Peter Trudgill’s Norwich Study (1970s Study)

Peter Trudgill’s Norwich Study (1970s Study)

- The study took place in Norwich in the 1970s.

·   -  The point in the study was to find out why people speak differently and why certain sounds were ignored in words due to the person’s accent.

 n  -Trudgill noted that this way of speaking (saying “talkin” instead of “talking”) was not unique to Norwich. "Nearly everywhere in the Eng-speaking world we find this alternation between higher-class/formal ng and lower class/informal n. It goes back to the fact that in Old English (and later) there were two forms, a gerund ending in -ing(walking is good for you) and a present participle ending in -end (he was walking). The -end form was the ancestor of -n' and -ing (obviously) of -ing.”

·    -  He noted also that it depended on what class you were in whether you mispronounced these words or not and were more careful with your speech.

·    -   He also says that it was mainly common in the lower working class for these changes in the way they speak to be more common.

·     -  He also finds out that it is more common for men to use these variations in speech compared to women. “When women were questioned about what they thought they were saying, they tended to say they used the standard -ing forms more often than they really did.  When men were questioned about what they thought they were saying, they tended to say they used the nonstandard -in' forms more often than they really did.”

·     - When conducting the study he split people into groups depending on their gender and social class. 

 - He found that women wanted to sound more standard whereas the men wanted to sound more non-standard.