one in particular of those which did not reach statistical significance in this model: ethnicity. Ethnicity is of particular interest here, as it of course relates to points made earlier with regard to the links between TH-stopping and black varieties of English. However, ethnicity does not emerge as a statistically significant influence on the realisation of /θ/ as [t]. It would be easy to simply state this fact and move on; however, there is clearly a correlation between ethnicity and use of [t], even if it is not strong enough to emerge as significant among the other variables. As can be seen in Table 7.5, the percentage of [t] realisations among white British speakers is considerably lower than almost all the other ethnic groups, and if we were to take a very blunt ‘white’ versus ‘not white’ approach, the difference would be very large indeed. While this approach is fairly common in variationist studies, it rarely explains anything in itself. This is not to say there is no value in it at all—looking for correlations such as these then opens the door to investigating why they might be occurring, but in themselves, they do not carry much meaning

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Table 7.5 Use of [t] and other ‘th’ variants divided by speaker ethnicity. Percentages show proportion of total tokens for that group (p. 238) Ethnicity

[t]

[f]

[θ]

Total

Black African Mixed white British/black Caribbean Black Caribbean Mixed white British/Pakistani White British

6 (12.5%) 18 (9.8%) 3 (8.8%) 2 (4.8%) 6 (1.2%)

39 143 29 36 449

3 23 2 4 37

48 184 34 42 492

(cf. Cameron’s 1990 ‘correlation fallacy’). After all, ethnicity itself is such a fluid concept that is constructed in practice rather than something passively inhabited (e.g. Schilling-Estes 2004), so unless one looks at how it is being constructed, a simple measurement offers limited insights. In addition, straightforward correlations (and statistical analyses such as the ones above) miss the important fact that in this particular case, three white British speakers did use [t], and two mixed white/black Caribbean or black Caribbean speakers did not. Admittedly, when we are talking about such large data sets as can be found in a lot of first-wave variationist studies (e.g. Labov 1972) in which such correlations are central, these kinds of outliers are perhaps of little relevance; after all, the aims of such studies, especially in relation to issues of identity, tend to be very different (see Drummond and Schleef 2016 for a discussion). But on a smaller-­ scale study such as this, a single instance of a variant can, arguably, provide a lot of information: ‘Indexical meaning can … arise out of statistical commonality or single instances of use that are salient enough to gain meaning for speakers’ (Kiesling 2009: 177). But this observation works both ways—on the one hand, the existence of these outliers warns us against drawing blunt ethnicity-related conclusions, but on the other, we do still need to account for the fact that the rest of the speakers did fall into such a pattern. One possibility is that ethnicity is playing a more indirect role, perhaps mediated by another social factor (or combination of factors). This idea will be explored shortly. With regard to those factors which did emerge as statistically significant, the models suggest that informal contexts are more likely to generate realisations of [t] than formal contexts (one-to-one meetings). In fact, only 4 of the 35 [t] tokens appeared in a formal context. While this is perhaps not surprising, it is of some interest in that it reinforces the

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observed similarities between the various informal contexts. For example, this category groups together the lessons themselves and the breaks between lessons, two situations which might usually be seen as something quite different in a ‘normal’ school environment. But this is not a ‘normal’ school environment—classes are very small (could be anything from one to seven pupils) and the atmosphere is very relaxed. So-called banter between students (see Dray 2017) is as common in the classroom as it is outside, and while they may be pulled up for excessive swearing, for example, in class, the same can happen outside class. But when we invited individuals or pairs to come and talk to us separately, however informal we made it, this was still an unfamiliar and relatively new situation for them, and one which tended to inhibit use of [t]. The possible reasons for this will be explored in the next section. The raps factor is of interest as it begins to identify a possible social practice aspect of the variation rather than a macro-social influence. All it suggests at this stage is that those individuals who we observed rapping as part of their everyday practice (Abdou, Aiden, Callum, Georgia, Jacob, Jamal) are more likely to use a [t] variant. Crucially, however, only two of the recorded tokens of [t] being discussed here occurred during rapping, the rest occurred as part of ‘normal’ speech. It is also interesting to note that of the six individuals who we observed rapping, three are white British, one is black African, one is mixed white British/black Caribbean, and one is mixed white British/Pakistani. The reason this is important is that in a study with a larger sample, it might be expected that the traditional association of rap/grime with black cultures results in a greater likelihood of ‘rappers’ being non-white. In which case, ethnicity might emerge as a statistically significant factor alongside rapping, or else the argument could be made that ethnicity is being mediated by rap, thus still playing a role. I cannot discount this interpretation, and it potentially brings in useful discussion around what resources are available to be used by, and how ethnicity can be enacted differently within, different groups of people. However, the data that is available here does not allow that investigation in any meaningful way. With raps emerging as significant, it might seem strange that music does not do the same. However, I think this is more to do with the way in which we coded the data for musical tastes. If we had our time with the

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young people again, we would delve more deeply into this, but the reality is that our knowledge is limited and patchy in this area. The categories we used are vague and overlapping, and we didn’t manage to gather ­information consistently. Rapping is far more robust, as this is a straightforward measure of an observed activity. Position is of passing interest, but is largely predictable, given that 30 of the 35 instances of [t] occur in word initial position. A further model was tested including only the nine individuals who had produced [t] (342 tokens in all), and this time, the only two factors emerging as statistically significant were again formality and position (see Table 7.6). One final point should be made in relation to the more quantitative aspect of the study—the fact that [t] only appeared in a very limited set of lexical items (thing x 23, thief x 5; everything x 2; three x 2; birthday x 1; teeth x 1; anything x 1). Although lexical context was excluded from the model on the basis of the distribution of the variants being so skewed between the items, it is of course of interest that only certain words appear able to use [t]. Clearly, the most frequent context is thing, which is perhaps no surprise when we consider the grime lyrics from earlier. In fact, it would be plausible, and in many ways more robust from a quantitative perspective, for this whole study simply to focus on variation within thing. With that in mind, one final model was tested which included only thing-related words (thing, anything, everything), which were realised as Table 7.6  Regression analysis (Rbrul) of the effect of linguistic and social factors on the realisation of voiceless ‘th’ – nine speakers who produced [t] (p. 240) Factor

Log odds

Tokens

Response proportion

Factor weight

1.062 −1.062 0.885 0.230 −1.115

170 172 221 58 63

0.182 0.023 0.136 0.069 0.016

0.743 0.257 0.708 0.557 0.27

Formality p < 0.01 Position p < 0.05

Informal Formal Initial Medial Final

Not significant Model

Centre, sex, ethnicity, music, interactants, surrounding sound, raps Tokens: 342; log likelihood: −96.035; degrees of freedom: 5; intercept: −3.208; overall proportion: 0.102

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Table 7.7  Regression analysis (Rbrul) of the effect of linguistic and social factors on the realisation of voiceless ‘th’ – only ‘thing’ words (p. 241) Factor

Log odds

Tokens

Response proportion

Factor weight

1.838 −1.838

71 219

0.282 0.018

0.863 0.137

Raps p < 0.05

Yes No

Not significant Model

Centre, sex, ethnicity, music, interactants, formality, surrounding sound Tokens: 290; log likelihood: −60.852; degress of freedom: 3; intercept: −3.047; overall proportion: 0.083

[θ, f, t]. Individuals with fewer than five tokens were excluded. The results can be seen in Table  7.7. Interestingly, the only factor that emerges as statistically significant this time is raps. Clearly, none of the models can fully explain the situation, as each is necessarily partial and limited in its own way; with such small numbers (35 instances of [t] overall) and with such skewed data, we should be cautious about reading too much into them. Also, by inputting raps as an influencing factor, we are in danger of simply substituting ‘practice’ categories for macro-social categories. However, taken as a whole, the results above do serve a purpose in that they provide insights into some possible patterns, highlighting areas that perhaps warrant further investigation. Clearly, there is something about both being in an informal context and being someone who raps that predisposes an individual to producing [t], even taking into account the limited lexical range in which such variation is possible. In addition, it would appear that straightforward ethnicity is not a relevant explanatory category to pursue. But at the moment these remain abstract and somewhat meaningless correlations. In order to gain insights into what these patterns might mean, we turn to the interactional data below, which highlights two specific contexts.

Interactional Analysis One context that plays a significant role in the data here is the weekly art lessons in Meadow Cross. It is generally a very laid-back session, lasting longer than normal lessons (over two hours), with a teacher who

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enjoys engaging with the class in casual conversation as they are working and the youth worker Michael, who is well respected and who relates to the young people especially well. The class contains four of the [t] producers, and the context (over various recordings) accounts for 19 of the 35 tokens of [t]. The four individuals under discussion, who could loosely be described as friends within the centre, have been mentioned before, but I’ll reintroduce them here. Jamal is undoubtedly the ‘leader’, as is evident from the behaviour of the others around him. Casually but immaculately dressed in either tracksuit bottoms or jeans and t-shirts, Jamal is slim and quite small compared to the others, although he carries himself with apparent confidence, at least to an observer. Jacob is a sportsman—he is well built and physically fit, and often talks of his physical/sporting activities. He is viewed by the others as a bit of a joker, and dresses casually in tracksuit bottoms and t-shirts. Abdou, throughout our time in the centres, appeared to constantly seek Jamal’s approval, with Jamal in turn mocking him at almost every opportunity. Often the target of the mocking was Abdou’s appearance, with Jamal regularly describing him as ‘ug’ (ugly). Abdou seems to put up with a lot of abuse (mostly verbal but occasionally physical), but keeps coming back for more. Jake is the outsider of the group—coming from a different part of Manchester, he would rarely see the other boys outside school. He is bigger than the others, but not toned like Jacob. Topics of conversation in the art class tend to be quite wide-ranging; however, a recurring theme is one of ‘toughness’, be that fights the boys have either had or witnessed, getting into trouble with the police, or demonstrating how friendly they are with known criminals or possibly gang members. Extract 7.1 takes place during a conversation in which all four boys above are present, along with Michael, the youth worker (aged around 50). Also in the room are one of the girls, Shanique, one of the centre coordinators, Joy, and me. However, Michael and the four boys are sitting together, with everybody else outside of this small group. They were working on mosaics—which at this moment meant arranging cutup images onto a page. The conversation leading up to the extract was about somebody (let’s call him Marcus) they all knew who was in prison,

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and when he was getting out. Here, they are discussing when they last saw him. Extract 7.1 Art Lesson

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26

Abdou Jacob Jake Abdou Jamal Abdou

the last time I seen him he was on bus with me and Jamal [last time-] [where? ] er (.) outside here (unclear) yeah and then we seen every man on the next bus so we ran for it outside Morrisons Jamal yeah, yeah Jake last time I seen him (unclear) (2s) Jacob last time I saw him was town innit Jake yeah same Jacob (.) used to chill with Lamar didn’t he back in the day Abdou yeah Jamal used to chill with me (.) ((kisses teeth)) La::mar! Abdou I remember when he robbed- when (unclear – name?) were about and he robbed Lamar’s ((laughs)) Jamal ((laughs)) Jacob what the h- ((laughs)) what happened? Abdou yeah he used to be a thief bro he couldn’t even control it Jamal he’s got [ (unclear) ] Jacob [he’s a thief ] in’t he Michael he not loyal. He thieve from your house? Abdou ye-eah Michael bad that Jacob innit

Abdou is the first to use a [t] variant in line 20 when he is talking about Marcus being a ‘tief ’. The reason this is of interest is because up until this point in the recording, Abdou had produced 19 tokens of voiceless (TH),

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16 of which were realised as the ubiquitous [f ], and 3 were [θ]. Incidentally, all 3 [θ] tokens occurred while he was singing as he worked, so it is likely that he was simply replicating the standard variant within the original version of the song itself. Jacob produces a similar realisation of the same word in line 22, having previously produced 11 tokens of voiceless (TH) comprising 7 [f ], 3 [θ], and 1 [t]. So what is it that brings about Abdou’s use of [t] at this particular point? I think there are two plausible (related) explanations. Firstly, from a stance-based perspective, Abdou and the others are clearly setting themselves up as being part of this tough, criminal life. There has already been talk of when each person last saw Marcus, thus establishing their credentials as being closer to that world. They are not necessarily trying to outdo each other, but they are each trying to lay claim to at least being in close proximity to Marcus. Abdou and Jamal are slightly ahead here given the fact that Marcus was actually with them on the bus (line 1), and they were all part of whatever misdemeanour is mentioned by Jamal (unfortunately unclear) which led them all to ‘run for it’ (lines 5–7). Jamal then lays special claim to being close to Marcus by emphasising that Marcus used to chill with him and not Lamar (line 15). Abdou then delights in recalling when Marcus robbed ‘Lamar’s’ (presumably Lamar’s house) which is when he says that he used to be a ‘tief ’, a sentiment then echoed by Jacob. It could be argued that the use of [t] is one element of the style Abdou is creating and manipulating in the context of ‘tough-talk’. In using [t] in this environment, Abdou is reinforcing the stance he is taking in which he is trying to align himself alongside Marcus as an insider to this world. He has already provided his credentials as being a friend of Marcus, and now he is reminiscing (in a very positive way—there is laughter in his voice) about his criminality. In order for this interpretation to work, there must of course be something indexically linking [t] to a stance of toughness. I will return to this shortly. An alternative explanation calls on lexical rather than phonetic variation. The fact is, of the five examples of the word thief we have analysed in the recordings, all of them are realised with the [t] variant. Although impossible to say for sure with such a small sample, there is a possibility

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that thief and tief are seen as two distinct words with slight differences, if not in referential meaning, then at least in contextual appropriateness. The difference is subtle, but such an interpretation renders this less an instance of TH-stopping and more one of lexical choice. This interpretation is supported by the fact that in line 23, Michael, the adult youth worker, also uses the [t] variant. Although this is specifically not a study of the adults’ speech, the language of the adults as interlocutors is of course relevant, as it forms part of the interactionally created reality. There is no reason to suspect that Michael was aligning himself alongside Abdou et al. in terms of their positive stance towards the world of criminality; rather, his use of tief was a predictable lexical choice given his own Jamaican heritage and very noticeable Jamaican English dialect and accent, an accent which very much includes variants of /θ/ as [θ, t] (Wells 1982: 565) (although not [f ], which indeed is a variant I did not hear Michael use). In this sense, tief simply is the Jamaican English word for thief, so this is the natural word for Michael to use. However, for the boys, there is no such natural explanation; the boys do not have Jamaican English dialects. There is a possibility that the increased use of [t] in this context comes about as a result of the boys accommodating towards Michael’s speech. I cannot dismiss this interpretation, as Michael is present in the majority of the art lessons (the situation in which most of the recorded TH-stopping occurs). However, if this were the case, I would have expected a lot more TH-stopping to emerge in other situations, as Michael is with the boys most of the time in one way or another. But this does not appear to happen, either in the recorded or observed data. The interpretation is therefore not impossible, and it might be the case that individual instances can be reliably interpreted as coming about in this way, but it is an unlikely explanation of the overall pattern. There is also a strong possibility that there is a priming effect in operation—that one use of [t] in a particular context encourages a repeated use. However, although this is likely, I would argue that it does not detract from the stance-taking interpretation. It may lower the bar for the availability of [t] to be used, but its use is certainly not inevitable, and does not explain its initial use. The boys are choosing (for want of a better word; see discussion in Chap. 4 surrounding the conscious/unconscious distinction) to use this particu-

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lar variant. At which point, the distinction between the two explanations (lexical or phonetic) largely ceases to be relevant, as the question simply becomes what is the indexical link between a stance of toughness and either tief or [t] in the speech of the boys? I believe one possibility lies in the cultural associations of TH-stopping in relation to music. Recall that raps emerged as statistically significant in the model, suggesting that those individuals who we observed rapping were more likely to produce [t]. In fact, three of the four boys here (Abdou, Jamal, Jacob) and both of the TH-stoppers are ‘rappers’. But we are talking about a specific type of rap— that practiced in UK grime and Jamaican dancehall. Grime especially is very down to earth, and very much of the street. It is the story of hardship, of disenfranchisement, of the daily battles faced by what many see as the UK’s underclass (MacDonald 2008). Grime belongs to the povertystricken inner city, and while it crosses racial divides, it is socially grounded in a particular social class (Dedman 2011: 519). Grime is tough. And most importantly, grime speaks to urban British youth in the language of urban British youth, and its participatory nature thus sets up a cycle of linguistic reinforcement. Grime (and, to an extent, dancehall) is not a type of music that people passively listen to—it is a type of music they engage with (Drummond 2016; Dedman 2011). Its history is one of young men creating home-made tapes of themselves rapping, and this DIY approach has continued; the tapes have simply been replaced by phone videos and YouTube. The fact that we observed these young men rapping in our dayto-day attendance at the learning centres is crucial—it helps to demonstrate how embedded the music is in everyday life. We have several examples of boys (including Jamal and Abdou) seamlessly slipping into rap as part of a conversational interaction, as if the lines between their ‘normal’ conversational speech and their ‘grime’ speech are blurred or even non-existent. I am wary of overstating the specific grime significance here, as many of the characteristics and social connections described above are equally relevant to hip hop more widely (e.g. Alim 2006; Alim et al. 2009; Cutler 1999; Jeffries 2011; Quinn 2010). However, I would suggest that the especially immersive nature of grime sets the findings from this study apart from ostensibly similar studies such as Cutler (1999), which looks in great detail at ‘Mike’ and his use of African American Vernacular English (AAVE) features partly as a result of his

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alignment with hip hop (see also Bucholtz (2011)). While there are many comparisons to be drawn, especially in relation to the lifestyle Mike became part of, I would argue that listening to, and learning lyrics of, well-known hip hop tracks (as Mike did) is subtly yet crucially different from actually engaging with the production of grime. In summary, what I am arguing here is that the boys are using this particular variant in the process of adopting a stance of toughness in relation to the interaction that takes place. The variant acquires this social meaning in this particular context through its association with grime (and rap/hip hop and dancehall more generally), which embodies a street/ urban/tough lifestyle. The quantitative analysis gave a partial picture by highlighting the possible connection between use of [t] and ‘rapping’, and this then formed a basis for the interactional analysis. However, it is not always the case that [t] is used so explicitly to align with a tough stance in relation to the content of the particular interaction taking place. It can also be used more generally to index participation (or desired participation) in that world of grime, especially when such involvement does not perhaps come quite so naturally. Callum is very different to Jamal and his friends. At the other centre, Ashbourne, he is an energetic and generally cheerful boy who, although seemingly confident, does not appear to have the swagger or coolness of Jamal especially. Callum is white, interested in grime, and we have observed him rap. In the 34 tokens of /θ/ we have recorded of him, 28 are [f ], 4 are [t], and 2 are [θ]. Two of the instances of [t] come close together in a recording made again during an art lesson. Interestingly, grime had itself been the topic of conversation moments before in the extracts below, with Callum actually rapping in class and then talking about one of his favourite artists. In Extract 7.2, Callum is wandering around the room, and seems to be looking for the voice recorder: Extract 7.2 Callum

1

Callum

yo where’s that little recorder thing ?

When he finds it he says:

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Extract 7.3 Callum

1

Callum

yo this th- this thing’s still on.

Extract 7.3 is very telling, as Callum self-corrects from fing to ting, an apparently conscious move. This correction arguably illustrates the role of intent discussed earlier; neither of the identities that Callum performs before and after the self-correction of this contextually salient variable is any less real than the other, yet the second one is the one he intended to perform at that particular moment. By consciously using a particular variant, Callum is taking a stance in an attempt to (re-)align himself as someone involved in grime and what it represents. Without that self-­correction, we are glimpsing another side of Callum—the side which he likely performs in other contexts, and, arguably, the side which comes most naturally to him given the social constraints of his particular life experience. It is almost as if for a second he forgot the identity he was performing at that moment, and consciously readopted his preferred stance in relation to the grime lifestyle. Perhaps [t] is an example of a feature that at the moment remains conscious and awkwardly intentional, yet one which, in time, will become automatic and more integrated into Callum’s own style (Eckert 2016: 78). This scenario brings to mind an incident described in Cutler (1999: 429) when Mike, a white teenager who uses AAVE speech features as part of his increasing identification with hip hop culture, self-corrects his standard pronunciation of [æsk] to the more desirable AAVE version of [æks]. A similar occurrence is described in Bucholtz (2011: 34) when she suspects a young male speaker is ‘correcting away from Standard English’ in his use of remote past been. Arguably, Callum’s need to perform this identity at this point was made especially acute due to an incident that had occurred a few minutes previously (Extract 7.4), just after he had been rapping. Having heard him rap, the teacher (James) asked him what it was. Also present are Mark, an IT support teacher, and Adana.

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Extract 7.4 The mean streets of Buxton

1 2 3 4 5 7 8 9

James Callum Adana James Callum Callum James Callum

10 11

James Callum

12 13 14

James Callum Mark

what’s that? London fam (.) Church Road Skrapz * *A grime artist Chur- [where? ] [Church] Road fam Church Road Church Road where? Church Road man you don’t know where Church Road is? Buxton (.) Buxton? yeah Buxton (.) yeah naa it’s Brixton in fact … the mean streets of Buxton [yeah Church Road ] [((laughs)) the mean streets of ] Buxton!

The reason this exchange was funny for the staff was that Brixton and Buxton are two very different places to get mixed up. Brixton, in South London, has a reputation for being a tough place, famous for the Brixton Riots in 1981. Whereas Buxton, in Derbyshire, is a well-to-do and picturesque market town popular with tourists. In fact, Callum’s misunderstanding goes deeper than this, as the Church Road he is talking about, famous for its gang violence and the grime artists Nines and Skrapz, is in North London and not in Brixton at all. It’s therefore plausible that Callum was especially aware at that point of how he was being perceived by others, and the self-correction was a fleeting example behind the scenes of this process. In this chapter I have tried to show how the use of TH-stopping, a linguistic feature heavily associated with black varieties of English, is possibly being used in this particular context not as a marker of ethnicity, but as part of the process of enacting and performing an identity in relation to a particular way of life, a way of life that is embodied in the social practices of grime (especially), but also in hip hop and dancehall. These two example scenarios: the four boys in Extract 7.1 and Callum in

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Extracts 7.2, 7.3, and 7.4 show two instances in which [t] is being used in this way within an interaction. The two processes are similar in some respects, but different in others. The four boys are using [t] very much to take a stance which aligns them within the world created by the topic of conversation. Their precise involvement in that world is unclear, but at that moment, that is the reality they are creating. I am therefore suggesting that [t] is being used as a linguistic resource (alongside other linguistic and non-linguistic resources) which helps to place them in that world in that moment. [t] carries this social meaning in this context by way of its indexical associations with rap, grime, and a general sense of ‘tough’ or ‘street’ culture. This link is reinforced by the quantitative analysis carried out previously which showed the meaningful correlations between an individual’s engagement with this social practice and use of that particular variant. Callum also uses [t] as a resource in the performance of identity, with the variant again indexing some sense of street/tough/grime values. Yet the stance he is taking is in relation to that world rather than to the particular interaction at that time. It seems to be a world that he is on the edges of, rather than embedded within, and his use of the variant is arguably more agentive and more conscious. The extent to which the young people themselves feel that they align specifically to a grime lifestyle is debatable, especially the boys in Extract 7.1. This is simply my reading of the situation based on the recorded and observed data, and it must always, like any such sociolinguistic analysis, remain partial. Callum, on the other hand, does appear to be making an open and concerted effort to align himself with the lifestyle, perhaps because he is at present just that bit further away from it. However, almost regardless of how any of them view their own relation to grime as a music genre itself (or dancehall, or hip hop), the ‘tough’, ‘street’ indexical resource of [t] is available to them to be used in this way as a result of their involvement. By invoking the practice of grime, I am putting it forward as a possibly useful and productive lens through which to view, analyse, and understand urban British youth language and identity. I am not suggesting that the use of [t] as a phonetic variant (or as a possible lexical variant in the case of, e.g., ting and tief) has emerged in the speech of these young people purely as a result of their engagement with grime; clearly, such forms have been around in British English for a long time

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(see, e.g., Hewitt 1986). Neither am I suggesting that by foregrounding this indexical link, we should close our eyes to a likely relationship between the use of [t] and ethnicity after all. I am simply offering an interpretation of the sociolinguistic realities of a particular group of people, in a particular context, at a particular point in time. And within those constraints, TH-stopping very much appears to be grime related.

Notes 1. Multiple logistic regression is a process of statistical analysis which allows us to explore the influence of multiple independent variables on the production of a particular speech feature. If you are completely new to this, the introduction by Hay (2011) is very clear, and provides useful followup resources.

References Alim, H. Samy. 2006. Roc the mic right: The language of hip hop culture. New York: Routledge. Alim, H.  Samy, Awad Ibrahim, and Alastair Pennycook (eds.). 2009. Global linguistic flows: Hip hop cultures, youth identities, and the politics of language. New York: Routledge. Baranowski, Maciej and Danielle Turton. 2015. Manchester English. In Raymond Hickey (ed.), Researching northern Englishes, 293–316. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Benor, Sarah Bunin. 2010. “Ethnolinguistic repertoire: Shifting the analytic focus in language and ethnicity”. Journal of Sociolinguistics 14, 2: 159–83. Brubaker, Rogers. 2004. Ethnicity without groups, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. Bucholtz, Mary. 2011. White kids: Language, race and styles of youth identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cameron, Deborah. 1990. Demythologizing sociolinguistics: Why language does not reflect society. In J.E. Joseph & T.J. Taylor (eds.), Ideologies of language, 79–96. London: Routledge. Cassidy, Frederic G. 1961. Jamaica Talk: Three hundred years of the English language in Jamaica (The Institute of Jamaica). London: Macmillan & Co.

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Cheshire, Jenny, Sue Fox, Paul Kerswill, and Eivind Torgersen. 2008. “Ethnicity, friendship network and social practices as the motor of dialect change: Linguistic innovation in London”. Sociolinguistica 22: 1–23. Cutler, Cecilia. 1999. “Yorkville crossing: White teens, hip hop and African American English”. Journal of Sociolinguistics 3: 428–442. Cutler, Cecilia. 2003. “Keepin’ it real: White hip-hoppers’ discourses of language, race, and authenticity”. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 13, 2: 211–233. Dedman, Todd. 2011. “Agency in UK hip-hop and grime youth subcultures— Peripherals and purists”. Journal of Youth Studies 14, 5: 507–522. Dray, Susan. 2017. “Identity matters: Language, practices and the (non)performance of rudeness in a Pupil Referral Unit”. Linguistics and Education 38: 44–54. Dray, Susan and Mark Sebba. 2011. Practices, ethnicity and authenticity: ‘Creole’ and youth language in a British inner city community. In L. Hinrichs & J. Farquharson (eds.), Variation in the Caribbean: From creole continua to individual agency. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Drummond, Rob. 2016. “Skepta, grime, and urban British youth language: A guide”. The Conversation. 1st September. Available at: https://theconversation.com/skepta-grime-and-urban-british-youth-language-a-guide-65611 [Accessed Oct 2017]. 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/S0047 404517000999​ Drummond, Rob and Erik Schleef. 2016. Identity in variationist sociolinguistics. In Sian Preece (ed.), The Routledge handbook of language and identity, 50–65. London: Routledge. Eckert, Penelope. 2016. Variation, meaning and social change. In Nikolas Coupland (ed.), Sociolinguistics: Theoretical debates, 69–85. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fought, Carmen. 2013. Ethnicity. In J. K. Chambers & Natalie Schilling (eds.), The handbook of language variation and change, 2nd edition, 388–406. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Hay, Jennifer. 2011. Statistical analysis. In Di Paolo and Malcah Yaeger-Dror (eds.), Siciophonetics: A student’s guide, 198–214. London: Routledge. Hewitt, Roger. 1986. White talk black talk. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. Hickey, Raymond. 2007. Irish English. Its history and present-day forms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Honeybone, Patrick. 2007. New-dialect formation in nineteenth century Liverpool: A brief history of Scouse. In Anthony Grant & Clive Grey (eds.), The Mersey sound: Liverpool’s language, people and places, 106–140. Liverpool: Open House Press. Jeffries, Michael P. 2011. Thug life: Race, gender and the meaning of hip hop. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Johnson, Daniel Ezra. 2009. “Getting off the GoldVarb standard: Introducing Rbrul for mixed-effects variable rule analysis”. Language and Linguistics Compass 3, 1: 359–383. Johnson, Daniel Ezra. 2016. Rbrul Version 2.3.2. http://www.danielezrajohnson.com/rbrul.html Kiesling, Scott. 2009. Style as stance: Stance as an explanation for patterns of sociolinguistic variation. In Alexandra Jaffe (ed.), Stance: Sociolinguistic perspectives, 171–194. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kirkham, Sam. 2015. “Intersectionality and the social meanings of variation: Class, ethnicity, and social practice”. Language in Society 44, 5: 629–652. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404515000585. Labov, William. 1972. Sociolinguistic patterns. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. MacDonald, Robert. 2008. “Disconnected youth? Social exclusion, the ‘Underclass’ & economic marginality”. Social Work & Society 6, 2: 236–248. Madsen, Lian Malai. 2013. “‘High’ and ‘low’ in urban Danish speech styles”. Language in Society 42: 115–138. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404513000018 Mendoza-Denton, Norma. 2008. Homegirls: Language and cultural practice among Latina youth gangs. Malden and Oxford: Blackwell. Newlin-Łukowicz, Luiza. 2013. “TH-stopping in New  York City: Substrate effect turned ethnic marker?” University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 19, 2: Article 17. Patrick, Peter. 2004. British creole. In E. W. Schneider, K. Burridge, B. Kortmann, R. Mesthrie, & C. Upton (eds.), A handbook of varieties of English [Vol. 1], 231–243. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Pichler, Pia and Nathaneal Williams. 2016. “Hipsters in the hood: Authenticating indexicalities in young men’s hip-hop talk”. Language in Society 45, 4: 557–581. Quinn, Eithne. 2010. Nuthin’ but a ‘G’ Thang: The culture and commerce of Gangsta Rap. New York: Columbia University Press.

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Rampton, Ben. 2011. “From ‘multi-ethnic adolescent heteroglossia’ to ‘contemporary urban vernaculars’.” Language & Communication 31, 4: 276–294. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langcom.2011.01.001. Rickford, John R. 1999. African American vernacular English. Malden and Oxford: Blackwell. Roth-Gordon, Jennifer. 2009. Conversational sampling, race trafficking, and the invocation of the gueto in Brazilian hip hop. In Samy H. Alim, Awad Ibrahim, & Alastair Pennycook (eds.), Global linguistic flows: Hip hop cultures, youth identities, and the politics of language, 63–78. New York: Routledge. Sankoff, David, Sali Tagliamonte, and Eric Smith. 2005. Goldvarb X: A variable rule application for Macintosh and Windows. Toronto: Department of Linguistics, University of Toronto. Schilling-Estes, Natalie. 2004. “Constructing ethnicity in interaction”. Journal of Sociolinguistics 8, 2: 163–195. Sebba, Mark. 1993. London Jamaican. London: Longman. Silverstein, Michael. 2004. “Cultural concepts and the language-culture nexus”. Current Anthropology 45, 5: 621–52. Thomas, Erik R. 2007. “Phonological and phonetic characteristics of AAVE”. Language and Linguistics Compass 1: 450–75. Watson, Kevin. 2007. “Liverpool English”. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 37, 03: 351–360 Wells, John. 1982. Accents of English 3: Beyond the British Isles. Cambridge: CUP.

8 Giving Back

Impact is at the centre of all the research we do these days. Defined by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) as ‘an effect on, change or benefit to the economy, society, culture, public policy or services, health, the environment or quality of life, beyond academia as the result of excellent research’ (HEFCE 2016), the impact agenda essentially prioritises the social value of our research. Whatever the ins and outs of the politics behind the impact agenda (see Lawson and Sayers (2016) for an excellent introduction to its history and detail), there can be little doubt that the broad idea of doing work that has some recognisable social benefit is fundamentally ‘a good thing’. This is not to say that there aren’t dangers in requiring all research to be immediately accountable in easily measurable terms, but as a guiding principle for research, especially within an area such as sociolinguistics, it is an appropriate underlying aim. Fortunately, universities have dedicated impact staff who are able to advise and guide as to the most appropriate ways to maximise the impact of one’s research, as it is not something that every academic is naturally good at. This means that as long as we as academics are confident there is some kind of intrinsic benefit to the research (which is hopefully part of © The Author(s) 2018 R. Drummond, Researching Urban Youth Language and Identity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73462-0_8

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the reason we embarked upon a given project in the first place), we can rely on others to help us apply and record that benefit. Of course ‘impact’ is very subjective, especially when we start to look between disciplines. It can be hard to compare the measurement of impact between a piece of bioengineering research that leads to a life-­ saving medical procedure and a piece of fine art work that enhances the well-being of the population of an urban neighbourhood. In the social sciences we perhaps have it easier than some of our humanities colleagues in determining if our research has impact potential, but it can still be difficult. My own personal way of determining if a project might have value outside academia relates to the extent to which you can describe and explain the research to someone outside of academia and not feel awkward. If you find yourself inwardly cringing as you explain your publicly funded project to the interested hairdresser/friend/family member, then perhaps its impact is not so clear. Whereas if you can describe a project with confidence, knowing that people without specific subject knowledge will still see why you are carrying it out, then you are probably on the right impact lines. This is a crude and somewhat flippant generalisation of course, but with an element of truth somewhere. Quite apart from being able to measure or explain the value of our research to the outside world, we owe it to the people who allow us into their lives to generate something of value for them in particular. Although sometimes easily forgotten, this is a principle that has a strong history in sociolinguistic research. In the foreword to Lawson and Sayers (2016), John Rickford reminds us of Labov’s (1982: 172) principle of debt incurred (‘An investigator who has obtained linguistic data from members of a speech community has an obligation to use the knowledge based on that data for the benefit of the community, when it has need of it.’) and Wolfram’s (1993: 227) principle of linguistic gratuity (‘Investigators who have obtained linguistic data from members of a speech community should actively pursue positive ways in which they can return linguistic favors to the community.’). Elsewhere, Rickford himself notes that ‘most of us fall short of paying our debts to the communities whose data have helped to build and advance our careers’ (Rickford 1993: 130). At the very beginning of this project I was confident there would be an identifiable benefit, although the details were admittedly somewhat

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vague. I should say, I would not attempt to embark on a project now with such a flimsy grasp of its potential (measurable) value, but this whole process has been nothing if not a huge learning experience. I did from the outset feel confident that by doing the research I would be in a better position to raise awareness of ‘youth language’ and challenge some of the stereotypically negative views surrounding the way young people speak, but awareness-raising is hard to measure. However, the original grant application did describe the creation of some kind of information pack for teachers around the language of young people, and it is this planned output that has developed into something particularly special. Below I outline four areas of potential impact, including two which are probably not measurable in any meaningful way, and one which (hopefully) is. However, I genuinely don’t see any of them as being more important than any other.

8.1 Just Being There One unexpected positive outcome of the project was the apparent benefit for the young people, and some of the staff, of us simply being there. It seems rather immodest to say so, but this is what we were told on several occasions, and this was also our impression. It was unexpected for obvious reasons, not least the fact that the usual situation in this kind of research is for the researchers to be incredibly grateful to the participants and hosts, and not the other way around, certainly during the period of data collection. The ‘benefit flow’ of sociolinguistic research tends to be in one direction at a time; before and during the research itself, the benefit is all towards the researcher: people are giving up their time, accommodating you, helping with arrangements, simply so that you can gather the data you need, when you need it. It is usually only after the research has taken place that the benefit flows in the other direction (assuming the project has been set up properly and responsibly in the first place): the community should reap some rewards from your work in the form of ‘impact’. Sometimes this impact will be the core purpose of the project in the first place, and sometimes it will be almost incidental, but it should always be there.

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But here, we were definitely given the impression that us simply being there was doing some good, and I think this can be put down to two reasons. The first reason relates to the fact that the PRU is an almost invisible organisation for most people. Recall that at the beginning of this research process, I myself had no knowledge of its existence, and I imagine this is the same for most people who are not involved in teaching, or who do not have children who have been excluded from school. Therefore, to have two people come in from university and take a genuine interest in what the young people and staff were doing was seen as a positive development. All members of staff, from the caretakers, to the centre coordinators, to the youth workers, to the teachers, are working together in a bid to improve the life chances of these young people who are in danger of falling by the wayside. Yet they are doing so almost invisibly, at least as far as the ‘outside world’ is concerned. I got the distinct impression that many saw our project as a way of being recognised, even if only by us, for the work they do. I am not for a second suggesting that they strive for this recognition—I mean it more in a sense of them taking the appropriate pride in being observed doing what is a challenging job. The second reason is related to the first, but focuses on the young people. Few, if any, of the young people we met are likely to go to university, yet this is no reason for them to remain ignorant of what opportunities are available, and it is no reason for universities not to reach out to this particular group of people. In fact, it may well be the case that the traditional lack of progression to university could, in part, be put down to this absence of any meaningful link between the two contexts. This absence is made even more stark when considered against the physical reality of the local environment. Manchester is home to three universities, two of which (the two largest) are geographically close to one of the learning centres discussed here. Neither of these universities are traditional campuses, meaning that their vast and ever-multiplying buildings simply form the everyday architectural makeup of the local environment. Many of the young people walk/cycle/bus past these imposing buildings every day, yet they have no connection to them, and no real understanding of what they contain. They represent a different world—a world that is on their doorstep, a world that has been further developed while they have been old enough to be aware in many cases, yet a world to which

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they have no access. While our presence did not necessarily create that access for the specific group of young people discussed here, it did potentially unravel some of the mystery surrounding what goes on at these places. Susan and I were often asked what it was we actually did, and I have a few interesting recordings of some of the girls discussing how the data might be used by ‘that bloke at the university’. Looking forward, the project has certainly (re)created an ever-­ strengthening link between Manchester Met and Manchester Secondary PRU. Manchester Met has a very strong presence in the area of youth-­ oriented research, primarily through the Manchester Centre for Youth Studies, and the PRU is now part of our regular group of contacts. There is a lot we can learn from each other, and we all look forward to working a lot more closely together in the future.

8.2 Mock Interviews Some of the data discussed in this book came from some mock college interviews which we set up for the young people. During the data collection period we were aware of a lot of discussion around college applications. Some classes were dedicated solely to preparation for college applications and interviews, with an additional focus on similar processes in the subsequent world of work. We were aware that staff had in the past provided the opportunity for students to engage in a mock interview with them, but we were told that they weren’t always taken particularly seriously. The problem was that the young people knew the staff members too well, and so didn’t feel comfortable role-playing as strangers. Even if Susan and I were to conduct the interviews, there was still too much familiarity to make it realistic, so we offered to bring in a colleague from the university who was unknown to all of them. Huw Bell is a very experienced teacher, teacher trainer, lecturer, and interviewer who has also done a lot of work with young people. He conducted seven mock interviews in all, two in Ashbourne and five in Meadow Cross. The interviews were set up to be as realistic as possible, with Huw never breaking out of character, and the interviewees discussing the actual courses they had applied for. The exercise was a huge

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s­uccess, with all seven participants (including some unlikely individuals such as Jamal and Kane) taking it very seriously. After each interview, Susan sat them down to discuss how it had gone, and at the end of all of them, Huw offered some group feedback on their performance. Quite apart from their excellent linguistic performance (proof if it were needed, that they were all able to adjust their language to meet the needs of the context), it was clear from the post-interview discussions that the experience had been valuable. Now that all ‘our’ young people have left the centres and I am no longer known, I offer the same service myself, and will continue to do so for as long as I am wanted. A few weeks ago I went to Ashbourne and conducted several interviews with the current cohort of young people, and it seemed to be as useful as always. It’s a very small thing to do, but it’s useful, for me as well as for them.

8.3 R  aising Awareness of the Value of Non-­standard Language In Chap. 1, I described the background to this project as being one in which the language of young people is often routinely challenged as being deficient in some way. There seems to be a constant battle between those commentators who call for young people to be taught to ‘speak properly’ and those linguists (or linguistically oriented teachers and commentators) who point out the danger in forcing a linguistically arbitrary notion of ‘standard English’ to be used at the expense of other non-standard varieties. No sociolinguist would ever argue against the need to teach people to be able to operate successfully in ‘standard English’, as this is what society demands. However, most would strongly defend the idea that non-­ standard varieties are of equal value to this standard, and would argue for an approach to teaching which does not belittle or demotivate users of such varieties. I see part of the job of sociolinguists working in this area as challenging the inherent unfairness of a society that perpetuates the myth of one variety of English being objectively superior to all others, especially when it often does so with so little understanding of the social bias that such an approach encompasses. One way in which we can challenge this

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inequality is by continuing to study, learn about, and comment on these non-standard varieties, not as a hobbyist endeavour, but with a view to informing those more traditional commentators and policy makers. The more we understand about how particular groups of society use language, the more we can argue for an inclusive approach to non-­standard varieties that uses rather than ignores their value in the teaching of standard English. I hope this study has managed to do this in its own small way. Whether the people with influence are convinced by the evidence I provide here or not, I know for a fact that this group of young people, who represent the very type of person who is often so negatively portrayed in the media, are more than capable of adapting their spoken language to suit the various contexts in which they find themselves. I heard them do it.

8.4 Comic Art Scenarios The final area of impact potential is perhaps the most innovative. During discussions of how our findings might be of use to the PRU, Susan and I looked towards the countless recordings we had of entirely natural, unguarded interactions between the young people themselves or between the young people and staff members. In many cases, these interactions included instances, often fleeting, of some kind of miscommunication or communication breakdown. There were times when people got angry over something that had been said when there was clearly (to an observer) no intention of malice. There were other times when a small incident escalated very quickly into something more serious. Susan and I felt that some of these interactions could be usefully presented as scripted scenarios to serve as the basis for some kind of discussion among the young people and/or staff. We would identify potentially relevant scenarios, edit them as little as possible in order to make them readable, and create discussion questions around them. The questions would focus on identifying where in a particular scenario communication broke down, or what triggered something to escalate, or what specifically was misunderstood or misinterpreted in a particular interaction. These could then be used with young people to talk through similar experiences, or used as a staff training resource.

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I then had the idea of illustrating some of these scenarios as an alternative to presenting them as written scripts, which can be inaccessible. Illustrating authentic communication was something I had wanted to do for a while, but with no real identifiable purpose. Now here was the purpose. The key, however, was to illustrate them in an attractive and relevant way. I wanted to avoid what I saw as the bland illustration so often seen in public information leaflets or traditional educational resources; the illustration for these scenarios had to match the context—edgy, current, and lively. After a few failed attempts at finding a suitable artist, I was lucky enough to come across Andrew Chiu,1 a local illustrator who seemed to be able to offer just what was needed. We worked together to create the first scenario (‘The Cage’). The process started with me providing a script along with ‘stage directions’ and an idea of the context and characters involved. Andrew then produced a sketched outline of the one-page strip for further discussion (change of facial expression here, different clothes there, etc.), before creating a full-colour final version. I then took this completed prototype to Ashbourne to show to a variety of staff members. The feedback was extremely positive, and included a few suggestions for minor adjustments. Andrew and I then produced four further scenarios: ‘The Bat’, ‘The Purple Pen’, ‘Racist?’, and ‘Style’, and I began to work on some activities. When these were drafted, I went back to Ashbourne and discussed the activities in detail with Anna, the coordinator. She made some suggestions which I subsequently incorporated. Example 1 shows ‘The Cage’ (Fig. 8.1) and Example 2 shows ‘The Purple Pen’ (Fig. 8.2), each with their associated activities, some of which are to be used with students, some with (new) staff.2

Example 1: ‘The Cage’ Discussion/activity questions and suggestions for use with the young people 1 . Describe in your own words the story that is presented here. 2. How do you think the boy in the red tracksuit is feeling in frames 1–5? Why is he feeling like this?

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Fig. 8.1  The Cage

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Fig. 8.2  The Purple Pen

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3. How do you think the staff member in the green shirt is feeling in frames 2–6? Why is he feeling like this? 4. Do you think the boy in the red tracksuit did lock someone in the cage? What makes you think this? 5. Do you agree that the member of staff in the green shirt when he says that walking past someone in trouble and not helping them (standing up for them) is as just as bad? (Frame 5) 6. If you were one of the other young people and knew what had really happened, would you say something? 7. Have you ever been blamed for something you didn’t do? What happened? How did it make you feel? 8. Have you ever let someone else take the blame for something you did? What was it? How did it make you feel?

Other ideas (instructions for teachers/staff) 9. Use one of the copies of the story where some of the speech has been blanked out (the boy in the tracksuit/the staff member/everybody)  and invite suggestions as to what is being said. 10. Ask for ideas as to how the situation could have played out differently if their responses had been different. 11. Ask pairs of students to act out the scenario, or invite them to create their own version.

For staff training (questions for teachers and trainee teachers) 1 2. What’s your overall impression of the scenario depicted here? 13. Is the staff member in the green shirt right to use the opportunity to talk about this earlier incident? 14. Imagine the conversation in frame 1 has taken place. If you were the staff member, what would you say next?

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Example 2: ‘The Purple Pen’ Discussion/activity questions and suggestions for use with the young people 1 . Describe in your own words the story that is presented here. 2. What do you think Daniel could be thinking and feeling? 3. Do you think it’s acceptable for a teacher to call a student an Emo? 4. Do you agree with Nathan’s comparison in frame 5? 5. Have you ever been called a name you didn’t like? How did it make you feel? 6. At what point does name-calling change from being ‘just banter’ to something more serious? 7. Do you agree with the staff member in frame 6?

Other ideas (instructions for teachers/staff) 8. Use one of the copies of the story where some of the speech has been blanked out and invite suggestions as to what is being said. 9. Discuss which names for groups of (young) people are appropriate, and which aren’t (e.g. Emos, Hoodrats, Roadmen, Chavs, Goths, Geeks, Nobodies).

For staff training (questions for teachers and trainee teachers) 1 0. What’s your overall impression of the scenario depicted here? 11. What is an example of a stereotype in this scenario? 12. Do you think you hold any stereotypes? If so, how might they impact on the way you work? 13. What is the relationship between stereotypes, prejudice and discrimination? Have you ever experienced any of these?

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14. What do you think of the idea that some young people might be in the PRU precisely due to issues around stereotypes, prejudice and discrimination? I am well aware that there is nothing new about the idea of illustrating scenarios in order for them to be used as a teaching/training resource. However, such resources can often come across as contrived—creating particular contexts in order to make a particular point, and using inauthentic language in the process. The ‘selling point’ of this particular idea is precisely the authenticity of both the language and the context. This means that young people should find the scenarios to be relatable, as they are genuine interactions from their very environments (and staff can use this fact as a way of demonstrating their relevance)—they simply happened to take place a couple of years before they arrived. Similarly, staff should be able to appreciate the likelihood and familiarity of these kinds of interactions and how they developed. From a research impact point of view, the fact is that this resource simply could not exist in this form without the detailed and time-consuming ethnographic research process. The only reason we had access to such scenarios is that we were trusted members of that community at that time. If the resources prove to be of value, then this is a true example of research impact. Although this particular set of five scenarios is intended to be of benefit specifically for these two learning centres (or maybe additional PRU centres in the future), there is a lot of potential to develop the concept further so as to be of use to a broader range of people. One possible area to look at is in the creation of materials to be used in Citizenship classes. Citizenship is a compulsory part of the national curriculum in British secondary schools which provides the ‘knowledge, skills and understanding’ to ‘play a full and active part in society’ (Department for Education 2013). As such, it is an obvious area in which to develop and promote the spiritual, moral, social, and cultural development of young people, itself a requirement of the British education system. Clearly, this format of presenting a particular scenario as a comic strip alongside some activities is a good way to introduce certain issues that need to be covered.

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8.5 Update As of summer 2017, the materials described above are in the final stages of development, to be ready for use at the beginning of the 2017–18 academic year. Plans are already being made for a collaboration between Huw, Anna, and me to work with Andrew (the artist) in producing further materials to help in the delivery of the Citizenship curriculum, with a specific focus on use in the PRU. I’m also booked in for my next set of mock interviews, which will take place in the Autumn term.

Notes 1. Andrew Chiu is a freelance illustrator and comic book artist—see http:// www.andrewchiu.co.uk/. 2. Some of the details of individuals have been changed in order to prevent identification. However, if a particular factor was deemed to be relevant to the context (e.g. gender or ethnicity), then it was retained where possible.

References Department for Education. 2013. National curriculum. Available at: https:// www.gov.uk/government/collections/national-curriculum [Accessed Oct 2017]. HEFCE (Higher Education Funding Council England). 2016. ‘REF impact’. Available at: http://www.hefce.ac.uk/rsrch/REFimpact/ [Accessed Oct 2017]. Labov, William. 1982. “Objectivity and commitment in linguistic science: The case of the Black English trial in Ann Arbor”. Language in Society 11, 2: 165–202. Lawson, Robert, and Dave Sayers (eds.). 2016. Sociolinguistic research: Application and impact. Abingdon: Routledge Rickford, John R. 1993. “Comments on ethics, advocacy and empowerment”. Language and Communication 13, 2: 129–131 Wolfram, Walt. 1993. “Ethical considerations in Language Awareness Programmes”. Issues in Applied Linguistics 4, 2: 225–255.

9 Final Thoughts

9.1 The Project This project started with two research questions: 1. How do urban adolescents attending a non-mainstream learning centre in the UK use language and other semiotic practices to enact identities in their day-to-day lives? 2. To what extent is current Manchester English as spoken by urban adolescents beginning to incorporate features associated with a possible MUBE? I have tried to address the first one throughout the book, but with a focus on language in Chaps. 6 and 7. Somewhere in the process of carrying out this research, talking to Susan, reading what others have written, and writing this book, I have come to see that everything we do is related to the performance of identity in its broadest sense, even when we are apparently doing nothing. When we are sitting alone in an empty room, we are by definition not somewhere else that we could have been—we are still affecting another context by our absence in some way. Having the opportunity to properly observe and interact with a new group of people, then reflecting on that observation and interaction daily, both at the time © The Author(s) 2018 R. Drummond, Researching Urban Youth Language and Identity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73462-0_9

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and for weeks and months afterwards, makes clear the extent to which identities are continually enacted, negotiated, and performed in practice. Simply by the way he opens the door to the centre as he arrives, Jamal is enacting something, so too is Alesha as she rolls her eyes on the way into class, and so too is Kane by leaving his seat notably absent. It would have been quite easy in some ways to write a book about a single day in the learning centre, and I worry about all the events and details that have been lost in the description I have offered. In this volatile and unpredictable space, identities are being enacted moment by moment using endless resources, often with high social stakes. All I have done is describe some of the more salient ways in which I have observed this happening, and tried to uncover and explore some of the (linguistic) resources that have been used in the process. The second question is slightly more problematic. I don’t think I have necessarily uncovered a possible MUBE, at least not in the way I had initially envisaged, a way which would have significantly added to the existing and ongoing work into MLE. I think I have quite clearly shown that there is a different and emerging way of speaking among some young people, and that this way of speaking shares features with MLE and a possible MUBE, but I would need a larger and more socially stratified group of speakers in order to say anything authoritative on a new variety. That said, I do take the view that the variation described here fits with the concept of a multiethnolect, albeit as part of a ‘stylistic practice’ approach rather than a ‘structural variety’ approach (Svendsen and Quist 2010), at least in relation to the data available. Also relevant is the fact that even within a social constructivist view of the role of language in the performance of identity as described in this book, the linguistic features themselves must first exist and be available to be used. A multiethnolect approach explains how this might happen (e.g. Cheshire et al. 2011). I have tried to show where individuals have used features that differ from a traditional Manchester variety, and I have identified where these features coincide with those of MLE/MUBE. In doing this, I have suggested a link between the use of particular MUBE-oriented (or particular non-­ local) features and orientation to an urban/street/grime way of life, and I have shown how this can be explored both quantitatively and interactionally.

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9.2 The Book The book had the single aim of reporting on the entire project from a personal perspective in a way that was honest, interesting, and hopefully enlightening. It was always going to be as much (if not more) about the research process as it was about the sociolinguistic findings in the hope that it would (a) offer insights into a particular group of young people and their lives in the often-hidden world of PRUs, and (b) provide descriptions and reflections of experiences that might help others embarking on similar or related research. To say that the process has been a journey for me is both a cliché and an understatement. What I thought was a challenging but relatively straightforward research project has proved to be anything but, yet it has been all the more rewarding for it. I hope I have managed to convey some of that uncertainty and excitement throughout the previous chapters. In some parts, the book was set up as a discussion of two contrasting ways of going about the process of broadly sociolinguistic research—a variationist approach adopted by me, and an interactional/ethnographic approach adopted by Susan. While the tensions between the two approaches were (and are) very real, I don’t think they have negatively impacted the account presented here. It is true that our initial ambition of a truly combined approach did not ultimately come into fruition. Maybe this genuinely is impossible. But the final result is certainly along the lines I was hoping for in that it combines what I see as the strengths of both approaches.

9.3 Final Reflection For both Susan and me, our time in the PRU learning centres was very special. We felt privileged to be welcomed into the two centres and given the opportunity to share the lives of the young people and the staff in this way, and we remain immensely grateful to all concerned. I have nothing but admiration for all the staff we met, some of whom were the type of exceptional teachers we all hope to emulate. The four centre ­coordinators:

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Anna, David, Tim, and Joy, and the youth worker at Meadow Cross, Michael, made a particularly profound impression on me, as they are the ones who are responsible for the well-being of the young people day in and day out, often in incredibly challenging circumstances. They each had their own, often very different, ways of caring both for the young people and for their own emotional well-being, but they each did it in a way that ensured the maximum opportunity for the young people to reach their potential. As for the young people themselves, unfortunately, I doubt they will ever know the effect they had on us. For them, we were most probably just two faces among the many they encountered in their eventful journey through adolescence. They will have no idea of the extent to which they profoundly changed the way I view certain aspects of our society. Issues around privilege, fairness, opportunity, and education have all come into much sharper focus since the project, and my resolve to challenge the negative discourse that so often exists around ‘youth language’ has been strengthened. The young people described in these pages are intelligent, articulate, unpredictable, and exasperating in almost equal measure, and I enjoyed (almost) every minute I was with them. I hope I have done them justice in the portrayal I have provided.

References Cheshire, Jenny, Paul Kerswill, Sue Fox, and Eivind Torgersen. 2011. “Contact, the feature pool and the speech community: The emergence of Multicultural London English”. Journal of Sociolinguistics 15, 2: 151–196. Svendsen, Bente Ailin, and Pia Quist. 2010. Multilingual urban Scandinavia: New linguistic practices. Multilingual Matters.

Author Index1

A

Alim, H. Samy, 231, 246 Atkinson, P., 67

Buchstaller, Isabelle, 209–211, 213 C

B

Baranowski, Maciej, 13, 206, 208–209, 224n8, 230 Bauman, R., 73 Becker, Kara, 61 Benor, Sarah Bunin, 194, 230 Blom, Jan-Petter, 63 Boersma, Paul, 199 Briggs, Charles L., 61, 73 Brubaker, Rogers, 231 Bucholtz, Mary, 49, 73, 75, 77, 186–187, 192–193, 231, 247, 248

Cameron, Deborah, 63, 77, 187, 238 Cassidy, Frederic G., 230 Chambers, Jack K., 67 Cheshire, Jenny, 4, 12, 208–212, 224n9, 229–230, 270 Clifford, J., 67 Cutler, Cecilia, 231, 246, 248 D

D’Arcy, Alexandra, 67, 209–211 Dedman, Todd, 231, 246 Delingpole, James, 10

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Author Index

Drager, Katie K., 208 Dray, Susan, 1–2, 13, 15, 59, 65, 72, 230, 239 Drummond, Rob, 1–2, 13, 59–60, 69, 72, 97n4, 208, 223n1, 225n15, 231, 238, 246

Hewitt, Roger, 251 Hickey, Raymond, 230 Honeybone, Patrick, 230 Howley, Gerry, 13, 201 Hughes, Arthur, 13, 201, 205, 208–209 Hymes, D., 67, 71

E

Eckert, Penelope, 35–37, 44n11, 52, 60–61, 63, 69, 71–74, 77, 79, 97n2, 97n4, 184, 187, 191–194, 248

I

F

J

Fabricius, Anne, 199 Fought, Carmen, 230 Fox, Sue, 4, 12, 208–212, 224n9, 229–230, 270 Frazer, Elizabeth, 187 Fuller, Janet M., 60, 97n4

Jaffe, Alexandra, 193–194 Jeffries, Michael P., 246 Johns, Lindsay, 9–10 Johnson, Daniel Ezra, 199, 235 Johnstone, Barbara, 97n1 Jones, Owen, 11, 38

Ibrahim, Awad, 246 Ilan, Jonathan, 224n3 Ilbury, Christian, 224n10

G

Gates, Shivonne, 224n10 Grant, Tim, 111 Gumperz, John J., 63–64 H

Hall, Kira, 77, 192 Hammersley, M., 67 Haraway, D.J., 65, 79 Harding, Nick, 10–11 Harvey, Penelope, 187 Hay, Jennifer, 251n1 Hazen, Kirk, 97n3

K

Kerswill, Paul, 4, 11–12, 208–212, 224n9, 229–230, 270 Kiesling, Scott, 64, 69, 193–194, 238 Kirkham, Sam, 35, 44n10, 74, 201–202 L

Labov, William, 60, 68, 184, 238, 256 Lave, J., 35, 69, 79

  Author Index    

Law, John, 65, 72, 79 Lawson, Robert, 35, 44n10, 74, 255–256 Levon, Erez, 74, 186

Q

M

R

MacDonald, Robert, 246 Madsen, Lian Malai, 232 Marcus, G.E., 67 Maybin, Janet, 69, 75, 184 McConnell-Ginet, Sally, 35, 69 McNair-Knox, Faye, 61 Mendoza-Denton, Norma, 35, 48–49, 109, 184, 194, 230–231 Mol, A., 65 Moore, Emma, 35, 43n10, 74, 193, 223n2

S

N

Newlin-Łukowicz, Luiza, 230 O

Ochs, E., 63, 69, 193 Ozanian, Mike, 16n5 P

Patrick, Peter, 230 Pennycock, Alastair, 246 Pharao, Nicolai, 223n2 Pichler, Pia, 231 Podesva, Robert, 69, 73–74, 193–194, 223n2

275

Quine, Oscar, 21 Quinn, Eithne, 246 Quist, Pia, 12, 270

Rampton, Ben, 63–64, 68–69, 75, 184, 187, 232 Ramsammy, Michael, 201, 205 Rauniomaa, Mirka, 193 Richardson, Kay, 187 Rickford, John R., 61, 63, 230, 256 Roberts, Celia, 69, 75, 184 Roth-Gordon, Jennifer, 231 Røyneland, Unn, 12

Sankoff, David, 235 Sayers, Dave, 255–256 Schilling-Estes, Natalie, 47, 61–62, 67, 184, 194, 238 Schleef, Erik, 60, 69, 97n4, 208, 238 Sebba, Mark, 13, 230 Sharma, Devyani, 63, 74–75 Silverstein, Michael, 63, 69, 231 Singleton, Vicky, 65 Smith, Eric, 235 Snell, Julia, 73–74, 186, 194 Svendsen, Bente Ailin, 12, 270 T

Tagliamonte, Sali A., 37, 44n11, 60, 64, 67, 79, 235 Thomas, Erik R., 224n6, 230

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Author Index

Verran, Helen, 65

Watson, Kevin, 229–230 Watt, Dominic, 13, 199, 201, 205, 208–209 Weenink, David, 199 Wells, John, 201, 230, 245 Wenger, E., 35, 69, 79 Wiese, Heike, 12 Williams, Nathaneal, 231 Wolfram, Walt, 256 Wolfson, Nessa, 61 Woolard, K.A., 67

W

Z

Wardhaugh, Robert, 60, 97n4

Zhang, Qing, 194

Torgersen, Eivind, 4, 12, 208–212, 224n9, 229–230, 270 Traunmüller, Hartmut, 201 Trudgill, Peter, 13, 201, 205, 208–209 Turton, Danielle, 13, 201, 205–206, 208–209, 224n8, 230 V

Subject Index1

A

Acoustic analysis, 74, 87, 224n6 See also Phonetic analysis Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), 38 African American Vernacular English (AAVE), 230–231, 246, 248 Age, 60, 68 Ali, G., 11 Allow it (verb), 110–111, 148, 215 Alternative provision definition, 43n1 American English, 210 American high school language, 35–37 Anthropology, 65, 71 Anti-Social Behaviour Order (ASBOs), 38, 44n13

Appearance, 30–33, 43n9, 48–50, 125, 157 Arsed (verb; trans bothered), 216 Art (subject), 25, 85, 108–109, 127–128 ASBOs, see Anti-Social Behaviour Order Ashbourne, 53–55, 149–183 Asian ethnic groups, 22–23 Audio recordings, 70, 74–75, 81, 107 Authentic speakers, 97n1, 97n2 B

Badmans (noun), 164 Bait (adjective), 215–217 Baldhead (Jamaican term; non-rasta), 171

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Subject Index

Banter, 30, 109, 168–169, 171, 216, 239, 266 Bare (adverb, determiner), 217 Bashment music, 231 BBC, see British Broadcasting Corporation Be like (quotative), 210–214 Benefit system, 174–175 Berry, Halle, 155–156, 188n2 Berry, Mary, 155–156, 188n2 Bitch (noun), 146 Bitches, 40 Black Caribbean pupils, 22 Black culture, 11, 239 Black street patois, 10 Blame, 265 Blood (noun), 113, 124 BMXers, 40 Bomba (noun), 126 Boying, 168–171 British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), 17n7 BBC Newsnight, 11 British Creole, 230 British English (BrEng), 210, 229–230, 250–251 Bullying, 117–119, 122, 134 Burnout, 43n10

Chatting shit (expression), 114, 127, 132, 169 Chav (noun), 38–40, 133, 161, 165, 170, 266 Chavvy (adjective), 217 Chicano English, 230 Citizenship classes, 267–268 Clothing, 105–106, 170, 196–197 See also Appearance Co-Investigators (Co-I), 91–92 Collaboration, 95–96 Comic book illustrations, 262–268 Commonalities, 95 Community of Practice (CofP), 35–37, 39, 44n11, 60, 69, 79, 195 Compromise, 95 Consonants, 198–209 Context, importance of, 182 Cookery, 85, 105, 136 Correlation fallacy, 238 Crackhead (noun), 205 Creative writing, 113 Creoles, 230 Criminal activity, 11, 196, 242–244 Crip (noun), 127 Culture, 230–251 Cunt (taboo swearword), 158–159, 177, 178, 180 Curse words, 106, 109, 115–116

C

Cameron, David, 175 Casual speech, 94 Categorisation issues, 73, 79, 224–225n11 Chatting baz (expression), 132 Chatting macca (trans talking rubbish), 219

D

Dancehall music, 224n4, 224n5, 231, 246–247 Data collection methods, 61 Dead (adjective), 113, 218 Denmark, 12

  Subject Index    

Danish urban speech, 223n2 Department for Education, 21–22, 43n1, 43n6, 43n7, 267 DH-Stopping, 229–231 Diaries, 70–71, 77, 86, 89, 104–105 Direct speech, 211 Discourse functions, 67 Discourse markers, 97n3, 208–209 Discrimination, 9–10, 266–267 Disgusting (adjective), 167 Disruptive behaviour, 141, 185 See also Violence and aggression Doming, 169 Doodling, 146–147 Dough (noun; trans money), 130 Drinking culture, 171 Dutty (adjective), 218 E

East End London speech, 12 Elan, 97n5 Eliot, T.S., 64 Emergence principle, 192 Emos, 40, 156, 266 Emotion, 30, 138–139, 262, 265–266 emotional demands of research, 122–123 English (subject), 25, 34, 110, 125, 139, 148, 159–160, 167 Ethnic diversity, 12 Ethnicity, 22, 64, 68, 70, 72–73, 78–79, 94, 170, 172, 174, 203–204, 220, 224n8, 229–251, 268n2 Ethnographic/interactional approach, 9, 13–16, 67–75, 77, 130, 166, 185–186, 267

279

Ethnolinguistic repertoires, 230 Exclusion from centres, 28–29, 43n6 Exclusion from education, 22–23, 43n1 Expertise, 57, 161 Expressing Inner-City Youth Identity Through Multicultural Urban British English, 9 F face (vowel), 209 Facebook, 179 Fake language, 10–11 Feature pool, 12 Fed (noun; trans police), 49 Feminist technoscience studies, 65 F2–F1 measurement, 201–202 Food dieting and, 157 meal preparation, 27 Football, 16n5, 119, 139–140, 150 Friendships, 12, 29 Fuck (swear word), 156, 159–161, 216–217, 219 Funding (research), 9, 14

G

Gang culture, 11, 109, 111–113, 195–196 Gangsters, 117 Garage music, 224n4, 231 Gay (adjective; trans homosexual), 128 Gay (adjective; trans rubbish/lame), 150 GCSE exams, 24, 133, 139 Geeks, 40, 266 Gender, 60, 72–73, 212–213, 268n2 gendered forms, 182–183

280 

Subject Index

Geographical location, 68 Germany, 12 Ghetto (social group), 40–41 Ghetto grammar, 9 Ghettos, 40–41, 231 Girly girls, 40–41 Go (quotative), 210–214 Golf, 119–120 goose fronting, 97n3, 208 Gossiping, 169 Goths/gothic, 40–41, 266 Great British Bake Off, The, 188n3 Grime, 196, 203, 206, 222–224, 229–251, 270 Grumbling, 125 Gun crime, 16n2 Gwop boys, 40–41, 128–129 Gypsy/Roma pupils, 22 H

Hanging (adjective; trans horrible), 147 Happy tensing, 201 Happy vowel, 200–207 Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), 255 Hip hop culture, 231 Hip Hop Nation Language (HHNL), 231 music, 224n4, 246–248 Speech Style, 231 Hipsters, 40 Homework, 159–160 Homosexuality, 128, 150 Hoodrats, 40–41, 164–165, 266 Hoods, 40–41, 231 House music, 196

I

Identity, 9, 12, 34, 41–42, 47, 50–51, 63–65, 67, 69, 72–74, 77–79, 94, 123, 170, 191–193, 195, 197, 202, 204, 206, 221, 230–232, 238, 248–250, 269–270 See also Roles and identities Impact (research), 255–268 benefit flows, 257–259 definition, 255 discussion/activity questions, 262, 265–266 graphic scenarios, 261–267 importance within academia, 255–257 instructions for teachers/staff, 265–266 mock interviews, 259–260 non-standard language, value of, 260–261 staff training, 265–267 update, 268 Impartiality, 184–185 Inbetweeners (C4 TV show), 141 Indexicality, 69, 238, 250–251 Individual learning programme (ILP), 179 Information and communications technology (ICT), 25, 141 ‘-ing’ pronunciation, 97n3 Inner-city North London, 224n9 Insider status, 47 Interactants, 236 Interactional sociolinguistics, 64–65, 271 Interactive classes, 81, 86 Interviews (sociolinguistic), 61–63, 68, 74, 96, 160, 172, 199

  Subject Index    

Irish English, 230 Irish Traveller pupils, 22 J

Jafaican, 10–11 Jamaica, 55, 58n2, 136–137 Creole, 230 culture, 218 English dialect/accent, 245 heritage, 111 patois, 11 words, 219–220 See also Patwa (Jamaica) Joint enterprise, 35–36 See also Community of Practice (CofP) Jokes, 172 Jungle music, 224n4, 231 L

Labelling, 40 Letter (vowel, phrase-final), 205–207 Leverhulme Trust, 9, 14, 91 Lexical variation, 244–245 Like (quotative), 208–209 Littering, 119–120 Live (adjective; trans good), 113, 153, 218 Liverpool English, 229–230 London English, 229 Long (adjective), 218–219 Longness, 125 Lying, 169 M

Macca (adjective), 219 Macro-social categories, 69, 72, 74

281

Man (pronoun), 142, 219 Manchester accent, 201 demographics, role and status, 13 Manchester Centre for Youth Studies (MCYS), 187, 188n4, 259 Manchester City Council, 23, 43n2 Manchester Metropolitan University, 9, 188n3, 259 Manchester Secondary Pupil Referral Unit (PRU), 2, 259 Manchester Youth Language, 191–225 acoustic analysis, 198–209 context, 191–194, 221–223 ethnicity, 222 gender, 222–223 lexis, 215–221 orientations, 194–198 quotatives, 209–214 region, 223 vowels and consonants, 198–209 Mandingo (noun), 172 Masculinity, 222–223 Material semiotics, 65–66, 79 Maths (subject), 25, 34, 148, 167, 176–177, 216 Meadow Cross, 23–24, 51–53, 105–149 Media response to urban youth language, 10–11 Metalhead, 40–41 Metaphor, 133 Methods, 59–97 categories, 77–80 collaborative studies, 73–76 combined approach, 76–81 context, 59–60, 95–96 culture clash, 66–76

282 

Subject Index

Methods (cont.) data analysis, 81–83 data collection, 81–83 engagement, 83–87 ethnographic/interactional approach (Susan), 65–66 funding and time, 91–93 identifying differences, 69–73 incomplete data, validity of, 90–91 learning outcomes, 94–95 mini-crises, 80–81 misunderstanding, 83–87 mixed/combined methodology, 75–76 noise, 87–88 note-taking, 89 practicalities, 81–93 practices, 78–80 problems and challenges, 83–93 resistance, 83–87 two approaches, 67–69 variationist approach (Rob), 60–65 Minging (adjective), 133 Miscommunication, 66, 261 Mixed-effects modelling, 235 Mixed race, 66, 204, 222, 239 Mobile phone use, 28, 115, 125, 162, 165–166, 178–179 Monophthongisation, 209 Mosher, 40–41, 129, 133 Moss Side, 5, 16n2 Mother’s, 113–114 mouth (vowel), 209 Multiculturalism, 12, 204 Multicultural London English (MLE), 12–13, 16n1, 78, 111, 142, 191, 196, 200, 208–209, 211–213, 221, 224n10, 270

Multicultural Manchester English, 4, 12 Multicultural Urban British English (MUBE), 12–13, 78, 111, 179, 191, 196, 200, 208, 214, 221, 269–270 Multiethnolect, 12, 270 Multiple logistic regression analysis, 235, 251n1 independent variables, 236 linguistic and social factors, 237, 240–241 Multiple-meaning potential, 223n2 Music, 17n6, 88, 105, 125, 135–136, 162–163, 170–171, 196–197, 229–251 See also under individual musical genres and artists

N

Name-calling, 152, 266 National Curriculum, 25, 43n4 Neds, 44n10 Nelson, Lee, 11 Newcastle Electronic Corpus of Tyneside English 2) corpus (NECTE2), 212–213, 225n13 New Zealand (NZ) English, 210 Nicknames, 151, 183 Ninja (noun), 127 Nobodies, 40, 266 Non-engagement, 87 Non-standard English, 10, 74 Non-verbal gestures, 125 Normative power, 184 Norteña and sureña girls, 184 Norway, 12

  Subject Index     O

Observational field notes, 74, 82, 89, 94, 234 Observation/familiarisation, 82 Observer’s paradox, 184 Office for National Statistics (ONS), 13 Of Mice and Men, 110, 138 One-to-one conversations, 81 Open-mindedness, 94–95 Orientation scale, 191, 194–198, 221 Outsider status, 8, 47, 54, 110, 157 Overlapping speech, 88, 115–116, 234 P

Parkdale, 44n10 Partialness principle, 192 Participant observation, 64, 68, 70, 120, 141 Patois-influenced language, 124–125 Patwa (Jamaica), 136–137 Peak (adjective), 219 Peas (noun; trans money), 129 Peer recordings, 81 Perception of social meaning, 193 Performance, 94 Personalisation, 56–57 Personality, 30–33 Personal Social and Health Education (PSHE), 25 Phenomenology, 67 Phone Shop, 11 Phonetic analysis, 71–72, 87–88, 233 See also Acoustic analysis

283

Phonotactic constraints, 67 Physiology of speech, 68 Poetry, 64, 133 Polish American English, 230 Polish migrants, 13 Politeness, 80–81, 159 Politics, 174–175 Pool culture, 171 Populars, 43n10 Posh boys/ posh kids, 40, 122 Positionality principle, 192 Postcolonial studies, 65 Power, 184 Praat software, 199 Pragmatic markers, 219 Prejudice, 266–267 Preparation for Working Life (PfWL), 25, 58n3 price (vowel), 208–209 Priming effect, 245 Principle Investigator (PI), 91–93 Principle of debt incurred, 256 Principle of linguistic gratuity, 256 Project overview, 1–17 aims and research questions, 9–13, 269–272 April 2014, 14 August 2014, 16 importance of the study, 14 July 2014, 15 June 2014, 15 Manchester as focus of study, 13–14 pilot (Sept-Dec 2013), 8–9 pre-pilot (Sept-Oct 2012), 4–7 project beginnings, 14–16 scene-setting, 3–9

284 

Subject Index

Pupil Referral Units (PRUs), 16n3, 21–44 approaching individuals, 185–186 Ashbourne, 149–183 centres, 23–25 chavs, 38–39 comment, 183 community of practice, 35–37 confrontations, resolution of, 185 context, 21–23, 42 daily routine, 26–30 ethical concerns, 186–187 identifiable groups, 39–41 identities, 34–42 key staff, 25–26 Meadow Cross, 103–149 opportunities, identification of, 186 orientations, 41–42 practical challenges, 186 role recognition, 184–185 a ‘year in the life of the PRU,’ 103–88 young people, 30–33 Q

Quantitative analysis of language, 60 Quotatives, 97n3, 179, 208–214 background, 209–210 MLE, 210–211 in the PRU, 211–214 R

Ra (interjection), 106, 219–220 Racism, 171, 174, 204 Racist (adjective), 157–158

Racist (adjective; trans unfair), 149, 150, 220 Rapping, 236, 239–241, 246–248, 250 Rass (interjection), 106, 219 Rbrul, 235, 237, 240–241 Rebellious, 44n10 Recordings, 82 Relationship-building, 29, 84, 127–128, 152 Research Assistants/Associates (RA), 91–93 Research backgrounds, 1–2 Research scientists, 56, 108, 110 Retirement, 121 RnB music, 196 Roadmen, 165, 266 Rockstone (Jamaican proverb), 136–137 Roles and identities, 47–58 Ashbourne, 53–55 in the centres, 50–55 context, 47–48 Meadow Cross, 51–53 perceptions, 56–58 Rob, 48–49 Susan, 49–50 Roma school children, 13 Roundedness (vowels), 205 S

Safe, 143 Salience, 12, 203, 215, 248 salient characteristics, 41–42 See also Social group names Satire, 11 Say (quotative), 210–214

  Subject Index    

Scally (noun), 132–133 Science (subject), 25, 34, 154–155 Science, Technology and Society (STS), 65 Scooter boys, 40 Scran (food), 126 Second-wave variationism, 65 Selassie, Haile, 111 Self-correction, 248 Self-identification, 40, 79 Semiotic practices, 12, 69, 197, 269 Sex, 68, 236 Sexuality, 73 Sick (adjective), 220 Simultaneous speech, 107 Skaters, 40 Skin colour, 124–125, 232 Skrilla (noun; trans money), 129 Slag (noun), 178 Slang, 217 Slavery, 172 Smokers, 27–28, 40–41 Smoking, 81, 105, 170 Snitch (verb/noun), 120, 127 Social class, 38, 64, 68, 72–73, 201, 246 See also Working class communities Social copycat, 169 Social groups, 40, 73–74, 128–129, 132–133, 164–165 Social inequality, 161, 246 Socially oriented linguistic analysis, 17n8 Social meaning, 63–64, 69, 94, 193–194, 247 Social networks, 35, 60, 74 Social practice, 214, 250

285

Social science research, 187, 211, 256 Sociophonetics, 71–72, 88, 97n5, 198, 221 See also Phonetic analysis Specials, The, 5 Speech communities, 35 Speeches, language of, 146 Spellings, 112 Spitting voice, 117 Sporting activities, 27, 58, 81, 150, 155 Staff training, 261 Stance, 193–194, 244–245, 247, 250 Standard English, 10, 260 Starkey, David, 11 Stereotypes, 266–267 Street culture, 224n3 See also Urban street style Stush (adjective), 220 Style, 193–194 style-shifting, 199, 224n7 stylistic practice, 69 stylistic variation, 63 Swag (noun), 40–41 Swearing, 29–30, 167–168, 217, 239 Switching (situational/metaphorical), 63 T

Tag questions, 223n2 Think (quotative), 210–214 Third wave variationism, 44n11, 63–65, 69, 79, 97n4, 191–2

286 

Subject Index

This is + speaker (quotative), 211 TH-Stopping, 203, 213, 222, 224n8, 229–251 data and analysis, 233–251 distribution of tokens, 235 formality, 236, 240 independent variables, 236 interactional analysis, 241–251 position of th in word, 236, 240 quantitative analysis, 233–41 surrounding sound, 236 use divided by speaker ethnicity, 238 Time (noun trans ages), 179, 221 Time-consuming activities, 94 Tomboy, 40 Townies, 43n10 Transcription (data), 70, 82, 94, 97n5 Trust, 82, 84 U

Ug (adjective; trans ugly), 242 Unbalanced data, 127 University researchers, 47–48 Urban street style, 195–207, 221–223, 270 V

Variationism, 67–68, 77 Variationist sociolinguistics, 44n11, 60–61, 63, 67–69, 71–75, 77, 88, 271 Vernacular speech, 61–62, 68, 88, 97n2

Violence and aggression, 6–7, 29, 113–116, 134–136, 152, 172–174, 179–180, 224n5 Vocational courses, 24 Voiceless fricatives, see TH-Stopping Voice recorders, 115, 117 Vowels consonants and, 198–209 vowel chart, 200 vowel sounds, 97n3, 224n6 Vulnerable young adults, 123 W

West Indian Englishes, 230 Wire, The, 5 Woman in Black, The, 113 Wordlists, 86–87, 124, 127, 149, 170, 172, 182, 199 Working class communities demonisation of, 11, 38 speakers, 66, 201–202, 207 speech in children, 73 See also Social class Work placements, 130–132, 143 Y

Yardie (noun), 124–125 Youth clubs, 187n2 Youth forum meetings, 81 Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR), 187 Z

Zero (quotative), 210–214