James & Lesley Milroy (Belfast, 1978)

Focus: Social networks & non-standard pronunciation

Method: Studied 3 speech communities, with Lesley introduced as “friend of a friend”.  Measured people’s social networks as open/closed and by density.

Findings/conclusions: Non-standard forms were reinforced by closed, dense networks.  Gender seen as less of a predictor than network - women with closed networks just as non-standard as men.

Jenny Cheshire (Reading, 1982)

Focus: Grammar & peer group norms

Method: Toughness index - attitudes to crime, weapons etc devised.  Conversation with teenagers at adventure playgrounds recorded under guise of research into attitudes to Reading.

Findings/conclusion: “Tougher” kids used fewer standard forms generally.  It was possible to define sub-groups and find differences in their usage of various non-standard features.

Jenny Cheshire & Viv Edwards (dialect survey, 1997)

Focus: Non-standard grammar and region

Method: Questionnaires in schools throughout the UK, to establish whether non-standard grammatical forms given were used in the school’s district.

Findings/conclusions: Many forms were found to be common across the UK (eg look at them big spiders) and some forms which were expected to be found widespread (eg multiple negation) were not.

Paul Kerswill & Ann Williams (Milton Keynes, 2000)

Focus: Accent features & age in Milton Keynes

Method: Examined groups of children by age, comparing with their parents’ accents, which are from different locations as MK is a new town created in 1969..

Findings/conclusions: Milton Keynes is seeing a new accent created by its youth, which includes many features considered to be “Estuary”.  Older children were found to have their own accent, not like any of their parents or of the native older people - this may be linked to peer group belonging.