Pearce 2009

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English Linguistics
A Perceptual Dialect Map of North East England

Michael Pearce
Journal of English Linguistics 2009 37: 162 originally published online 31 March 2009
DOI: 10.1177/0075424209334026
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Journal of English Linguistics
Volume 37 Number 2
June 2009 162-192
© 2009 Sage Publications
A Perceptual Dialect Map 10.1177/0075424209334026

http://eng.sagepub.com
of North East England

hosted at
http://online.sagepub.com
Michael Pearce
University of Sunderland, United Kingdom
This study presents perceptual dialect maps derived from a questionnaire completed by
almost 1,600 people across North East England. Respondents were given the names of
fifty-one locations and asked to provide numerical judgments on the “similarity” or
“difference” of the dialect of speakers from these locations compared to speakers from
the respondents’ hometowns. The questionnaire also invited respondents to comment
on accents and dialects in the region. The numerical data are mapped, revealing a per-
ceptual landscape consisting of three broad areas further subdivided into smaller per-
ceptual zones. These perceptual areas are described and discussed in relation to salient
geographical, social, and cultural factors. The article concludes by placing this research
in the context of dialectological and variationist studies of English in the North East.
Keywords: North East England; folk linguistics; perceptual dialectology; language

attitudes; regional identity
T he present article’s attempt to map the linguistic landscape of North East England
from the perspective of people living there is a contribution to the sociolinguistic
discipline of perceptual dialectology (PD), a branch of folk linguistics—the study of
what ordinary people (i.e., nonlinguists) know, think, and feel about language. Dennis
Preston, one of the discipline’s major proponents (Wales 2006a:57), calls PD the
“dialectologist’s-sociolinguist’s-variationist’s interest in folk linguistics,” and he asks
a series of questions that he suggests it is the perceptual dialectologist’s job to
answer: “What do non-specialists have to say about variation? Where do they believe
it comes from? Where do they believe it exists? What do they believe is its function?”
(Preston 1999:xxv). The focus of this article is mainly on the third question: where
do people believe linguistic variation exists? Trying to answer this question is of
course interesting and worthwhile for its own sake—not least as a contribution to the
ethnography and cultural anthropology of the area under scrutiny (Preston 1999:xxiv).
But Preston (2003:123) also argues that “language ideologies and folk beliefs” are
“important considerations in the general study of language variation and change.”1
This is because language attitudes, which comprise people’s beliefs and feelings
about features of language, will predispose them to act in certain ways. In other
words, what people believe about variation and change might have a bearing on
“actual” variation and change; this idea is taken up later in the article.
162

Pearce / Perceptual Dialect Map of North East England 163
Table 1
Counties and Districts in North East England
County Districts
Northumberland Blyth Valley, Wansbeck, Castle Morpeth, Tynedale, Alnwick,

Berwick-upon-Tweed
Tyne and Wear Gateshead, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, North Tyneside,
South Tyneside, Sunderland
County Durham City of Durham, Easington, Sedgefield, Teesdale, Wear Valley,
Derwentside, Chester-Le-Street, Hartlepool, Darlington,
Stockton-on-Tees (north of the River Tees)
North Yorkshire (part only) Stockton-on-Tees (south of the River Tees),
Redcar and Cleveland, Middlesbrough
The setting for this study is North East England. In human geography, the term region
is generally applied to “a more or less bounded area possessing some sort of unity or
organizing principle(s) that distinguish it from other regions” (Gregory 2000:687). The
territory contained within the “bounded area” of North East England can vary depending
on who is defining it and for what ends. But in this article, when the terms North East
England and the North East are used, they should be understood as referring to the
official administrative counties and districts given in Table 1. These areas make up “the
North East,” one of the nine Government Office Regions of England. In comparison with
other English regions, the population is quite low (approximately 2.5 million in 2001)
and spread over a large area (850,000 hectares). Most people live in three conurbations
centered on the cities of Newcastle-upon-Tyne (which from now on is referred to as
Newcastle), Sunderland, and Middlesbrough. To the south and north of Tyneside lie the
coalfields of County Durham and southeastern Northumberland, with their ex-mining
towns and villages, while the rest of the region consists of wild moor-covered uplands
and rich agricultural lowlands (Aalen 2006; Vigar 2006).
This region has played an important role in British history. For example, in the
seventh and eighth centuries it was at the heart of the largest and most powerful of
the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, which stretched from north of the River Humber into
what is now southeastern Scotland. It was also one of the most important centers of
learning in western Europe, with its intellectual and religious life based at the
monasteries and scriptoria of Lindisfarne, Jarrow, and Wearmouth. A thousand years
later, as a consequence of the increasing exploitation of indigenous coal reserves in
the eighteenth century, North East England became one of the first European regions
to industrialize (Benneworth & Charles 2007). A particularly significant industrial
development—the railway—arose from the need to transport coal rapidly and
efficiently from the collieries in West Durham and Darlington to the port at Stockton
on the River Tees (MacRaild & Purdue 2006; Muir 2006). Later, the region was at
the vanguard of developments in shipbuilding technology, armaments, and electrical

164 Journal of English Linguistics
turbine generation, “all of which fuelled the growth of industry in the region”
(Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development [OECD] 2006:38). This
rapid industrial growth meant that workers in the North East were some of the
earliest to organize themselves for their mutual advantage.
Yet in spite of its importance in English cultural, economic, and social history, the
North East of England does not usually loom large in the mental maps of people from
outside the region, particularly those from London and the South East, who inhabit
what is widely perceived as the cultural, political, and economic “centre of national
gravity” (Wales 2006b:1) and who therefore perhaps have a disproportionate role in
shaping what Russell (2004) calls the “national imagination.” Indeed, to many
southerners, much of England north of Birmingham, in particular the North East, is
Terra Septentrionalis Incognita. It is not a prime internal tourist destination: in 2007
only 3.6 percent of tourist trips by U.K. citizens to U.K. destinations were to the North
East of England, compared with 20.0 percent to destinations in the South West and
27.5 percent to London and the South East (VisitBritain 2007). Nor is it much of a
target for inter-regional migration—according to the Office of National Statistics
(ONS 2007) for the year ending September 2007, just 3.6 percent of the 110,750
internal migrants in England moved to the North East (the smallest proportion of all
the English regions), compared to 35.3 percent who went to London and the South
East; and of the incomers to the North East, only 8,300 were from London and the
South East (9,100 came from Yorkshire and the Humber, in spite of this region’s much
smaller population). Such facts mean that outsiders’ perceptions of the North East are
seldom derived from direct experience but rather from representations on television,
in films, and in the national press. These representations often simplify and distort, in
particular by focusing on the city of Newcastle and its inhabitants (commonly known
as “Geordies”) to the exclusion of other places in the region.2 As a result, there is a
tendency for outsiders to regard the whole of the North East, from Darlington to the
Scottish border, as “Geordieland,” even though within the region the term has
powerful associations with Tyneside and the city of Newcastle (see Beal 2004b).
Many of the questionnaire respondents comment on this attitude (the hometown
of the respondent is given in brackets):3
(1) Why do people always assume everyone in the North East speaks with a Geordie
accent? Grrr. [Darlington]
(2) I am a Wearsider through and through and I think my accent is totally different
from the Geordie accent.4 However, people from outside the North East think we
all sound the same and of course we’re all Geordies! [Sunderland]
(3) I am so sick of people saying to me “Why aye man, Byker Grove” when I meet
people from different areas of the country, when I am not from Newcastle and in
fact have a Durham accent.5 [Durham]
The fact that the “incorrect” use of the label Geordie rankles with these respondents
is probably a consequence of Newcastle’s perceived dominance in the region, a

perception that has emerged in previous sociolinguistic studies of the North East and
that has some basis in fact. For example, Burbano-Elizondo (2006:113) reports on
“Sunderland people in particular,” complaining that “their city is regarded as
Newcastle’s poor relation.” Llamas, in her study of the sociolinguistic implications
of the “border town” status of Middlesbrough, located “in a transition zone between
the extreme south of the North East and the extreme north of Yorkshire” (Llamas
2007:580), identifies “an ardent sense of rivalry and even hostility towards the
Geordie accent” and “a resentment towards the perceived dominance of Newcastle
in the North-East” (Llamas 2006:107). Indeed, in economic terms, Tyneside is
dominant. A recent OECD report (2006) describes it as the “growth centre” of the
North East, with 36.9 percent of the region’s “economic contribution.”
Implicit in the respondents’ statements above is the belief—as an assertion of
regional identity in the face of homogenizing external views that appear to reinforce
Newcastle’s hegemony—that distinctive varieties of English are spoken in different
parts of the region. And many of the respondents take up the theme of internal
variation directly.
(4) It’s amazing sometimes how big the differences in accents can be even with neigh-
bouring towns. [South Shields]
(5) People from the north of the region sound completely different to those from the
south. Those from Teesside sound nothing like those from South West Durham.
Darlington and Bishop Auckland sound similar, until you listen and then you can
detect huge differences. [South Shields]
Such claims point to the linguistic element in what Burbano-Elizondo (2006:113)

considers the “various strong and distinct local identities that distinguish the inhabit-
ants of different North-Eastern localities.”
This study explores these distinct identities at the level of perceived differences
and similarities in speech. Its regional U.K. focus makes the study somewhat unusual
since most sociolinguistic research with a PD element, especially in Anglophone
contexts, has traditionally been concerned with what Preston (forthcoming) calls
“broad, non-local assessment of dialect distinctions”, eliciting perceptions of dialectal
variation for entire countries, in particular the United States (see, e.g., Preston 1986)
and the United Kingdom (Inoue 1996/1999; Montgomery 2007). However, some
recent studies, such as Benson’s (2003) in Ohio and Bucholtz et al.’s (2007, 2008) in
California, have narrower foci, exploring the perceptual landscape of single U.S.
states. Despite the fact that Ohio is approximately fifteen times bigger than North
East England and California (a state that is larger than the whole of England and
Wales) is nineteen times bigger, this study can be regarded as proportionately
equivalent in its scope to these state-based studies.
The method I employ to derive perceptual dialect areas and boundaries, which is
described in the next section, is a modified version of the “little arrows” technique,

which was used in the earliest perceptual studies carried out in the Low Countries.
This was a method developed in the late nineteenth century by Willems in his study
of the Low Franconian dialects (Goeman 1989/1999:138-139). The technique was
also employed in a postal survey carried out in 1939 by the Department of Dialects
of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences and Letters, which wrote to 1,500
people across the country, approximately half of whom were teachers (Daan
1970/1999:23). Correspondents were asked, “1. In which place(s) in your area does
one speak the same or about the same dialect as you do? 2. In which place(s) in your
area does one speak a definitely different dialect than you do? Can you mention any
specific differences?” (Rensink 1955/1999:3). The results for the first question
formed the basis of a series of maps, employing a method of cartographic
representation first used in a map of North Brabant (Weijnen 1946) and later in maps
of the entire country (e.g., Daan & Blok 1969). On these maps, arrows connect a
respondent’s home area to another that the respondent says is linguistically similar,
and “groupings of these connected areas . . . are then identified as ‘unities’ based on
the dialect consciousness . . . of the respondents” (Preston 2002:57-58). This means
that blank areas uncrossed by arrows are interpretable as dialect boundaries
(Heeringa 2004:12).
Method
Like the Dutch study, my main data collection tool was a questionnaire. Unlike
that study, however, which surveyed one—usually older and generally middle
class—male from each target location, the research reported here considers, in
common with most current work in PD (e.g., Bucholtz et al. 2007, 2008), the
responses of multiple subjects, of both genders, and of a diverse range of ages and
social backgrounds. The questionnaire was publicized in the local media, and e-mail
invitations were also sent out to all current staff and students of the University of
Sunderland. People were encouraged to complete the questionnaire online (a link
was provided to a Web site set up for the purpose), but a hard copy was also made
available for those preferring pen and paper.6
In the main part of the questionnaire, respondents were asked to consider fifty-
one locations across the North East of England (see Figure 1). These locations were
chosen either because they are large centers of population (and are therefore likely
to be reasonably well known to people) or because they have local salience in
relation to possible perceptual boundaries.
Participants were invited to think about the speech of people in each of these
places, assessing the extent of its similarity to or difference from the speech of
people in their own hometown. The wording here is important. At the start of the
questionnaire, respondents were asked to give their hometowns. The request was
accompanied by a note explaining that this is “probably the place you grew up in.

Figure 1
Survey Locations

It’s also probably the answer you give when someone from the North East asks you
‘Where are you from?’” This wording, rather than alternatives such as “Where do
you live?” or “Where are you from?” was used because it reduces the potential
confusion that might be experienced by someone who has lived in several different
places and who might be unsure about which of these places to choose (although a
majority of respondents—53.6 percent—did indicate that they had lived all or most
of their lives in their given hometown locations). The wording also exploits the
powerful connotations of the word home. Home, as Cresswell (2004:24) points out,
“is an exemplary kind of place where people feel a sense of attachment and
rootedness,” and by making such a center of meaning the point of origin for
judgments of similarity and difference in speech, the respondents’ commitment to
the task is perhaps more fully secured than it might otherwise have been.7
The responses of each participant for each location were scored. A judgment that
people in location A speak “the same” as people from the respondent’s hometown
were scored 1, while judgments that their speech is “very similar” or “quite similar”
were scored 2 and 3, respectively. Judgments of difference were scored 4 (“a bit
different”), 5 (“very different”) and 6 (“completely different”). There was also an
option that read, “I’ve never heard of this place, or I’ve never met anyone from there
so I don’t know what they speak like” (this response was treated as missing data and
was not scored). This method, a version of which is also used in Benson’s (2003)
study of dialect boundaries in Ohio, leads to a more nuanced and variegated account
of dialect perceptions than the one used in the 1939 Dutch Survey, which conflated
into a single question the wordings “the same” and “about the same,” leaving no
option for the respondent to consider degrees of difference.
To convert the scores into a map, completed questionnaires were grouped
according to the hometowns of the respondents. Then, for each of the hometown
locations with five or more respondents,8 the median judgment score for each of the
fifty other questionnaire locations was calculated: a low score indicates that, as a
whole, respondents from location A view the speech of people from location B as
“close” to their own; a high score indicates “distance.” For example, respondents
from Newcastle give a median score of 5.00 for speakers from Sunderland (“very
different”) and 2.00 for Gateshead (“very similar”). Once the judgment scores were
obtained, they were converted into arrows. Because the questionnaire allowed for up
to three similarity judgments to be made (“the same,” “very similar,” and “quite
similar”), the relationship between locations at different levels of similarity can be
shown. Perceptual dialect areas—Weijnen’s “unities”—were mapped by drawing
lines around interlinked locations.
The adoption of the “little arrows” technique contrasts with much recent work in
PD (e.g., Bucholtz et al. 2007), which, following Preston (e.g., 1981), asks respondents
to annotate outline maps, mainly by drawing “lines around areas where they believe
regional speech zones exist” and labeling these zones “with names of the area, of the
dialect, of typical speakers from them and/or representative examples of speech for

each” (Preston, forthcoming). Such an approach was discounted in this study for two
main reasons. First, to ensure as wide an uptake as possible, much of the data
gathering was done online, and it is difficult to collect map data electronically.
Second, map-drawing tasks risk amplifying the effect of cartographical ignorance.
People have a richly developed sense of their local environment, but they might not
necessarily have an understanding of where locations are in relation to each other in
“map space.”
The method of data collection used here is practical and efficient, but it also has
potential weaknesses. Gathering volunteers through appeals on a university e-mail
list and in local newspapers is quick and cheap, but since only 54 percent of
households in North East England have Internet access (ONS 2008a), and given that
the vast majority of questionnaires were completed online rather than on paper (at a
ratio of 15:1), the sample is arguably skewed toward the upper end of the social scale
(since members of U.K. universities and confident Internet users tend to come from
this segment of society). Because of this, I make no strong claims for the
representativeness of the results: the perceptual boundaries and areas derived from
the data reflect the pooled judgments of the respondents and are not generalizable to
some larger population (e.g., everyone in North East England). However, it is worth
stressing that the relatively high number of respondents makes the study less
representationally questionable than some previous research in PD (in particular the
early Dutch work). And as I report in the next section, the respondents were in fact
from a wider range of social backgrounds than might have been expected, given how
the data were collected.
Overview of Findings
Tables 2 and 3 give a breakdown of the questionnaire respondents by gender, age,
and location.9 Some of the apparent biases here might be related to the uptake of the
questionnaire. For example, the fact that there are twice as many female respondents
as males could have something to do with the large contingent of university students
who took part as a result of my e-mail invitation: in common with most other U.K.
universities, there are more female students at Sunderland than male students. The bias
toward the 18 to 29 age group might have a similar origin; it could also be related to
the fact that younger people are perhaps happier to work online than older people,
although anyone who expressed a preference for a paper copy was sent one.
Furthermore, hometown locations are not proportionately represented. As one might
expect, the two largest cities in the region (Sunderland and Newcastle) have the
highest number of respondents, but the third largest (Middlesbrough) is underrepresented,
given its large population. And the disproportionately high uptake from South Shields
is probably because of the prominence given to my research in an article in the local
newspaper.

Table 2
Demographics of the Questionnaire Respondents
n %
Gender
Male 490 31.4
Female 1,058 67.8
Not given 13 0.8
Total 1,561
Age
11–17 69 4.4
18–29 873 55.9
30–45 352 22.5
40–59 184 11.8
60–69 55 3.5
70 or older 24 1.5
Not given 4 0.3
Total 1,561
Table 3
Top Fifteen Hometowns of Questionnaire Respondents
Location Number Location Number of Respondents
46 Sunderland 389
32 Newcastle-upon-Tyne 124
42 South Shields 107
16 Durham 78
20 Gateshead 61
22 Hartlepool 54
48 Washington 48
29 Middlesbrough 43
39 Seaham 34
26 Houghton-Le-Spring 33
15 Darlington 31
35 Peterlee 30
27 Jarrow 26
45 Stockton-on-Tees 23
51 Whitley Bay 21
Total 1,102
An indication of the social background of respondents is given in Table 4. On the

questionnaire, respondents were asked to supply the postcode of the “house in the
place you grew up in/consider as your home town,” and 74.8 percent did so. Using
ONS (2008b) data (see Noble et al. 2008), the levels of income deprivation (which
are based on the proportion of people living in low income families within a
neighborhood) were extracted for each respondent’s postcode.

Table 4
Levels of Income Deprivation Associated with Respondents’ Home Locations
Deprivation Index Number of Respondents %
1 318 26.9
2 289 24.4
3 211 17.8
4 144 12.2
5 221 18.7
Total 1,183
A deprivation index of 1 indicates that a respondent’s postcode lies within the top
20 percent of the most income-deprived neighborhoods in the United Kingdom; an
index of 5 indicates that the postcode belongs to the 20 percent least income-
deprived neighborhoods (a neighborhood, of which there are 32,482 in the country,
contains approximately 1,500 people). Of those respondents who supplied postcodes,
the highest proportion (26.9 percent) have affiliations with locations in the top
20 percent most income-deprived neighborhoods, and 18.7 percent are from the
20 percent least income-deprived neighborhoods. In North East England,
approximately 32.0 percent of neighborhoods are in the top 20 percent of deprived
areas nationally and approximately 5.0 percent in the least deprived 20 percent of
neighborhoods. These figures suggest a slight skewing toward the higher end of the
social scale amongst respondents but also reveal reasonable penetration into some of
the more deprived areas. We can infer from this that the people completing the
questionnaire are far from socially homogenous.
Figure 2 shows the perceptual relationships among the questionnaire locations.
The thickest arrows represent what might be termed “first-level” perceptual similarity
since they are drawn between locations with a median judgment of 1.00 to 1.5, indicating
that, on the whole, respondents see people from the linked location as speaking “the
same” as people from their hometowns. For example, respondents in location 6 (Blyth)
judge that people from location 13 (Cramlington) speak “the same” as people from
Blyth. If there is a reciprocal link, the arrow is two way, as in the case of location
4 (Bishop Auckland) and location 43 (Spennymoor). The thinner arrows show links at
the level of 2.00 to 2.5 (“very similar”): this is “second-level” similarity. Nonsymmetrical
links, where the reciprocal judgments are at different levels, such as location
2 (Billingham) and location 45 (Stockton), are marked with twin-headed arrows.
Discussion of Findings
Figure 3 shows “perceptual areas” (corresponding to Weijnen’s “unities”) derived

from the network of arrows. Lines are drawn at the boundaries between areas

Figure 2
Little Arrows

containing locations linked by at least second-level similarity. This results in the

emergence of three “sectors” (northern, central, and southern). Symbols are used to
mark locations linked by first-level similarity within these sectors, resulting in the
emergence of seven “zones.”
Like all cartographic representations, this map should be treated with caution. The
precise and clean-cut appearance of a map can lend it a persuasive—but possibly
misleading—air of scientific authority (Wright 1966, quoted in Pickles 2004:36). The
lines and symbols point to the approximate position of a perceptual boundary (based,
of course, on the aggregated judgments of this particular set of questionnaire
respondents); and, like isoglosses, they certainly do not mark an identifiable “line” on
the ground (Kirk, Sanderson & Widdowson 1985:9, quoted in Wales 2006a:61). In
the description of the sectors that follows, links are made between perceptual areas
and extralinguistic factors that might play a role in people’s formation of cognitive
“landscapes” of regions and dialect areas (Wales 2006a:58-59). Indeed, it is important
to emphasize here that social, cultural, and geographical factors are potentially as
important (and perhaps for some respondents more important) in shaping perceptions
than are factors principally related to language, hence the weight given to these in the
descriptions of the sectors and their boundaries. I conclude my discussion of findings
by looking at the relationship between the extent and shape of these perceptual areas
and “actual” linguistic variation in space by drawing on research from both dialec
tological and variationist studies.
The Northern Sector

This sector contains the southeastern Northumberland coastal plain, together with
the entirety of Tyneside, a conurbation of some 880,000 people, with Newcastle at
its heart. The aggregated judgments of respondents result in a perceptual linguistic
area corresponding closely to the borders of “Geordieland,” as popularly under-
stood. Beal (2004b:34), for instance, in her discussion of “where ‘Geordies’ consider
their homeland to be,” claims that, beyond Newcastle, “Geordies can be found
throughout Northumberland and even in the northern part of the old County Durham,
at least in Gateshead and South Shields.” The Tyne seems to be of particular sig-
nificance in popular conceptions of Geordie territory, and some respondents com-
ment on the river’s role. Some see it as a barrier, others as a carrier of influence:
(6) North side of the Tyne is fairly uniform. [South Shields]

(7) The river Tyne has a common centre of gravity in terms of how similarly people
speak on both sides of the river. [Wallsend]
(8) Along the banks of the Tyne the accent is very similar, both north and south of the
river. [South Shields]
(9) I think the dialects differ depending on which side of the River Tyne you live.
[Newcastle]

Figure 3
Perceptual Areas: Three “Sectors” and Seven “Zones”

The quantitative findings appear to confirm the Tyne’s centrality. Of the twenty-one
locations in the northern sector, sixteen lie within 5 kilometers of the river’s urban
reaches. But it is noteworthy that there are fewer northern sector locations south of
the Tyne than north of it, suggesting that Geordie territory remains more strongly
associated with “old” Northumberland than it does with “old” County Durham. There
is also some correlation between the shape and extent of the northern sector and cur-
rent political boundaries. All the locations in the sector either lie within Northumberland
or the metropolitan county of Tyne and Wear. Indeed, of the five metropolitan bor-
oughs constituting Tyne and Wear (see Table 1), only Sunderland lies outside the
northern sector, and it is the only one that is not contiguous with the River Tyne.
Turning to the first-level perceptual zones, if the northern sector is broadly
“Geordieland,” then zone B is its heartland. Interestingly, although all locations
within 5 kilometers of the Tyne at Newcastle are in this zone, together with the two
locations at the mouth of the river on the north bank (North Shields and Tynemouth),
there is a cluster of locations toward the river mouth on the south bank (Hebburn,
Jarrow, and South Shields) that forms part of a separate zone (C). This is perhaps a
further indication of the salience of the River Tyne when it comes to people’s
perceptual maps. On Tyneside, the river is traversed by several bridges—with seven
of these crossings (three road, three rail, one pedestrian) spanning a 1.5-kilometer
stretch of the river between Gateshead and Newcastle. Downstream, the next
crossings are nearly 10 kilometers away in the form of road and pedestrian tunnels
between Jarrow and Howden. There is also a passenger ferry between North and
South Shields. Perhaps the multiple bridges at Gateshead serve to link these south of
the river locations physically and perceptually with Newcastle, but the comparatively
poorer and less prominent links toward the river mouth—together with the distance
from the “heartland”—serve to “distance” Hebburn, Jarrow, and South Shields.
People’s dynamic interactions might also have a role to play in influencing the
shape and extent of perceptual areas. Mooney and Carling (2006:5), in their analysis
of regional economic flows associated with work, shopping, and leisure, report that
Tyneside’s “catchment areas . . . tend to stretch a long way to the north, but rather
less far to the south.” Furthermore, they maintain that the River Tyne acts as a barrier
for all types of flows, singling out the limited interaction “between South Tyneside
and North Tyneside, despite their obvious geographical proximity” (at its narrowest,
the river is 200 meters wide between North and South Shields). The economic
“catchment” of Tyneside described by Mooney and Carling corresponds quite
closely with the shape of the northern sector and also helps to explain the “peripheral”
nature of zone C within it.
The Central Sector

This sector is roughly coterminous with County Durham and the Wear portion of
Tyne and Wear (the metropolitan borough of Sunderland). In the east is the Durham

limestone plateau, a low upland area containing most of the East Durham coalfield.
It is roughly triangular in shape with its apex on the coast near South Shields and its
base running from Darlington to Hartlepool (Aalen & Muir 2006:213). In the west,
bordering on the Pennines, is the Durham coalfield Pennine fringe. Between them is
a narrow area of low-lying land that contains the north–south stretch of the River
Wear and also carries the main north–south transport links in the region (the A1(M)
road and the high-speed railway link between Edinburgh and London). As with the
northern sector, there is a correspondence between the sector’s shape and political
areas. This is especially so in the south where the perceptual boundary follows quite
closely the border between County Durham and Tees Valley.
The sector is made up of three first-level perceptual zones. Zone D consists of
eleven linked locations, mainly on the Sunderland and Durham coast but extending
inland as far as Houghton-Le-Spring. Nearly all of these locations lie on the east
Durham plateau. Indeed, the western boundary of the zone corresponds roughly with
the plateau’s prominent western escarpment. All the locations, with the exception of
Washington, lie to the east and south of the Wear and to the east of the A1(M). The
locations share a common industrial heritage. The influence of coal mining on both
the physical and internal mental landscapes of County Durham has been enormous.
By 1911 there were 152,000 miners in County Durham—30 percent of the total
employment (McCord 1979:117). Several respondents from locations in zone D
comment on the relationship between coal mining and their perceptions of dialect:
(10) I would group the East Durham coalfield areas together in terms of the way they
speak. [Seaham]
(11) It is noticeable if someone comes from a mining background. A lot of the pit
villages have or had a distinctive accent in common. [Sunderland]
(12) I find people who are from a village or a colliery have a different twang than those
who live in the town centre a couple of miles from these pit villages. [Easington]
Respondents sometimes use the term Pitmatic to refer to the dialect of the coal mining
areas in the North East (particularly those in County Durham):
(13) People in Durham villages are Pitmatic and the “Townies” in Sunderland speak a
different version to this. [Durham]
(14) Both my Grandas were miners and I tend to speak slightly more “Pitmatic” than
my cousins who only have one Granda who was a miner. [Peterlee]
(15) I talk Pitmatic: “thoo,” “tha nars,” “thine.” [Easington]
Pitmatic was coined in the nineteenth century to describe the craft and technicalities
of coal mining and by extension was applied to the forms of speech (particularly the
specialist vocabulary) of colliery workers (Griffiths 2007:10). But, as the comments
above imply, the term is also used more generally to describe the broad local ver-
nacular of people living in areas where coal was once mined (Wales 2006b:124). The

fact that a commonly used term for the local variety began as a word for the techni-
cal vocabulary of colliery workers speaks of mining’s centrality in the consciousness
of people in the North East.
Traditionally, mining settlements were tightly knit, with most facilities close to
hand. Mooney and Carling (2006:5) suggest that, despite the last mine in east
Durham closing in 1994, the self-contained and somewhat insular nature of these
communities persists, resulting in limited economic flows outside of the area. This
insularity is perhaps reflected in respondents’ perceptions of dialect (note the dense
network of arrows linking locations in zone D).
The other two zones in the central sector—E (in the north of the Durham coalfield
Pennine fringe containing the towns of Consett and Stanley) and F (centered on four
locations in the south of County Durham)—lie to the west of the Tyne and Wear lowlands
and the A1(M) corridor. As far as zone E is concerned, the first-level perceptual link
between these two towns is possibly a consequence of proximity, shared geography, and
industrial heritage as well as relative isolation. The towns occupy densely settled ridge-
top locations above the coalfield valleys and are only nine kilometers apart. The nearest
other survey location to Consett is Whickham, over fourteen kilometers away. Finally,
all four locations in zone F lie to the west of the A1(M) corridor and all share a mining
heritage. The locations are also relatively isolated, generally being closer to each other
than they are to other locations in the sector.
The Southern Sector

This sector is divided from the central sector by a boundary that roughly follows
the political border dividing the unitary authorities of Hartlepool, Middlesbrough,
Stockton-on-Tees, and Darlington from County Durham. The five locations in this
sector are situated in the Tees lowlands, a broad plain through which the River Tees
meanders. The Tees is often regarded by dialectologists as of significance in delimit-
ing dialect areas in the north (Wales 2006b:17, 42), and historically the river formed
the boundary between County Durham and Yorkshire. Some respondents from the
southern sector refer to the Yorkshire element in their perceptions of dialect:
(16) People south of Middlesbrough in places like Brotton and Loftus sound proper
Yorkshire types and are easier on the ear than industrial Teessiders. [Hartlepool]
(17) In south Durham we get a bit influenced by Yorkshire. [Stockton]
(18) Accents in Darlington are quite different even in the town between posh West End
and not so posh, going from nearly Yorkshire to darkest Teesside. [Darlington]
(19) I have often been told I sound more Yorkshire than north east even though I have
lived here all my life. [Billingham]
It appears that these respondents see themselves as occupying a transitional area

between the North East and Yorkshire, and this is reflected in their perceptions of

dialect. Such perceptions are probably being reinforced by patterns of economic

flow: Mooney and Carling (2006:27) identify “clear links between parts of the south
of the region and North Yorkshire.”
There is only one first-level zone within the southern sector, formed by the link
between Billingham and Stockton-on-Tees. That these locations should be so closely
linked perceptually is probably a consequence of their proximity, their position north
of the Tees in the Stockton unitary authority, and a shared heritage of heavy industry
(which is now in decline).
Perception, Production, Variation, and Change

Once perceptual dialect areas have been uncovered, a logical next step is to
investigate what Preston (forthcoming) characterizes as the relationship between
perception (people’s beliefs about the distribution and character of linguistic objects
in space) and production (the facts of such distribution): in other words, we can add
to our understanding of a region’s ethnography of language by considering the extent
to which folk wisdom corresponds with the findings of linguists. In the context of
this research, the task of comparing production and perception areas is not
straightforward. This is due mainly to a lack of up-to-date production maps for the
North East. The Survey of English Dialects (SED)—brainchild of Harold Orton and
Eugen Dieth—is still “the fullest, systematically-collected body of dialect material
for all the English regions” (Upton & Widdowson 2006:2), and the interpretive maps
based on the SED (e.g., Orton, Sanderson, & Widdowson 1978; Kolb et al. 1979;
Viereck 1986a, 1986b; Viereck & Ramisch 1991, 1998; Upton & Widdowson 2006)
are an inevitable starting point for comparisons of production and perception. But
because the SED’s aim was “to record speech that was not greatly influenced by
outside social pressures or by radio and television” (Upton & Widdowson 2006:2),
the people surveyed were mainly rural, male, and born in the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries. This means that interpretive works based on the SED data
should be treated with caution when they are compared to the current perceptual
landscape. Contemporary and urban sources are needed to represent more closely
the present-day dialect-scape of the North East.
Fortunately, such sources exist in the form of an SED-inspired project to make
publicly available a set of interviews recorded in the late 1990s for the Millennium
Memory Bank (MMB). This collaboration between BBC Local Radio and the
British Library was intended to create “an archival snapshot of ‘ordinary’ Britons’
opinion and experience at the turn of the century” (Robinson 2005:5). The
significance of such an archive for dialect studies was soon recognized, and, using
the original network of SED locations as a geographical template (but with the
addition of urban locations), 267 of these interviews were selected and linguistically
annotated with information about phonology, lexis, and grammar and were presented

Table 5
Locally Salient Phonological Features
Vowel Variable Recorded Variants Occurrence
Goat [] [] [] Sunderland [ > ]

Ellington, Stannington, Seghill,
Stamfordham, Byker []
All other locations []
Face [] [] [] [] Stannington [ > ]
Seghill []
Byker, South Shields [ > ]
Sunderland, Washington [ > ]
Cockfield [ > ]
Hartlepool, Middlesbrough []
All other locations []
Mouth [] [] [] [] Stannington []
Stamfordham [ ~  ~ ]
Byker [ >  ~  ]
Newcastle []
Sunderland [ ~ ]
Nurse [] [] [] Stannington, Seghill, Stamfordham, Newcastle,
South Shields, Whickham, Sunderland []
Byker []
Hartlepool, Middlesbrough []
Start [] [] [] Stamfordham, Byker, South Shields,
Whickham, Consett []
Ellington, Stannington, Seghill, Newcastle [ ~ ]
Wheatley Hill, Cockfield, Hartlepool, Billingham,
Middlesbrough []
Consonant Variable Recorded variants Occurrence
Initial /h/ + [] or - [] Sunderland, Butterknowle, Hartlepool,

Middlesbrough - [h]
All other locations + []
Note: > = first variant more frequent; ~ = as frequent.
alongside excerpts from some of the original SED recordings held in the British
Library Sound Archive (Robinson 2005:4-7).
Forty-two recordings of people from within my survey area are available, and
from these I have selected all those in which the subject uses at least one of six
locally salient phonological features: the vowels in goat, face, mouth, nurse, start
and the initial // (see Table 5). Where more than one recording for a single location
exists, I have chosen the interview with the youngest subject (the mean year of birth
for all subjects is 1948). In Figures 4, 5, 6, and 7, these features have been mapped
onto the perceptual dialect areas.

Figure 4
Perception and Production Areas: The Goat Vowel

Figure 5
Perception and Production Areas: The Face Vowel

Figure 6
Perception and Production Areas: The Mouth, Nurse, and Start Vowels

Figure 7
Perception and Production Areas: /h/-Dropping

The goat vowel [] is a “mainstream” northern variant (Watt 2002:47), and it is the
most common one in the MMB data set. Figure 4 shows that [] is associated mainly
with the southern and central perceptual sectors. The centralized monophthong [], on
the other hand, is preferred by speakers mainly in the north of the northern sector.
The picture for face is more complicated (Figure 5), with the mainstream
northern variant [] widespread in the region but also with a more open vowel []
associated with parts of the southern perceptual sector and the southwest of the
central sector. In addition, two diphthongized variants of the face vowel occur: []
and []. These are associated particularly with the east of the northern sector.
The spatial distribution of variants in the mouth, nurse, and start vowels is
mapped in Figure 6. The monophthong [] in mouth, a pronunciation reflected in
vernacular spellings such as <toon> (‘town’), <aboot> (‘about’), and <doon>
(‘down’), is widely regarded as a “traditional Tyneside pronunciation” (Beal
2000:348), associated with some locations in the northern perceptual sector, while
elsewhere the diphthongs [], [], and [] are prevalent. In nurse, there appears
to be a regional north–south divide, with [] occurring mainly in the northern sector
and [] in the southern. A third variant [] is associated with the broadest Geordie
accents (Wells 1982:374), and it occurs only in the speech of the interviewee from
Byker in Newcastle. There is also a north–south divide in relation to the start
vowel, with speakers in northern locations having an unrounded back vowel [] or
a rounded back vowel [], while [] is preferred in southern locations.
The final feature from the MMB data to be mapped here is perhaps the most
perceptually salient. So-called “h-dropping” has been described by Wells (1982:254)
as the “single most powerful pronunciation shibboleth in England,” and zero /h/ at
the start of a stressed syllable with <h> in the spelling has traditionally been regarded
as “vulgar” and “uneducated” (see Beal 2004a:180-183). Hughes, Trudgill, and Watt
(2005:66) claim that “most urban regional accents of England and Wales do not have
/h/ or are at least variable in its usage.” They go on to point out, however, that initial
/h/ is “retained in accents of the North East of England such as that of Newcastle,
although it disappears quickly as one travels southwards: /h/-dropping is reported for
Sunderland, and it is virtually categorical in Middlesbrough and other parts of
Teesside.” This makes the region unique, in that there appears to be variability in
/h/-retention among vernacular speakers in closely neighboring urban areas. Beal
(2000:352) even suggests that “h-dropping is a shibboleth of Makkem speech.”10
Some of the respondents comment specifically on this variable:
(20) People from and around Sunderland often drop their Hs. [Washington]
(21) Sunderland accents where they drop the H’s. [South Shields]
(22) Have you noticed Teessiders say “owee” not “howay”? [Middlesbrough]
The isogloss in Figure 7 shows /h/-dropping is limited to the south of the region and
a narrow coastal strip extending as far north as Sunderland, making it a feature
associated only with the central and southern perceptual sectors.

Some recent variationist studies also suggest intraregional spatial variation, again
pointing to a north–south divide. For example, Llamas (2007) looks at the realization
of the plosives (p), (t), and (k) in word-medial position among thirty-two speakers
from Middlesbrough. She compares her results with speakers from Tyneside—as
reported in Docherty et al. (1997)—and finds in Middlesbrough a “substantially
lower” use of the glottalized variants [p], [t] and [k] (Llamas 2007:588).
Furthermore, in the Middlesbrough data, the glottaled [] is the preferred realization
of (t), compared to a relatively low use in Tyneside. In a note in the same article,
Llamas mentions finding [] realizations of (k) among young speakers and points
out that this is a feature usually associated with Merseyside, a metropolitan county
in North West England some 230 kilometers from Middlesbrough (2007, 602).11
Such realizations have not been reported elsewhere in the region.
The production evidence presented here suggests that within the North East there
is real linguistic variation in space, to which the questionnaire respondents are
potentially sensitive. As might be predicted, there is no clear-cut correlation between
the distribution of production features and the perceptual areas, but the evidence
does at least point to a north–south divide, with some variants limited to, or at least
more common in, the speech of people in the northern sector (e.g., diphthongs in the
face vowel, rounded vowels in nurse and start, glottalized plosives) and other
features associated with parts of the central and southern sectors (e.g., /h/-dropping,
[] realizations of (k)).
In addition to uncovering folk insights into the distribution of linguistic objects
in space, PD research can provide an additional perspective on language change. A
sensitivity to change is revealed in the following comments:
(23) I’ve lived in Newcastle, South Shields, and Sunderland and the accents are
becoming more similar within Tyne and Wear. [Sunderland]
(24) Lots of old Geordie words and sayings are dying out. [South Shields]
(25) They are not as defined as they used to be years ago. I think our accents are dying
out. [Durham]
(26) There seems to be a loss in the Geordie accent—it seems to be becoming “softer.”
[Middlesbrough]
(27) As a young Makem fifteen-year-old there was a bewildering array of dialects in
our class from within a very small area. Sadly with the demise of the coal mining
industry and communities increasing in size but lacking the spirit, these dialects
are on the wane. [Sunderland]
These respondents perceive a reduction in variation, characterized in particular by

lexical/phonological attrition and a general homogenization of speech across the
region; and in comment 27 some sociocultural determinants of language change are
proposed. The folk observations support claims made by sociolinguists about what
happens when speakers of different dialects come into contact as a consequence of
urbanization, industrialization, and sociogeographical mobility: “Differences between

regional varieties are reduced, features which make varieties distinctive disappear,
and new features emerge and are adopted by speakers over a wide geographical area”
(Williams & Kerswill 1999:149). This process of dialect leveling is “thought to centre
on large urban areas . . . from which new features diffuse, and within whose reach
high degrees of contact and mobility may lead to linguistic homogenisation”
(Kerswill 2007b:50).
Additional sites of leveling are “new towns”—planned urban centers designed to
provide employment and housing that are generally characterized by high levels of
in-migration (Foulkes 2006). The perceptual data gathered in this research point to new
towns as sites of language change in the region (for an overview of Kerswill &
Williams’s research on dialect contact in Milton Keynes, see Kerswill 2007a). Three
new towns lie within the survey area: Newton Aycliffe and Peterlee (designated in 1947
and 1948) and Washington (designated in 1964). Washington attracts the most interest,
with some respondents alert to the progress and consequences of dialect contact:
(28) Washington is a bit of a strange place with regards to accent. It seems to very
much depend on where your parents are from as to what your accent is like. I do
not speak like a lot of my friends from Washington because my parents are from
Gateshead and Newcastle, whereas theirs are from Sunderland. This seems to
make a big difference to our accents. [Washington]
(29) Someone in Washington may have a Sunderland accent, whereas their neighbour
may have a Tyneside accent. [Sunderland]
(30) Some people living in Washington have a mixture of both Sunderland (Mackem)
and Tyneside accents. [Sunderland]
(31) A Washington accent is a hybrid of a Sunderland/Newcastle accent, taking fea-
tures of each. [Washington]
(32) Washington seems to have a mixture of Sunderland, Newcastle, and Gateshead
accents! Nobody ever seems to know where we’re from! [Washington]
(33) The Washington accent is new for the generation that grew up in the town. Most
of the parents moved to Washington from other places such as Sunderland etc.
[Washington]
(34) I think Washington has a very different accent to Sunderland and Newcastle. We
are Washington people, not Geordie or Mackem. [Washington]
These remarks reveal contrasting perceptions of dialect contact in action. Comments 28

and 29 seem to emphasize the initial stages of contact, in which “newcomers” import
their original dialect to Washington. The perception here is that these original dialects
are maintained and transmitted more or less unaltered down the generations, resulting
in a population “split” in relation to language, mainly between Tyneside and Wearside
dialects. Contrastingly, in examples 30 to 34, the respondents seem to be suggesting that
dialect leveling is taking place, resulting in the formation of a new, distinctive
Washington dialect; as one of the respondents writes, “We are Washington people, not
Geordie or Mackem.” In example 33, the respondent identifies a generational contrast:

people who moved to Washington as adults, on the whole, preserve their original
accents, whereas “the Washington accent is new for the generation that grew up in the
town”—a perception that corresponds with Kerswill and Williams’s findings on the
leading role played by children in the development of a new Milton Keynes dialect.
It is interesting to consider the possible influence of folk beliefs such as these on
the progress of dialect leveling. For example, the respondent in example 34 implies
a strong attachment to a separate Washington identity that is presumably reflected in
her (leveled) dialect; in contrast, in the case of the respondent in example 28, we
might speculate that her consciously held belief that she has “inherited” a Tyneside
accent from her parents (which, presumably, she identifies strongly with) might have
a retarding effect on leveling in her own speech.
Another potential brake on leveling evident in the data is a widespread identification
with and celebration of diversity:
(35) In one or two parts of the region accents can be completely different from one
street to the next. [Jarrow]
(36) The variation of accents across the region is enormous. [South Shields]
(37) I would say that there is a different accent and dialect every five miles or so.
[Durham]
(38) The accents vary massively between the different areas in the questionnaire. I love
that there is such variation in such a small geographical area. [South Gosforth]
Perceptions of local diversity such as these could affect processes of variation and
change. People with strong positive evaluations of dialect diversity might be more
likely to preserve variation in their own speech and value it in the speech of others,
thereby acting as a brake on leveling.
A further possible influence on leveling uncovered by this research lies in the
relationship among the three large urban areas in the region. The maps emerging
from the quantitative data place Newcastle, Sunderland, and Middlesbrough in
separate perceptual sectors; the mutual “difference” scores of respondents in these
locations are high: Table 6 shows the percentage of respondents from each of these
large urban locations who identify speakers from the other urban areas as “very
different” and “completely different.” Both findings point to the cities’ distinctiveness
in the minds of respondents.
Most discussions of dialect leveling in the North East suggest that Newcastle is
the locus from which new features have diffused and will diffuse in the future (e.g.,
Watt 2002), but given these perceptual findings it seems reasonable to suggest that
Sunderland and Middlesbrough also have a role to play, perhaps with their own
distinct leveled forms spreading into their hinterlands. More research is certainly
needed on the interaction of these three cities (on the relationship between
Middlesbrough and Newcastle and between Sunderland and Newcastle, respectively,
see Llamas 2007; Burbano-Elizondo 2006).

Table 6
Comparing Percentages of “Difference” Scores for Middlesbrough,
Newcastle, and Sunderland
Middlesbrough Newcastle Sunderland
Very Completely Very Completely Very Completely

Different Different Different Different Different Different
(%) (%) (%) (%) (%) (%)
Middlesbrough — — 48.8 46.5 65.1 18.6

respondents
Newcastle 43.5 27.4 — — 35.5 21.8
respondents
Sunderland 39.6 26.7 40.9 30.1 — —
respondents
Conclusion
In this article, I have applied a methodology designed to uncover what might be

called “common folk knowledge” in relation to linguistic variation in space in North
East England. I have shown how the numerical data derived from a degree-of-
similarity task can be used to make maps that reveal a nuanced perceptual landscape.
The article has described emergent perceptual sectors and their constituent zones and
proposed unifying factors such as landscape type, industrial heritage, and economic
flows. I also explored the relationship between perception and production by
comparing the perceptual areas with spatial data from dialectological and variationist
studies, finding evidence to suggest that informants are potentially responding to
“real” linguistic variation in their judgments of similarity and difference and not
simply basing their assessments on broader nonlinguistic perceptions, such as
geographical or cultural proximity.
In addition to exploring criteria that might be “important to the folk in defining
dialect regions” (Benson 2003:307), I also employed the findings to add a perceptual
dimension to the consideration of language change, showing how folk wisdom can
invoke some of the causes and processes of linguistic change recognized by
professional linguists and how it can potentially alert the researcher to sites of
further sociolinguistic inquiry.
Additional questions about the PD of North East England remain, of course. For
example, in this article I do not take into account the gender, age, socioeconomic
status, or local affiliations of the survey respondents, but given the fact that numerous
sociolinguistic studies have shown the significance of these factors in shaping ways
of using language, it seems reasonable to assume that these social variables will also
shape people’s perceptions of language variation. It is hoped that the method of data

collection used in this research will allow me in the future to produce perceptual
maps for men, women, different age groups, and so on, leading to a more socially
variegated account of the perceptual landscape of the North East. Questions also
need to be asked about the “micro-perceptual” landscape: the specific localized
particularities of perceptual areas and their boundaries. One line of inquiry here is
related to the way in which local government and citizens, while acknowledging the
existence of a broad North East identity, will often maintain strong allegiances to
individual settlements (OECD 2006; Vigar 2006). For many people, these allegiances
and the rivalries (and animosities) emerging from them form an important part of
their identity, and given the intimate relationship between issues of identity and
language, a consideration of borders, particularly in relation to the cities of Newcastle
and Sunderland,12 will provide an additional vantage point from which to view the
perceptual dialectology of North East England.
Notes
1. For a recent historical overview of perceptual dialectology, see Preston (forthcoming).
2. A search of the 2008 U.K. news archive on The Guardian Web site brings up 409 hits for
“Newcastle,” compared with 106 for “Sunderland” and 77 for “Middlesbrough,” suggesting that
Newcastle is referred to four times more than Sunderland and five times more than Middlesbrough in the
Guardian.
3. The respondents’ comments throughout this article have been lightly edited for ease of reading.
4. The River Wear flows into the North Sea at Sunderland, so citizens of this city sometimes refer to
themselves as Wearsiders.
5. Byker Grove was a long-running BBC children’s television series set in and around a youth club in
the Byker area of Newcastle.
6. QuestionPro software was used for the online element of the survey (http://www.questionpro
.com/). The following newspapers kindly publicized the research: South Shields Gazette, Sunderland
Echo, Northern Echo, Morpeth Herald, News Post Leader and News Guardian, and Hartlepool Mail.
7. The questionnaire was also designed to collect material that could be transformed into indices
pointing to an individual’s level of “embeddedness” and loyalty to his or her hometown. In addition,
material on respondents’ personality traits (e.g., level of extraversion) was also collected.
8. To ensure less chance of the results being affected by one or two “rogue” respondents, only loca-
tions with five or more “hometown” respondents were included (thirty-two locations).
9. The figures in the tables do not include partial and incomplete responses, which were not included
in the analysis.
10. Beal’s spelling of <Makkem> is unusual. Among the survey respondents, <Mackem(s)> is the
most common choice, occurring fifty-five times. Alternative spellings include <Mackam(s)> (ten occur-
rences) and <Makem(s)> (six occurrences).
11. Some respondents comment on the “Liverpool” element in accents in the southeast of the region:
“A strong Middlesbrough accent can sound like a weak Liverpudlian accent” (Newcastle); “I travelled six
miles or so away from my home and was asked if I was from Liverpool!” (Middlesbrough); “People from
Stockton/Middlesbrough have a different twang altogether. It reminds me of a Liverpool accent when I
hear them speak” (Bishop Auckland); “Teesside semi-Scouse” (Peterlee); “Although I feel accents in
Middlesbrough, Stockton-on-Tees and Billingham are practically the same, I have heard others mention
[and have noticed myself] that some ‘rougher’ sounding accents in this area are similar to ‘Scouse’”
(Billingham).

12. The rivalry between these cities manifests itself in different ways, most obviously at the level of
football (Sunderland AFC vs. Newcastle United). However, like Colls and Lancaster (2005:ix), many (if
not most) inhabitants of the North East seem to regard such divisions as “tensions within ‘the family’
rather than the expression of uberparochialism,” a sentiment supported by some of the respondents, one
of whom writes, “People from the region do tend to forget their petty differences and flock together when
circumstances dictate that they work in far-away places like London.”
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Michael Pearce is senior lecturer in English language at the University of Sunderland, where he carries
out research in corpus linguistics and discourse analysis as well as perceptual dialectology. He is the
author of The Routledge Dictionary of English Language Studies (2007).

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Journal ofhttp://eng.sagepub.

A Perceptual Dialect Map of North East England

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A Perceptual Dialect Map 10.1177/0075424209334026

of North East England

Keywords: North East England; folk linguistics; perceptual dialectology; language

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Northumberland Blyth Valley, Wansbeck, Castle Morpeth, Tynedale, Alnwick,

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Such claims point to the linguistic element in what Burbano-Elizondo (2006:113)

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An indication of the social background of respondents is given in Table 4. On the

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Figure 3 shows “perceptual areas” (corresponding to Weijnen’s “unities”) derived

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containing locations linked by at least second-level similarity. This results in the

The Northern Sector

(6) North side of the Tyne is fairly uniform. [South Shields]

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The Central Sector

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The Southern Sector

It appears that these respondents see themselves as occupying a transitional area

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dialect. Such perceptions are probably being reinforced by patterns of economic

Perception, Production, Variation, and Change

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Goat [] [] [] Sunderland [ > ]

Consonant Variable Recorded variants Occurrence

Initial /h/ + [] or - [] Sunderland, Butterknowle, Hartlepool,

Note: > = first variant more frequent; ~ = as frequent.

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These respondents perceive a reduction in variation, characterized in particular by

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These remarks reveal contrasting perceptions of dialect contact in action. Comments 28

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Very Completely Very Completely Very Completely

Middlesbrough — — 48.8 46.5 65.1 18.6

In this article, I have applied a methodology designed to uncover what might be

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