This ongoing project forms - but is not restricted to! - my PhD research at the University of Sheffield. Over the next few years, I aim to investigate the features of the Potteries accent, look at how is has changed and developed over the years, and listen to people's opinions about and attitudes towards it. Through the use of archive data kindly provided by Stoke-on-Trent Museums, public surveys and interviews with current residents, I hope to paint an accurate picture of an accent that has, as yet, been under-documented and under-analysed linguistically, as well as draw important links between the accent, people's affiliation to the city and the social and industrial history of the Potteries region.
The project is funded by The Wolfson Foundation, a charity supporting research in the arts and humanities, as well as science and medicine, education and health and disability.
The Stoke-on-Trent Museums group consists of The Potteries Museum and Art Gallery in Hanley, and the Gladstone Pottery Museum in Longton. They have offered kind help and support to the project, as well as access to their extensive oral history archive.
About the investigators
I'm Hannah, and I'm the lead researcher on this project. I grew up in Newcastle-under-Lyme, and did a BA in English Language and Linguistics at Lancaster University, and an MA in Linguistics at the University of York, before starting my PhD at Sheffield in October 2013. I've investigated the accent of the Potteries throughout both my previous degrees, and I hope to take my investigations further in the future. I think the Potteries and its accent are incredibly interesting, and hope to fill a current gap in linguistic research with this project's findings, as well as engage the local community on a subject close to many people's hearts.
Emma Moore is a senior lecturer in Sociolinguistics at the University of Sheffield, specialising in ethnographic methodologies and issue of language and identity. Chris Montgomery is a lecturer in Dialectology at the University of Sheffield. He is also from Newcastle-under-Lyme, and his research looks at perceptual dialectology, or the way in which people think about and react to accents.
About this website
This site has a few functions:
- To document the exciting, interesting and no doubt stressful experience of completing this PhD!
- To act as an information point for the project, and a place for people to find my contact details.
- To request help and assistance from fellow locals in collecting data.
- To publish the results of the investigations for anybody who might be interested!
If you have any questions or comments, please don't hesitate to contact me on voicesofthepotteries@gmail.com
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