Victorian voices analysed in new Lancaster University research on northern accent development

Researchers at Lancaster University and Leiden University have worked alongside each other to explore how northern accents and dialects developed over the nineteenth century.

This new research has been published in the Journal of Sociolinguistics, and making use of the Elizabeth Roberts Working Class Oral History Archive which is held at Lancaster University Regional Heritage Centre, and also Lancashire Archives.

The three main locations which are discussed in the study are Lancaster, Preston and Barrow-in-Furness.

Dr. Elizabeth Roberts’ archive contains recorded interviews with working class people who resided in the North Lancashire (which then included Barrow-in-Furness), and were born from the 1880s to the 1940s.

Dr Roberts’ work was carried out in the 1970s and 1980s by her and colleagues, with interviews describing the “ordinary lives of working class people” and topics such as cotton weaving, family life and dealing with loss, and preparing meals like sheep’s head broth.

Researchers today have used these recordings for conducting a linguistic analysis to understand how consonants are used differently across the studied region, and how ‘urban dialects in formerly industrial areas’ have developed due to factors such as population increase.

Findings from the linguistic analysis have confirmed that there are local perceptions that the Barrow-in-Furness accent differs greatly from those of Preston and Lancaster.

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The accent’s differences could be put down to the dramatic population growth and high fertility rates in Barrow between 1850 and 1880, between residents who had moved from Cornwall, Scotland, Ireland and the midlands. This therefore helped to create a new and distinctive dialect for the town.

In Preston, however, the Lancashire accent and dialect was kept largely the same as those moving into the city for work were from surrounding areas in the North Lancashire region, though the population was still growing at a steady rate.

As a result, both the Lancaster and Preston accents have been noted as keeping the more “traditional” aspects of their accents, such as rhoticity (also known as a “rhotic r” or the “post-vocalic r”) – for example, Lancaster speakers would pronounce the r in “car”, because r is positioned at the end of the word.

The study also noted that Lancaster accents developed as a more “mixed variety” due to greater inter-class context and less dependence on just one industry (cotton), like Preston – Lancaster’s trade and industry growth in the Victorian era facilitated this development.

Professor Claire Nance, lead researcher of the project, said: “The archive recordings allow us to look back in time at the Victorian origins of contemporary dialects.

Interviews from Preston, Lancaster and Barrow give us a fascinating insight into the development of dialects in northern England as they have very distinct social histories and settlement patterns.

We found very strong links between the growth of industry and the evolution of accent. This research allows us to celebrate accent as another aspect of our region’s long-lasting and distinct cultural heritage.”

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