Our data
Data to document real-time change
In order to document real-time change – both generational and lifespan – we are collecting three distinct linguistic data types across major age groups of Londoners.
Naturalistic data
This data is derived from three sampling formats, the first two of which are in real-time: panel data (resampling speakers recorded 15 years ago); trend data (recording a new sample of the same age group); apparent time data (different age groups at the present time). Naturalistic data also include recordings across different situations to study how individual repertoires develop.
Perceptual data
This data is being gathered to document changing social perceptions of accent forms as well as changing judgements of what counts as grammatical usage.
Experimental data
This data uses novel designs to study speech control and memory (e.g. whether accent stereotypes lead to selective recall about a person) in adults, adolescents, and children.
These three data types are being gathered in parallel, drawing on the complementary expertise of the research team in working with sociolinguistic interviews, child language experiments, and corpus construction.
The naturalistic data cover adult, adolescent, and child participants in three kinds of samples, in order to study change over generations and across social groups:
Panel data
Individuals re-sampled at multiple time points
Trend data
Parallel cohorts from multiple time points
Apparent time data
Different age groups at single time points