A be'er bi' a bu'er - attitudes towards the glottal stop in Modern Day Britain
"Using the glottal stop between vowels is a bit like wearing a tattoo: whether you realise it or not, certain doors will be closed on you. It is a statement about you and about where you belong, or where you think you belong, in British society." (Coggle 1994:42)
The glottal stop may be used in a variety of ways: word-finally, as in i' for it, pre-consonantally, as in bulle' proof for bullet-proof or as a word-internal, intervocalic glottal stop as in glo'al for glottal. The use of the glottal stop as a replacement for /t/ is often reported as being heavily stigmatised in Britain (Coggle: 42), despite the fact that it occurs in several accents/dialects in Britain such as Cockney and Glaswegian. The intervocalic, word-internal glottal stop is perhaps the most stigmatised, associated with the uneducated working classes. Glottalling is, however, making its way into RP and with that and the spread of Estuary English, I argue that t-glottalling is slowly losing its stigma in Britain today. To prove this, I have used Anne Fabricius PhD dissertation paper "T-glottalling between stigma and prestige: A sociolinguistic study of modern RP" as a main secondary source, along with an older text - John Honey's "Does accent matter" (1989), to show attitudes towards characteristics of working class speech 16 years ago. However, whilst intervocalic glottalling is still stigmatised and associated with poor education, word-final glottalling is very much becoming an everyday occurrence in Britain today, even amongst RP-speakers. (Fabricius 2000)
WHAT IS T-GLOTTALLING?
T-glottalling refers to the usage of a glottal stop. "The glottal stop is a form of plosive in which the closure is made with the vocal folds."(Hughes & Trudgill 1996:39) The glottal replacement is often used instead of /p/, /b/, /t/, and /k/, although the glottal replacement we are dealing with in this essay is the one replacing /t/. It is a common feature of many accents and dialects in Britain, such as Glaswegian and Cockney, as well as languages outside of the British Isles. It is, however, mostly associated with uneducated speech, at least in Britain, despite the fact that it has long been a feature of the prestige accent RP, although admittedly not in its intervocalic form. However, t-glottalling does not have phonemic status in RP. (1996:39)
Speakers of other languages may question why this particular sound has become such a stigmatised feature. In Britain, it has for a long time been the speech of the upper classes that has been the accent that was the most prestigious (Hughes & Trudgill 1996: 3). This may be changing - see my essay on Estuary English.
ATTITUDES TOWARDS WORKING CLASS SPEECH
Characteristics of working-class speech have been stigmatised due to associations of poor education and ignorance. Cockney, being the speech of the London working class, along with Glaswegian is perhaps one of the most known accents to include the glottal stop. However, one might wonder why working class speech is stigmatised. Perhaps John Honey, author of Does accent matter?, may offer some explanations about working class accents and why he believes them to be a threat to society:
But the Cockney, [...] accent is a closed system: outsiders cannot learn it formally and it can only be acquired by the chance factor of having been brought up in a relatively enclosed community. Moreover, its speakers often use it to advertise their rejection of many of the values of the wider society - such as educatedness and social mobility - and to assert their localism, their particularism, their in-group system of values which is designed to exclude outsiders like you and me. At one level the persistence of local accents is merely a quaint and harmless survival from the past, but at a more serious level it is an expression of a form of tribalism, the type of society dominated by kinship or other such arbitrary networks which cause a person to be valued because he is a member of a specific group rather than for any merit or competence he may display in the duties society requires of him, and where status is ascribed rather than achieved. (1989: 176)
There are several worrying aspects about this text: firstly, Honey is in effect saying that all speakers of working class accents such as Cockney are uneducated and have no interest in gaining an education, and furthermore, that they use their accents as a way of showing that they do not care about the society outside their own community. This claim is not only offensive to the thousands of Cockney speakers - it is also harmful in the sense that a we vs. them attitude hardly can be considered beneficial in any society. Secondly, Honey writes: "outsiders like you and me", and therefore assumes no speaker of a local accent would ever read his work. John Honey's text is a one example which displays negative attitudes towards working class speech.
ARE THE TIMES CHANGING?
Recent studies (Milroy, Milroy &Walshaw 1994, Fabricius 2000) have shown that t-glottalling is on the increase in RP. One study, carried out by PhD student Anne Fabricus, shows that t-glottalling is increasing in RP, and the reason for this being the dialect levelling of the Southeast. She argues that there is a wave-like profile of t-glottalling through the regions, which begins with speakers in London, due to the influence of "London speech" or Cockney. She means that this development is due to the size of the population of the capital, as well as London's dominance of the Southeast. (2000: 141) Fabricius continues to conclude that t-glottalling in RP has lost much of its stigma, but yet not acquired prestige. So, with the increase of glottalling in the prestigious RP accent, some aspects of t-glottalling are showing signs of losing some of its stigma. Fabricious means that as accents are beginning to reflect new patterns of contact and levelling of previous class and regional differences in speech, it has become unfashionable to flaunt a priviliged background in the form of a public school accent. As one example of these changes, she mentions non-RP speaking presenters on the BBC. This could also mean that RP is beginnning to lose its position as the desired accent, and that the young population of the Southeast, is beginning to acquire a covert prestige. Covert prestige is a term coined by Labov, and indicates an attitude where the lower-class, nonstandard varieties have prestige over the Standard. (Trudgill: 2000: 74) In Fabricius´ study of teens in the Home Counties, there was no difference in the production of glottal stops in terms of sex. Some studies have shown females to be leading t-glottalling a a prestigious change - Fabricius´ study, however, provides a contrast from this pattern. Nevertheless, it does seem as if the younger generation is displaying a form of covert prestige, as even young RP speakers are slowly moving away from the Standard in terms of pronunciation (Fabricius: 146).
Estuary English is one example of the "levelling of previous class and regional differences in speech" (2000: 10) that Fabricius mentions. With the increase of regional accents in the public domain, the spread of EE and the increased use of the glottal stop in final positions in RP, the glottal stop is losing its stigma.
CONCLUSION
In this essay, I attempted to demonstrate that t-glottalling is losing its stigma in Britain today, because of its increase in the prestigious accent RP and the spread of Estuary English. I found that although t-glottalling is still associated with the working class, especially when used intervocalically, it is losing its stigma. Young RP speakers today are influenced by the spread of word-final t-glottalling, and speakers from the London area are leading the development. However, intervocallic t-glottalling is still considered stigmatised. As attitudes can change rapidly, more research is definitely called for. Attitudes towards t-glottalling among Estuary English speakers is one area that has not yet been researched, for instance. If t-glottalling among EE speakers is more common, what are EE speakers' attitudes towards the glottal stop occurring in intervocallic environments? These are issues that would benefit from being looked into thoroughly.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Coggle, Paul. (1995) Do you speak Estuary? The new Standard English - how to spot it and speak it. London: Bloomsbury.
Fabricius, Anne H. (2000).T-glottalling between stigma and prestige: A sociolinguistic study of modern RP. PhD dissertation. Copenhagen Business School. (information accessed between July-January 04/05)
Harris, Roxy. (2003) Working Papers in Urban Language & Literacies. King's College London.
Honey, John (1989). Does accent matter? The Pygmalion Factor. London: Faber and Faber.
Hughes, Arthur and Trudgill, Peter (1996). English Accents and dialects. An introduction to social and regional varieties of English in the British Isles. 3rd edition. London/New York: Arnold.
Trudgill, Peter. (2000) Sociolinguistics - An introduction to language and society. Fourth edition. London: Penguin.