Research: Manchester Voices
A research project exploring the accents, dialects and identities of people in Greater Manchester.
Summary
Research summary
- May 2019 to October 2022
The Manchester Voices research project aims to understand the role of language in our understanding regional and local identities around Greater Manchester.
This is the largest sociolinguistics project of its kind. It includes:
- the Accent Van—a mobile recording studio inviting people across the 10 boroughs of Greater Manchester to talk about the way they speak
- perceptual dialect maps - people are invited to draw digital maps of where they feel people speak differently around the region
- a podcast for schools - allowing young people to reflect on their own use of language, and learn how to make a podcast
- archive recordings - transcriptions and analysis of old recordings of local people born at the turn of the 20th Century
- attitude surveys—where we track people’s thoughts and feelings about some of the region’s accents
The project will result in an interactive installation at Manchester Central Library, where people can explore our data from across the region. They can also learn the differences between the speech of the ten boroughs, and how these differences affect people’s perceptions and attitudes.
Manchester Voices is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).
Academic papers
- Ryan, S, Dann, H and Drummond, R (in press) Really this girl ought to be going to something better: Rhoticity, gender and education in oral history data from Oldham in Language in Society
Research team
Research team
Lead researcher
Collaborating with:
- Dr Holly Dann
- Manchester Central Library
Contact
Contact us
For general enquiries about our Linguistics research theme, you can contact its lead Dr Rob Drummond.
Project enquiries
You can email the project team.