Contextualizando la historia de las intervenciones en Chan Chan antes del 2007

If the younger generation are using a certain feature that the adults are not, researchers may hypothesise that there is a change in progress within that speech community. However, if the community language stays stable over time, while the individuals change, then we may decide that this is the process of age-grading (Sankoff 2005: 1004). Chambers explains that:

Age-graded changes are usually thought of as changes in the use of a variant that recur at a particular age in successive generations. They are, then, regular and predictable changes that might be thought of as marking a developmental stage in the individual's life (2003: 206)

Age-graded language occurs when a variant within a speech community is consistently used within one age range regardless of when the experiment took place. An example often cited for age-grading is the use of zee or zed for the final letter of the alphabet (Z) in Canadian speakers of English. As children, many Canadians learn the final letter as zee but by adulthood zed is more readily used (Chambers and Trudgill 1998: 151).

This phenomenon is seen throughout many generations, the change occurs as a child matures and therefore is not showing a variant in transition.

Language over time can succumb to social pressures, accent diversification based on age and perceived social status can be prominent (Bailey 2002:

324). Bailey states that it is common to observe the “sociolectal adjustments that young adults sometimes make in response to the pressure of the marketplace” (2002: 234). The ‘linguistic market place’ is a term used by Sankoff and Laberge (1978) taken from Pierre Bourdieu. It is described as a “way of talking about the extent which an occupation or activity is associated with use of the standard language” (Meyerhoff 2018: 164).

Research found that there is a ‘peak’ in people’s lives where they would use the most standard language (Sankoff and Laberge 1978). The figure

73 below shows an example of this peak over 3 generations. The peak occurs when speakers reach their twenties. Social pressures, employability perception and status affirmation were all attributed to this age group using more standard language (Meyerhoff 2018). There may be pressure from parents, schools or jobs to change to standard features. This was found in Rickford and Price’s (2013) research in California whereby the participants changed their vernacular over time due to job pressures. They felt that to progress in society, certain accent features had to change in order for them to move up the job ladder (Rickford and Price 2013).

Therefore, in this model, the use of non-standard features are used more by the youngest and oldest speakers and display the certain life-span changes described above.

Figure 7: (Meyerhoff 2018: 164) A hypothetical age-graded variable and the pattern of frequency over generations and age groups

This is a significant issue within the discussion of TH-fronting as this feature is sometimes proclaimed to be childish or incorrect (Tollfree 1999 (see 8.1.1 for more discussion). For the older generation in today’s speakers

then, the TH-fronting may carry this stigma. In more recent studies, in the north of England especially, [f] for /θ/ has been seen as a feature most associated with the south of England (Levon and Fox 2014). In the North, it is also seen as a “marker of a decreased professionalism” (Levon and Fox 2014: 204). Therefore, according to the theories above, the use of TH-fronting may be interlinked with age-grading. The issue of age-grading was also included with relation to discussion regarding apparent-time studies and will also be discussed with relation to the creation of the interview also. Potential links between age-grading and TH-fronting will also be discussed in section 8.6.2 with relation to the data collected for this thesis.

In conclusion, age-grading studies have shown that it is mostly the middle age range (‘twenties’ and ‘forties’ in figure 7 above) that use a standard form, while the oldest and youngest speakers are using more stigmatized or non-standard varieties (Chambers and Trudgill 1998; Romaine 1984;

Macaulay 1977). Reasons conceived for adolescents in Edinburgh using stigmatized forms were that younger speakers might be more subject to peer pressure (Romaine 1984). Older speakers who also used similar forms were not subject to any social pressures and therefore able to deviate from standardised variants. The social and economic pressures on middle-aged speakers may cause them to steer away from stigmatised forms (Chambers and Trudgill 1998).

75 An apparent-time study relies on there being a change in linguistic variables between two or more age groups. However, the difference between age-grading and language transformation can sometimes be a little confusing. If a correlation between age and a linguistic change is identified, then “the issue is to decide whether we are dealing with age-grading” (Labov 1994: 46). To decide whether the variation is change in progress or it is due to age-grading, earlier records of dialect from that region can be consulted to check that differences are not repeated in every generation (Chambers and Trudgill 1998). As previously mentioned, the real-time element to this study will allow me to analyse previous data (e.g.

Barry 1984; Pressley 2002) for comparison with my own. Therefore, I will be able to decipher whether any changes seen are due to age-grading or can be indicators of any linguistic changes in MxE.