Riitta Kerman visited Essex and Lancashire in 1988 in order to gather material for her Pro Gradu Thesis, which was supervised
by Ossi Ihalainen. Kerman's selection criteria included that the informants should be permanent residents in the area and with only a
short number of years spent in school. The occupations of the informants range from labourers in
weaving mills to a library worker. Her informant selection is influenced by sociolinguistic theories in dialectology,
as she chose her informants from different age groups (half of them were younger than 50 years in contrast to the oldest age group
selected for all the other corpora) and more equally from both sexes (50 percent of her informants are women). Her localities of choice
are from suburban areas or small industrial towns, which is again in contrast to the other corpora, in which localities were selected from rural
regions.
In Essex, Riitta Kerman found her informants through the local pub, in Lancashire through the local librarian. In
the summer of 2003, she donated copies of the Essex and Lancashire recordings to the VARIENG research unit.
Map of Essex (left) and Lancashire (right) and the localities visited.
S.W. from Barrowford. Recorded in 1988. Age, sex: 40, female. Occupation: Weaving instructor. Description: S.W. tells about working with looms.
An' it takes the weft across one way, but it doesn't go back again. So it 'as to go down on to a like a conveyor
belt, an' that 's why they 'ave so many of them because there 's one going across droppin' down and then another till they get the selves
back up again.
Download the sound clip by right-clicking here and choosing Save As
from the menu. MP3 1:25 1,29mb.
Sample #2
K from Stanway. Recorded in 1988. Age, sex: 80, male. Occupation: Coach driver. Description: K talks about England belonging to the EEC.
Well, there 's for and against, in' there? Is for and against. In some s- cases they win an' some cases they lose. I
personally feel very sorry for = people in the small way on lands, smallholds what they 're called. You know what gow small stuff, lettuces
and all things like that. Er where the big ones come along and just slash the price...
Download the sound clip by right-clicking here and choosing Save As
from the menu. MP3 1:53 1,71mb.
