What did we find?

This interactive map below shows where in Merseyside the in-group participants are from and whether they consider themselves as speakers of ‘Scouse’. The blue points answered ‘yes’, the red points answered ‘no’ and the green point answered ‘don’t know’.

An interactive map displaying language attitudes within Merseyside, click on the location to reveal the overall attitude. 

The general pattern shows that central and south Liverpool residents consider themselves as Scouse speaking, whereas when we move further afield to “urban Merseyside” these speakers don’t consider themselves as speakers of Scouse. This could be linked to the perception that the Scouse variety is tied specifically to Liverpool rather than Merseyside due to the accent stemming from Liverpool’s port.

Other than to uncover whether these participants identified as Scouse speakers, we also sought to find out whether there were language attitudes within the in-group. The remaining participants were asked to complete the ranking task again however this time they were given places in Merseyside – St Helens, Wirral and Liverpool.

 

The overall attitude shows the clear ranking of the areas in Merseyside. All overall attitudes had an average higher than 2. As we were previously ranking 1-2 as a negative attitude this therefore shows that the general attitudes are neutral to positive.

Through deeper analysis, similar to the previous in-group findings, we can see that members of the in-group are more likely to possess a positive attitude towards themselves. This is evident on five occasions whereby the speakers rank the area from which they are from as between 4-5 (positive).

 

Although the participant from St. Helens ranks all the areas as equally positive, this still supports the idea of in-group significance as all of the areas are still categorized as within the Merseyside region. The participant can therefore be from multiple groups at the same time e.g. from Merseyside but within this they are also from St Helens.

The common occurrence in all three attitude rankings is the order in which the locations are placed. St Helens is always ranked lowest, followed by Wirral and then Liverpool. A probable reason for this may be that when asked to state where in the UK they are from, 10 out of 16 of the in-group participants said Liverpool. From what we already know about language attitudes, it makes sense for Liverpool to be ranked highest due to the majority of the respondents identifying with this group – hence the positivity.

Interestingly, the clarity of the variety was often ranked highest, therefore being closest to a positive attitude. As this is the variety which the participants are either speaking in or frequently interacting with, it makes sense for them to rank them as clear.

Although the in-group maintained solidarity when facing the out-group this was not maintained, there are clear language attitudes within the in-group community and it can be seen that there are clear groups within the in-group. What we can say from this is that language attitudes are prevalent, even if we have to break the surface to uncover them.

 

 

Edited by Mia Thornton