AbstractsLanguage, Literature & Linguistics

The Norfolk Dialect

by Nadja Birgitte Kjeldergaard




Institution: Roskilde University
Department:
Year: 2015
Keywords: Norfolk Dialect; Sociolinguistics
Record ID: 1120843
Full text PDF: http://rudar.ruc.dk/handle/1800/20752


Abstract

This report investigates the current state of the Norfolk dialect and the changes and challenges it is currently facing, with regards to change and internal and external pressures from the standard english hegemony. In order to obtain an elaborate view into these affairs, the report takes a theoretical stand in a sociological, dialectical and geographical outset. The data collected for the project consists of interviews with the headmaster and three primary school teachers of a primary school in the rural village of Brundall, and an interview with the chairman, Ted Peachment, of the local dialect preservation organisation Friends of Norfolk Dialect. Additionally, a series of rapid anonymous surveys were conducted in the streets of the county capital of Norwich and the streets of Brundall, respectively. The project illuminates how the Norfolk dialect is still present in the speech of mostly the elderly segment of the native population, but seems to be disregarded in the everyday speech of the majority of the younger speakers. The report arrives at a conclusion, that the changes the dialect is currently undergoing, are detrimental to such a degree that it has become endangered - especially on the phonetic/accent level where many of the local mergers seem already to have been omitted.