Belfast study

The Belfast Study was a community study carried out in Belfast in 1975 by two researchers, James and Lesley Milroy. The study was carried out in order to study local practices in interpreting socio-linguistic patterns, by gaining access to everyday speech.

1. BACKGROUND
In 1975, the researchers James and Lesley Milroy realised a community study in Belfast, Northern Ireland. They wanted to gain access to everyday working-class speech to study local practices in interpreting sociolinguistic patterns. Thus their focus was on language in its social context to find out about vernacular norms and their maintenance in local communities.

The Milroys’ major hypothesis was that even when the variables age, sex and social class are held constant, the closer an individual’s network ties with his/her local community are, the closer his/her language approximates to localised vernacular norms.

To have a less ethnocentric analysis than class or caste studies can offer, they used the social network analysis. Social network analyses do not only compare group means, but go beyond that and enable us to study relationships between individuals in close detail. Additionally, it would not have been effective to use a social class analysis when dealing with working class members only.

To avoid the observation effect (subjects tend to assimilate to the interviewer’s speech style) and the outsider-effect (not getting close enough for attaining the necessary data) as far as possible, the Milroys decided on a participant observation technique. That means that the subjects did not know about this sociolinguistic study at all and thus were not influenced by social desirability effects while being recorded.

2. AREAS CHOSEN
On the basis of general ethnographic factors which seemed likely to give rise to linguistic differences within the same social class three low-status urban working-class communities were chosen:
1. Ballymacarrett
2. the Hammer area
3. the Clonard

The river Lagan splits Belfast into an eastern and western part. Ballymacarrett lies east of the Lagan, while the Clonard and the Hammer are west of it. Because of inter-ethnic conflicts, Belfast is highly segregated: Ballymacarrett mainly consists of Protestants who almost never cross the river, the Clonard has Catholic inhabitants and the Hammer area is occupied by Protestants. There is almost no interaction between the Clonard and the Hammer inhabitants. Most of them do not even use the same facilities.

All three areas are so-called “blighted areas” with a high level of social malaise, i.e. high unemployment rates, juvenile crime, sickness, early deaths from disease, and illegitimacy.

3. PROCEEDING
Lesley Milroy herself was the fieldworker. She had an initial link person who belonged to one community group and knew about the study. This contact person gave her a list with names and addresses, but did not introduce of accompany her to the group. When Milroy then approximated these people, she took the role of a “friend of a friend”, i.e. of the contact person. She introduced herself “a friend of X, he thought you might be able to help me”. It was necessary to have a female fieldworker because a solitary woman is less attacked or seen as a threat when she entered a new group. It was also helpful for her to name person X, because this was seen as a proof of good faith by the group members and they directly accepted and enmeshed Milroy in their network.
Lesley Milroy spent time with the community members, fetched the youths and did individual members some favours. All the time, she recorded their conversations. By integrating into the community networks, Milroy also got known by others and became part of the members’ exchange and obligation relationships, but always stayed “friend of a friend”, i.e. a second-order network contact for the others. Because of a rather standardised speech style, priests, teachers and community leaders were avoided.

4. DATA
The language patterns of a total of 48 live speakers were recorded. This means that there were 16 speakers for each community. These 16 people consisted of 4 young men and 4 young women aged 18 to 25 years, and 4 middle-aged men and 4 middle-aged women aged 42 to 55 years. All subjects had a relatively dense and multiplex social network which was often kin-based. These kinds of relationships are typical for traditional, long-established working-class communities, because they are minimally impacted by social or geographical mobility.

Their networks were measured by each individual’s answer to the questions whether they…
1. were member in a high-density, territorially based cluster
2. had substantial ties of kinship in the neighbourhood (more than one household in addition to their own nuclear family)
3. were working at the same place as at least two others from the same area
4. were working at the same place as at least two others of the same sex from the area
5. voluntarily spent leisure hours with workmates (only asked if conditions 3 and 4 were fulfilled).

The network strength score was counted by one point for each “yes”-answer and zero points for each “no”, so that the maximum score was 5 points.

Because of possible interaction effects (e.g., between gender and age) subgroups were formed (e.g., young Clonard women) to show all differences and not compare the group means only. Of course, the procedure of finding the “right” subgroups to discover further deviation was very difficult.

5. VARIABLES
The independent variables for this community study were age, sex and area (Ballymacarrett, the Clonard or the Hammer area).
The dependent variables consisted of eight phonological variables [(ai), (a), (I), (th), (Λ1), (Λ²), (ε1), (ε²)] that were clearly indexical of the Belfast urban speech community. These were analysed on relation to the network structure and background of each individual speaker.
Every informant then had an own network score. Now the scientists examined the impact of this network score on the speaker’s language use. The Milroys used statistical methods and graphs; they counted the correlation and made use of the analysis of variance to prove reliability and significance of the links between linguistic and extralinguistic variables. It was necessary to show that the data -although from a small-scale study only- was representative; otherwise a generalisation of the pattern wouldn’t have been possible.

6. RESULTS
Statistical analyses showed that the strongest vernacular speakers were generally those who had the strongest neighbourhood network ties.

The Milroys’ hypothesis that the extent of individuals’ use of vernacular variants would be strongly influenced by the level of integration into neighbourhood networks could be validated.

We can thus say that a close-knit network is important for dialect maintenance. Locally relevant ties seem to be those of kin, friendship, work and neighbourhood.

Besides some smaller findings , this study also revealed a significant difference in speech style between male and female groups concerning some of the dependent variables. For these variables we can conclude that they serve as sex markers.

7.CONCLUSION
To sum up the most important findings of the Belfast study, we can say:

The social network approach uncovers local social structures and links them to community-wide social and economic patterns. The strongest vernacular speakers are those with the highest level of integration into neighbourhood networks. A close-knit network is important for dialect maintenance.

(When Labov re-analysed the Belfast data in 2001, he confirmed the pattern found by the Milroys.)

Literature:

Coupland, Nikolas (2003): Sociolinguistics: a Reader and Coursebook. Basingstoke: Palgrave.

Marshall, Jonathan (2004): Language Change and Sociolinguistics: Rethinking Social Networks. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Meyer, Paul Georg (2002): Synchronic English Linguistics: An Introduction. Tübingen: Narr.

Milroy, Lesley (1995): Language and Social Networks. Oxford, Blackwell.

Milroy, Lesley; Gordon Matthew (2006): Sociolinguistics: Method and Interpretation. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

Stockwell, Pete (2007): Sociolinguistics: A Resource Book for Students. New York: Routledge Chapman & Hall.

Trudgill, Peter (2000): Sociolinguistics: an Introduction to Language and Society. London: Penguin Books.

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