Claudia Haller

"I Am British but I Am Still a Geordie". Local Identity in Northern England Claudia Haller

Seminar paper from the year 2014 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 2, http://www.uni-jena.de/ (Anglistik/Amerikanistik), course: Sociolinguistics, language: English, abstract: "The Geordie nation - that's what we're fighting for. London's the enemy. The south-east's the enemy. You exploit us, you use us, you take everything you can from us but never recognise our existence." (Sir John Hall in The Independent 21.06.1994, cited by Watt 2002: 55) This quotation by the former chairman of Newcastle United Football Club Sir John Hall serves as the basis for the observations dealt with in this paper where it is the aim to investigate the Geordie dialect. Football is firmly established on the Tyneside and has a clear connection to both identity and language. A particular focus will lie on the dialect levelling in the Geordie area as well as on phonological features in Northern England in general. Moreover, historical facts concerning the Tyneside and a classification of Geordie will be embedded in this work. Hence, latest studies of linguistic researchers will be included and evaluated to show common ground as well as differences regarding to social class and gender. Here, an empirical study of variants of FACE and GOAT vowels helps to understand the process of contact-induced levelling.