Sociolinguistic constructions of identity among adolescent males in Glasgow

The city of Glasgow, Scotland, is typically associated with violence, criminality, and aggression, and these negative associations impact on the social meaning of Glaswegian Vernacular as used by working-class adolescent males. There have been, however, no studies which have made a systematic attempt to uncover the role fine-grained phonetic variation plays in indexing these associations. Moreover, there have been no studies of Glaswegian which have examined locally constituted groups of adolescent male speakers, and how such speakers use a range of linguistic and social practices in their construction of particular social identities. This study is an ethnographically informed sociolinguistic account of Glaswegian Vernacular which examines the nexus of language, identity, and violence using data collected from a group of working-class adolescent males from a high school in the south side of the city between 2005 – 2008, and aims to uncover whether adolescent males who identified as ‘neds’ or who engaged in social practices considered ‘neddy’ have quantitative linguistic differences from those adolescent males who do not. Through the fine-grained phonetic analysis of the linguistic variables BIT, CAT and (TH), coupled with ethnographic observations, this thesis shows how an apparently homogenous group of speakers use linguistic and social resources to differentiate themselves from one another.

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

PhD

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

University of Glasgow

Year dc:date.issued

2009

Author dc:creator

• Lawson, Robert

• GN Anthropology
• P Philology. Linguistics

Language dc:language

en