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The Scale of Northern-ness
How perceptions of local geography and ‘posh-ness’ affect local dialect recognition close to the North/Midland border of England
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 January 2025
Abstract
This article identifies factors that affect local dialect recognition in the north of the East Midlands, England. Central to the argument is the local belief in a ‘scale of northern-ness’: the general impression that accent moves geographically across the East Midlands, transitioning gradually southwards from northern to southern English. This theory bears similarities with Upton's description of the Midlands region as a ‘transition zone’ (2012, 267). Two dialect recognition tasks were completed by three age groups of respondents based primarily in Chesterfield, North East Derbyshire. The results indicate that Sheffield voices were the most recognisable to the Chesterfield audience, perhaps because they differed from the East Midland voices in the sample. Respondents' ‘dialect image’ (Inoue 1999, 162) of East Midland voices led to some errors being made, with the key belief in the north of this region that ‘north is better’.
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