This chapter presents a self-contained ethnography of twenty-seven girls at a high school in Bolton, in the north-west of England. The setting of the school, Midlan High, is contextualised socially and geographically and the social groups within the school are described. The ethnography identifies four communities of practice in the school and these are described in detail. The communities of practice include the elitist and trendy pro-school Eden Village clique; the sensible, pragmatic and pro-school Geeks; the independent, cool, and somewhat anti-school Populars; and the most rebellious and anti-school group, the Townies. In articulating the process of ethnography, the chapter also reflects upon the fieldwork process, providing a frank and honest account of the intricacies of doing ethnography within an educational context.

How stylistically sophisticated can the use of morpholexical/morphosyntactic variation be? By focusing on the range of social meanings that can be articulated by ‘levelled were’ (e.g., she were funny) – a regionally restricted variant of the type most frequently studied in sociolinguistics – this chapter explores the extent to which social meanings are fixed by a variant’s enduring association with place. It first considers how children acquire linguistic variation and the extent to which this process interacts with their ability to vary grammatical items stylistically. The analysis then explores how levelled were patterns by social class, parental place of birth, and community of practice at Midlan High. It provides evidence that all of these factors play a role in the use of levelled were, but that the most robust correlation is with community of practice. This data is used to argue that grammatical variants can mark distinctive social styles and personas, and that speakers can adapt their use of variation providing that (i) they have access to a range of variants, and (ii) that they are motivated to use them by virtue of its utility to them as a social symbol.

Building on the discussion of suprasegmentals in Chapters 6and 7, this chapter introduces the concept of intonation. The chapter begins by defining intonation both articulatorily and acoustically, with a focus on the relationship among pitch, tone, and intonation. The chapter then provides an overview of methods of analysing intonation, including acoustic analysis and theTone and Break Indices (ToBI) System. The chapter next examines intonational systems in different varieties of English by first describing GAmE and SSBE sentence intonation and pitch accent patterns, to provide a framework through which to examine other varieties. The intonation and pitch accent patterns from different varieties is then discussed, as is the pitch range of different varieties. The chapter then examines two global phenomena in detail – High Rising Terminal on declarative statements, or uptalk; and creaky voice, also commonly called vocal fry. The chapter ends with exercises to check your understanding of the content of the chapter, as well as to expand your knowledge through an analysis of the intonation and pitch accent patterns in your own variety of English.

In this chapter, we will examine the emergence and evolution of the language called English. One of the first questions we will seek to answer is: Is English ‘English’? In other words, did English originate in the geographic area known today as England? To answer this question, we journey back to the roots of English, beginning with Indo-European. We then begin the story of English, with the emergence of Old English from 449 CE, after which we move into the era of Middle English, focusing on the impact of Anglo-Norman French. The emergence of English literature, and particularly the work of Chaucer, during this period is also discussed. We willexamine how British international trade and colonization of the Americas, Australia, and New Zealand, as well as parts of Asia, the Caribbean, and Africa, changed and spread the English language worldwide. The chapter concludes with an overview of the terminology used to describe the varieties of English that will be examined in this volume. The final section of the chapter has a series of exercises and tasks to guide you through a revision of the contents of the chapter.