Language & Communication 93 (2023) 15–29

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Language & Communication

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/langcom

An Emmet’s tale: The duality of social and lexical change

Rhys J. Sandow
Queen Mary, University of London, UK

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Stockwell and Minkova (2001: 34) state that ‘the lexicon is the language layer most
responsive to socio-political and cultural changes’. Despite this, lexis has been labelled as
the ‘Cinderella of sociolinguistics’ (Beal 2010; Durkin 2012) due to the lack of focus on this
Keywords: level of linguistic structure by variationist sociolinguists. This article redresses the dearth
Anglo-Cornish of lexis-oriented sociolinguistic studies by considering the ways in which the lexicon is
Cornwall
responsive to cultural changes in Cornwall, UK, by providing a case-study of the polyse-
Style
mous noun emmet (‘ant’ or ‘tourist’). From a study of 80 speakers from Cornwall, I consider
Lexis
Identity
the variation and change of emmet from the perspectives of semasiological and onoma-
siological usage as well as its social meaning. I conclude that this article provides support
for Stockwell & Minkova’s (2001) claim and that lexical variation can provide unique in-
sights to the sociolinguistic endeavour and enable sociolinguists to tell new stories about
language and society.
Crown Copyright Ó 2023 Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the
CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

1. Introduction

Stockwell and Minkova (2001: 34) state that ‘the lexicon is the language layer most responsive to socio-political and
cultural changes’. In this article I provide support for this statement by highlighting the links between societal and lexical
changes in Cornwall. I consider the ways in which the lexicon is responsive to cultural changes in Cornwall by focusing on one
case-study, that of the word emmet which, in Cornwall, has the polysemous senses ‘ant’ and ‘tourist’. I argue that the results
from this study provide strong empirical support for Stockwell & Minkova’s (2001) claim regarding the responsiveness of lexis
to societal changes. Broadly, this article serves to highlight the ways in which, in the context of the variationist programme’s
goal of developing our understanding of the relationship between language and society, the level of lexis is highly felicitous.
Lexis has been labelled as the ‘Cinderella of sociolinguistics’ (Beal 2010; Durkin 2012) due to the lack of focus on this level
of linguistic structure by variationist sociolinguists. This article provides a contribution to the limited but growing body of
sociolinguistic research which takes lexis as its primary unit of analysis. The attention afforded to socially-conditioned
onomasiological variation, that is, the mapping of one concept onto multiple lexical forms such as the realisation of SUBTER-
RANEAN TRANSPORT as metro, subway, or underground, has been growing in recent years (e.g. Boberg 2004; Sandow and Robinson
2018; Sandow 2020, 2022; Tagliamonte and Pabst 2020; Tagliamonte and Smith 2021). Fewer studies still have reported
socially-distributed patterns of semasiological variation (e.g. Robinson 2010, 2012, 2014; Beal & Burbano-Elizondo 2012;
Sandow 2023, in press), that is, the study of the way in which one word form maps onto different meanings, such as wicked
‘good’ and wicked ‘evil’. Previous research has highlighted the ways in which lexical items can carry social meanings (e.g.
Kiesling 2004; Bucholtz, 2009; Beaton and Washington 2015; Snell 2018; Beltrama 2018). While most of these previous

E-mail address: r.sandow@qmul.ac.uk.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langcom.2023.08.002
0271-5309/Crown Copyright Ó 2023 Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/
by/4.0/).
16 R.J. Sandow / Language & Communication 93 (2023) 15–29

studies take a singular approach to lexis (e.g. semasiological), this article considers onomasiological and semasiological
variation, as well as social meaning (see also Sandow 2023). In combining these approaches, I primarily take a first-wave
variationist sociolinguistic approach to the social and stylistic distribution of the usage of emmet, while the approach to
the discussion of social meaning is best characterised as third-wave (see Eckert 2012).
The key findings of this study are that the trajectory of lexical changes pertaining to emmet in Cornwall closely correspond
to social and attitudinal changes, particularly those relating to tourism and tourists in Cornwall. From a semasiological
perspective, the change from emmet ‘ant’ to emmet ‘tourist’ is near completion, with older middle-class speakers with a strong
sense of local identity being most conservative in that they are laggards in this change. From an onomasiological perspective,
different social categories best account for the observed variation among older and younger speakers, reflecting changes in
the social meaning of the investigated word. These changes reflect a shift in attitudes towards tourism, from anti-tourist
stances typically exhibited by older speakers to non-anti-tourist (both positive and neutral) stances typically exhibited by
younger speakers. These shifting attitudes to tourism are symptomatic of a broader shift in Cornish people’s sense of place.

1.1. Cornwall

Cornwall is situated at the south-west extremity of Great Britain and contains both the most southerly (The Lizard) and
south-westerly (Land’s End) points in the island. The river Tamar separates Cornwall from the rest of Great Britain, with less
than four miles of land connecting Cornwall’s eastern border with West Devon (D. Harris 2016a). In the 17th century, Cornwall
became renowned for its industrial prowess. Fishing, farming, and, particularly, mining were major contributors of jobs and
economic capital in Cornwall. Many Cornish people remain proud that Cornish copper and tin was exported across the globe.
However, in the 18th century, the mining industry began to decline. This decline continued into the 19th and 20th century
until the last Cornish mine, South-Crofty, closed in 1998.
As Cornwall’s traditional industries declined, a tourism and hospitality sector developed. The tourist industry in Cornwall
is largely driven by the attractive aesthetics of Cornwall’s landscapes and seascapes. An estimated 5 million tourists visit
Cornwall annually (Gaskell et al., 2021: 6). Cornwall relies on tourism more as a percentage of total economic output than any
other comparable region in Britain (Office for National Statistics, 2016). Indeed, tourism accounts for one in five jobs in
Cornwall (Local Government Association 2019).
While, overall, Cornwall financially benefits from tourism, the Cornish population have a complex relationship with the
industry. In areas with high-levels of tourism, residents often exhibit resistance to the sector, particularly pertaining to
tourist-oriented developments, the density of tourists leading to a strain on local infrastructure such as healthcare, and the
perceived undesirable behaviour of tourists, such as littering. A survey conducted by ‘Power Marketing’ (2012) on 1100
Cornish residents found that almost nine in ten respondents thought that tourism was ‘good’ for Cornwall. However, the
survey also found that over half of the respondents felt tourism to have a ‘bad’ or ‘very bad’ effect on the cost of living, pricing
of goods and services, and levels of litter. Moreover, 55% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that ‘traffic fumes and
congestion generated by tourists’ is a problem where they live. Indeed, the relationship that exists between Cornwall’s
‘permanent’ residents and tourists is nuanced.
In this article I consider the relationship between Cornish people’s sense of place and the social life of the Anglo-Cornish
dialect1 word for tourists, emmet.

1.2. Emmet

Emmet is a largely obsolete English word meaning ‘ant’ which has been maintained in the Anglo-Cornish dialect. Emmet
‘ant’ was, historically, used throughout Britain and Ireland and is attested as early as 1300 by the Oxford English Dictionary
Online (henceforth OED), who now label this sense as frequently ‘poetic’ or ‘archaic’. Dr Johnson’s dictionary of 1755 cites
emmet as ‘An ant; a pismire’. By the time of Joseph Wright’s (1898–1905) English Dialect Dictionary, emmet ‘ant’ was in ‘gen.
dial. [general dialect] use in Sc. Irel. and Eng. [Scotland, Ireland, and England]’. Wright goes on to cite examples from Kent,
Berkshire, and Yorkshire, as well as Cornwall. By the time of the Survey of English Dialects (Orton & Dieth, 1962–1971), the
geographic spread of emmet was limited to the South of England.
In the contemporary Anglo-Cornish dialect, emmet has two distinct senses; ‘ant’ and ‘tourist’. Emmet ‘tourist’ is a relatively
new addition to the Anglo-Cornish dialect. For example, in Phillips’ (1993: 29) A Glossary of the Cornish Dialect the entrance for
emmet reads ‘ants (and, by a recent extension, crowds of tourists)’. Through a process of metaphorical extension and con-
ventionalisation (see Traugott and Dasher 2002), emmet has acquired the ‘tourist’ sense as a result of a TOURISTS ARE ANTS
metaphor. The catalyst for this semasiological change is the perceived pejorative similarities between ants and tourists in
Cornwall. For example, tourists are perceived by some of the Cornish population to be red in colour (sunburn), to appear only
when the weather is warm and dry, to gather in large numbers, and are generally thought to be an irritant. Consistent usage of
this metaphor in Cornwall led to the ‘tourist’ sense becoming conventionalised. The OED attests that the earliest usage of
emmet in the ‘tourist’ sense was in 1975 in The Times newspaper. Comparing different editions of the OED enables an insight
into the changes relating to the use of emmet ‘tourist’. While the ‘tourist’ sense did not appear in the 1st edition, in the 2nd

1
Anglo-Cornish refers to the variety of English spoken in Cornwall and is distinct from the Cornish language, Kernewek.
 R.J. Sandow / Language & Communication 93 (2023) 15–29 17

edition emmet ‘tourist’ had the usage note ‘mildly disparaging’, while the updated online version reads ‘depreciative or
humorous’.
In order to investigate the usage of emmet from both semasiological and onomasiological perspectives as well as to situate
the research findings into their local context, a range of methods were used.

2. Methods

Before discussing lexical elicitation tasks, I first outline the sample of speakers who participated in this study. The sample
consists of 80 speakers from the Cornish towns of Camborne and Redruth, balanced for age, gender, and social class2, which
were each conceived of as binary categories (older (than 40) and younger (than 303), male and female, and middle-class and
working-class). For example, there were ten working-class older females, ten working-class younger females etc. Additionally,
information regarding participants’ strength of Cornish identity was quantified using an identity questionnaire (((IdQ)
adapted from Llamas (1999) see Appendix I). Participants who on average ‘agreed’ or ‘strongly agreed’ with ten comments
relating to Cornish identity were classified as having a ‘high’ IdQ score while those who did not were considered to have ‘low’
IdQ scores. Lastly, the number of Cornish grandparents that each participant has was also considered. All participants were
white (98.4% of the population of Camborne-Redruth are White British according to Oxford Consultants for Social Inclusion,
2016). In addition to the binary categories presented in Table 1, age and socioeconomic class were also conceptualised as
trinary categories for the purposes of statistical analysis, with older speakers being further split into 40–55 (n ¼ 22) and >55
(n ¼ 18), and the social class continuum being additionally categorised as working-class (n ¼ 24), upper-working-class
(n ¼ 34), and middle-class (n ¼ 21).

Table 1
The social categories of participants in this study.

Values (number of participants)

Gender Male (n ¼ 40)
Female (n ¼ 40)
Age <30 (n¼40)
>40 (n ¼ 40)
Socioeconomic class Working-class (n ¼ 40)
Middle-class (n ¼ 40)
Cornish identity High (n ¼ 45)
Low (n ¼ 35)
Number of Cornish grandparents 0 (n ¼ 15)
1 (n ¼ 7)
2 (n ¼ 16)
3 (n ¼ 8)
4 (n ¼ 34)

There are four different types of linguistic data that were collected. I discuss them here in the order in which they were
conducted in interviews with participants, beginning with onomasiology, then semasiology, followed by recognition, and,
finally, social meaning. After the linguistic component of the interviews, I engaged in discussions of Cornish identity with each
participant. When interpreting the results, it is important to note that while I, the interviewer, am Cornish, I do not speak in
the Anglo-Cornish dialect but generally have a levelled Standard Southern variety of British English. In addition to these
interviews, I also conducted ethnographic participation for a year in the community (for discussion, see Sandow 2021).

2.1. Onomasiology

Two elicitation tasks were used to elicit onomasiological usage (for more detailed description, see Sandow 2021). The first,
designed to elicit a casual speech style, was a series of spot-the-difference tasks. Speakers completed five spot-the-difference
tasks, each of which consisted of six differences (for example, see Fig. 1). In order to complete the tasks, the participants
needed to lexicalise the concepts that varied between the frames, e.g. ‘the tourists/emmets are facing opposite directions’.
Each investigated concept, such as TOURIST, appeared in two scenes. The rationalisation for this task is that speakers’ cognitive
load is focused primarily on task-completion but task-completion requires the lexicalisation of pre-selected concepts. In order
to elicit a careful style, speakers were told that their word usage was being studied while being shown an image and asked to
complete a sentence such as ‘these people are . ’ (see Fig. 2). The contrast between the two onomasiological elicitation tasks
can be considered to be one of style (see Sandow 2022).

2
Social class was determined using an index consisting of education, occupation, and place of domicile.
3
No participants in this study were aged between 30 and 40.
18 R.J. Sandow / Language & Communication 93 (2023) 15–29

Fig. 1. The ‘beach’ spot-the-difference task.

Fig. 2. The TOURIST naming task.

2.2. Semasiology

An alternative method is needed to study semasiological variation. I adapted Robinson’s (2010, 2012) who/what question
stimuli to elicit senses of polysemous nouns (see also Sandow 2023, in press). Speakers were asked ‘who or what is an
emmet?’. The speakers responded with a sense for emmet, such as ‘an insect’ or ‘people on holiday in Cornwall’, which could
typically be classified as either ‘ant’ or ‘tourist’. Speakers were then asked a follow-up question, ‘who or what else is an
emmet?’. This repetition of the who/what elicitation stimulus enabled the collection of a second semasiological token from
each participant.

2.3. Recognition

In order to investigate whether or not participants were able to identify Anglo-Cornish words, I employed a lexical
recognition task. Participants saw a 4  8 grid containing 32 words of mixed provenance and were asked to identify the
Anglo-Cornish words (see Fig. 3). In total, there were thirteen Anglo-Cornish words. Each of these are underlined in Fig. 3.
 R.J. Sandow / Language & Communication 93 (2023) 15–29 19

Fig. 3. The lexical recognition task, with the Anglo-Cornish words underlined (from Sandow 2021).

2.4. Social meaning

Following the lexical recognition task, I engaged participants in discussions of the social meanings of the words that they
correctly identified as being Anglo-Cornish. These were semi-structured discussions, including questions such as ‘if you were
to hear someone on the phone using the word emmet, are there any characteristics that you might associate with that person’
and ‘do you think people are more likely to use emmet when they are in certain moods?’.

2.5. Cornish identity

Discussions of Cornish identity began with looking back at the participants responses to the IdQ, particularly in relation to
the statement ‘I am proud to be Cornish’. I asked ‘in the identity questionnaire, you responded that you indicated that you
were [insert answer] proud to be Cornish, can you explain your answer a little more?’ and ‘what does being Cornish or having
a Cornish identity mean to you?’. As with the discussions of the social meaning of Anglo-Cornish lexis, this portion of the
interview was also semi-structured, as I adapted each discussion following a participant’s initial responses.

3. Results

In this section I present the results from the data collected using the methods described in the previous section. I begin this
section by discussing Cornish identity before discussing the linguistic results in the same order as in the previous section, that
is, onomasiology, semasiology, recognition, and social meaning.

3.1. Cornish identity

There are two main types of data to discuss in regard to Cornish identity. The first relates to scores on the IdQ, the second
relates to the discourses provided in the section of the interview that focused on Cornish identity.
Starting with the IdQ scores, Table 2 shows that they are not evenly distributed across the other social categories in this
study.

Table 2
The statistical relationships between IdQ total and the other independent variables, age, socioeconomic class (SEC), gender, and the number of Cornish
grandparents (CGP), from Sandow (in press).

Variable Social variation Statistical test Result

Age <30: High (n ¼ 14) low (n ¼ 26) Fisher’s exact test p[<.001***
>40: High (n ¼ 31) low (n ¼ 9)
SEC WC: High (n ¼ 26) low (n ¼ 14) Fisher’s exact test p ¼ .176
MC: High (n ¼ 19) low (n ¼ 21)
Gender Male: High (n ¼ 22) low (n ¼ 18) Fisher’s exact test p ¼ 1.00
Female: High (n ¼ 23) low (n ¼ 17)
CGP 0: High (n ¼ 6) low (n ¼ 9) Logistic regression c2 (df 1, n[80) 7.253, p[.007**
1: High (n ¼ 2) low (n ¼ 5)
2: High (n ¼ 7) low (n ¼ 9)
3: High (n ¼ 5) low (n ¼ 3)
4: High (n ¼ 25) low (n ¼ 9)
20 R.J. Sandow / Language & Communication 93 (2023) 15–29

Table 2 shows that those who are most likely to have high IdQ scores are those who are older and who have a higher
number of Cornish grandparents but there are no statistically significant relationships between IdQ score and gender or
socioeconomic class.
On the aggregate, older speakers are more likely to have higher IdQ totals than their younger counterparts (see Table 2). An
exclusively quantitative reading of the data fails to provide insight into why this pattern was observed. Ethnographic ob-
servations and interviews with participants suggest that this may be because a much more complex ideological matrix exists,
as opposed to simply strong/weak binary of identity. I suggest there is more than one way to be Cornish in twenty-first
century Cornwall (see also R. Harris 2016b; cf. Dubois and Horvath 1999; Watt 2002; Llamas 2007; Braber 2009;
Remlinger 2009), with the IdQ orienting towards a slightly more traditional conceptualisation of Cornish identity.
In this article I focus my discussion of identity primarily on a specific part of Cornish people’s sense of place, that is, their
attitudes to tourism. However, it is important to note that the attitudes towards tourism that I propose in this paper are not
constructed in a vacuum. They are part of a broader ideological landscape in Cornwall. In Sandow (2021) I propose two
Cornish identities, namely, the Industrial Celt and Lifestyle Cornwall, which can be considered to be chronotopic identities
(see Kroon and Swanenberg 2019); identities which are tied to a particular time and place. These identities are summarised in
Table 3. Older participants tended to align with the Industrial Celt identity which is predicated on Cornwall’s distinct Celtic
and industrial histories. Lifestyle Cornwall can be considered to be more of a hybrid identity, incorporating aspects of
Cornishness and Englishness, and tends to be favoured by younger people.

Table 3
The key characteristics of the Industrial Celt and Lifestyle Cornwall identities (adapted from Sandow 2021).

Industrial Celt Lifestyle Cornwall

Cornwall is a nation Cornwall is a county of England
Celtic identity Regional identity
Othering of England and the English Mock othering of England and the English
Industrial (particularly mining) identity Positive affect to Cornwall’s industrial aesthetics, e.g. engine houses
Negative affect pertaining to tourism and concomitant industries Overall positive affect pertaining to tourism and concomitant industries
Conservative attitude to change Welcoming of change
Cornwall is ‘cool’

As shown in Table 3, Industrial Celts typically display a negative affect towards tourism, while those who align with
Lifestyle Cornwall typically display a positive affect. The ‘Industrial Celt’ identity is characterised by a broadly conservative
attitude to cultural change. For example, Industrial Celts are often wary of tourists and the consequences of the tourism
industry on Cornwall. The threat that is felt pertains to Cornwall’s autonomy and traditional way of life which many believe to
have ‘changed because of emmets [tourists]’ (CWM804). JWF55 states that ‘[Cornwall is] being inundated with emmets
[tourists] [.] if they don’t like it down here, they can go back to where they came from’ (JWF55). Another speaker surmises
that ‘people from up-country [England] are coming down and ruining [Cornwall]’ (MMF50), while LMF52 states that ‘we
[Cornish people] do feel a bit threatened by them [tourists]’. DMM83 conceptualises in-migrants to Cornwall as colonialists;
‘it’s a shame that the nice coastal areas have been colonised by incomers’. These quotes speak to a territorial identity which is
felt to be undergoing undesirable changes due to increased tourism and counter-urban migration patterns.
Those who embody this chronotope feel that the outcome of globalisation and cultural levelling has been retrogressive. For
example, ‘it was better when the place was less trendy but felt like home’ (a participant cited in Kennedy, 2013: 264). This is
echoed by the informants in this study, such as ‘I know it is progress but I hate it’ (JWF55), ‘I liked it better the way it was’
(PWM71), and ‘the changes need to stop’ (CWF49). The participants are referring to a process of gentrification (see Deacon
2007). One of the consequences of this gentrification is a resentment from members of the community towards these changes
and those who are perceived to be the responsible for such changes (see Butler 2003; Gant 2016). Antagonism towards
perceived gentrification and the developers who are alleged to be responsible for this process is a common narrative theme
within the community (see also Deacon 2013). Some perceive these developer-led and financially-oriented changes to be
‘turning Cornwall into a theme park’ (MMF50) and to be taking ‘the heart out of Cornwall’ (LWF55). Similarly, there is a
backlash against tourism which ‘distorts house-prices and distorts the labour market with its low-wage economy’ (RMM63).
The perceived benefits of tourism, are, according to CWF54 ‘like a band aid [.] w need something more’, that is, they are
superficial and mask larger socioeconomic issues facing Cornwall.
The negative attitudes towards changes which are perceived to be led by, or for the benefit of, non-Cornish people is
symptomatic of a much broader ideology which schematises outsiders rather pejoratively. For example, SMF46 states that ‘there
are lots of people in Cornwall who aren’t Cornish and the Cornish people resent that’. This is exemplified by a protest at ‘County
hall’ in Truro on July 9, 2019, where a group of protesters remonstrated to the council regarding their frustration with the
perceived overdevelopment of housing in Cornwall. They argued that the majority of new-build housing was overwhelmingly
being sold to non-Cornish buyers. The protest claimed legitimacy from the 2014 Framework Convention for National Minorities

4
Where I refer to individual participants, I do so by making use of a code which simultaneously preserves their anonymity and provides some socio-
demographic information. The code that I use consists of the individuals’ first initial, their social class (M¼middle-class, W¼ working-class), their gender
(M¼male, F¼female), and their age. For example, a 44-year-old female named Susie who is middle-class would be referred to as SMF44.
 R.J. Sandow / Language & Communication 93 (2023) 15–29 21

which recognised the Cornish as a national minority. Specifically, they claim that such developments violate Article 16 of the
‘Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, which states that governing bodies ‘shall refrain from
measures which alter the proportions of the population in areas inhabited by persons belonging to national minorities’.
This attitude contrasts with those who embody the Lifestyle Cornwall chronotope, for whom the fact that tourists visit
Cornwall is a source of pride. For example, RWM23 states that ‘[Cornish] people are proud of living here because people come
down and take holidays because it’s a beautiful place’. Similarly, CWF21 comments that ‘it is nice that people come here on
holiday’. This shows an amiable relationship between those who embody the Lifestyle Cornwall chronotope and visitors to
Cornwall, in contrast to the othering exhibited by many Industrial Celts.
The discursive othering of non-Cornish people reported in regard to the Industrial Celt chronotope does exist within this
Lifestyle Cornwall identity, too. However, such narratives manifest in a much more jocular manner. This duality of hostile/
jocular othering is observed by a younger speaker (HMM23); ‘everyone has a pride in Cornwall and has a competitive edge
against everyone north of the Tamar. On the whole this is probably a more jovial and jolly thing, although there are some
people who do take it very seriously’. This evidences the lack of hostility that those who align with Lifestyle Cornwall feel
towards England and the English.
In reaction to globalisation there has been a ‘return to the local’ which involves a ‘struggle of the margins to come into
representation [.]to reclaim some form of representation for themselves (Hall 1997: 183). This return to the local in Cornwall
is largely manifested in two ways or a combination thereof. Many Cornish people reject post-modernism by returning to what
is perceived to be an ‘authentic’ Cornish identity, anchored by Cornish history including its Celtic heritage and industrial
prowess. Alternatively, much of the Cornish population orient towards an identity which embraces the post-modern turn in a
local context, whereby a perceived relaxed lifestyle and idyllic landscapes and seascapes are discussed as key components of
Cornish identities (see Sandow 2021).

3.2. Onomasiology

The concept TOURIST is realised by a range of lexical items in Cornwall. The Anglo-Cornish variant is emmet. While tourist and
holiday-maker are the obvious Standard English onomasiological alternatives visitor, people-on-holiday, group-on-holiday,
family-on-holiday, and foreigner5 were also attested variants. The analysis here focuses on the use of emmet, not the individual
non-local alternatives (for a discussion of the non-Anglo-Cornish variants, see Sandow 2021). Overall, 32 speakers used
emmet as an onomasiological variant of TOURIST. The social variation of this usage is displayed in Table 4.

Table 4
The social variation of emmet as an onomasiological variant of TOURIST.

Social Variable Number of speakers who used emmet Test Result

Age <30: 14/40 Fisher’s exact test p ¼ .494
>40: 18/40
IdQ High: 25/45 Fisher’s exact test p[.001***
Low: 7/35
SEC WC: 21/40 Fisher’s exact test p[.039*
MC: 11/40
Gender Male: 17/40 Fisher’s exact test p ¼ .820
Female: 15/40
CGP 0: 5/15 Logistic regression Waldc2 (df ¼ 1, n ¼ 80) ¼ .630, p ¼ .427
1: 1/7
2: 9/16
3: 2/8
4: 15/34

In order to identify potential interaction effects between the social categories presented in Table 4, I employ Chi-Square
Automatic Interaction Detection (CHAID, for further explanation, see Robinson (2014); Milanovi c and Stamenkovi c (2016))
decision-trees. There are two key advantages to using CHAID over other statistical tests to conduct multivariate analysis.
Firstly, and most importantly, CHAID can handle multicollinearity between independent variables, that is, where two or more
independent variables are not statistically independent of each other, as with IdQ score and age and CGP in this study (see
Table 2). Secondly, the output of the CHAID decision-trees are visually appealing and relatively intuitive to interpret. The first
node in a CHAID decision tree includes information regarding the frequencies of the investigated variants. This node then
‘splits’ on the basis of the most significant independent variable. Further splits indicate statistically significant interactions
between independent variables on the dependent variable. This allows more nuanced analysis than the individual inde-
pendent variable as seen in Table 4. For the CHAID analysis, I inputted all of the social variables, including age and socio-
economic class as both binary and trinary categories.

5
This usage is due to the belief that Cornwall is a nation and, thus, anyone not from Cornwall, including English people, are ‘foreign’.
22 R.J. Sandow / Language & Communication 93 (2023) 15–29

An initial CHAID analysis first splits the data on the basis of IdQ score with those with high scores using emmet to a greater
extent, (p ¼ .002, c2 ¼ 9.28, df ¼ 1, N ¼ 80) and shows no interaction effects, that is, there are no further splits to the decision
tree. This model accounts for 66.3% of the observed variation.
While emmet does not exhibit age-related variation (see Table 4), there are distinct interaction effects between age and
other social categories within the older and younger sub-samples. In order to investigate these interactions, I ‘forced’ the
CHAID decision tree for the usage of emmet to split on the basis of age, despite a lack of statistically significant age-related

Fig. 4. A CHAID decision tree for the usage of emmet as an onomasiological variant of TOURIST, with the first node ‘forced’ to split in relation to age (from Sandow,
2021).
 R.J. Sandow / Language & Communication 93 (2023) 15–29 23

variation (see Fig. 4). The decision-tree then split further on the basis of statistically significant patterns within the older and
younger cohorts of speakers. The CHAID decision-tree in Fig. 4 accounts for 75% of the observed variation.
Fig. 4 shows that the social parameters which are most strongly associated with the use of emmet differ
between younger and older age-groups. Within the younger population, the group most likely to use emmet are
those who are working-class, as opposed to those who are upper-working-class or middle-class (p ¼ .022, c2 ¼ 7.18,
df ¼ 1, N ¼ 40). Not shown in Fig. 4 is that within the younger speaker cohort, when other social variables are
removed from the model, IdQ score is also a statistically significant predictor of the usage of emmet for younger
speakers, with those with a high IdQ total using emmet more than those with a low IdQ total (p ¼ .031, c2 ¼ 4.642, df ¼ 1,
n ¼ 40).
Within the older population, IdQ score exhibits the strongest statistical relationship with the use of emmet, with those
with a ‘high’ score more likely to use the Anglo-Cornish variant than those with a ‘low’ score (p ¼ .020, c2 ¼ 5.39, df ¼ 1,
N ¼ 40). Those older speakers with a high IdQ score aged 40–55 were more likely to use emmet than those above the age of 56
(p ¼ .020, c2 ¼ 5.43, df ¼ 1, N ¼ 31). This is consistent with the OED, which attests the first usage of emmet ‘tourist’ in 1975.
Thus, those who are aged 40–55 would have been exposed to emmet ‘tourist’ in their childhood and adolescence, whereas
those in the oldest group would have been more likely to acquire other onomasiological variants of TOURIST. There is no sta-
tistically significant socioeconomic class effect within the older speakers, when using binary (p ¼ .204, c2 ¼ 1.616, df ¼ 1,
n ¼ 40) and trinary (p ¼ .279, c2 ¼ 2.182, df ¼ 1, n ¼ 40) categorisations.
In sum, the older and younger speakers exhibit distinct patterns of social variation in their usage of emmet as an
onomasiological variant of the TOURIST variable. For older speakers, the most frequent users of emmet are those with a strong
sense of local identity aged 40–55. For younger speakers, socioeconomic class is the best predictor of the usage of emmet,
with working-class speakers using the Anglo-Cornish variant more than their upper-working-class and middle-class
counterparts.
In addition to social variation, the onomasiological usage of emmet also demonstrates stylistic variation. Emmet was
used more frequently in the careful, as opposed to casual speech style. Of the 32 speakers who used emmet, only 2 did so in
the casual elicitation task, while all 32 did so in the careful speech style (2-tailed Fisher’s exact test p  .001). This is an
inverted-style pattern (Stuart-Smith 2014; Sandow 2020, 2022) as the non-standard variant occurs more often when
attention is elevated (cf. Labov 1972). This suggests that emmet is not being used in speakers’ most unmonitored style, but is
used to style Cornish identities when attention-to-speech, or, more broadly, attention-to-self presentation (see Sandow
2022), is elevated.

3.3. Semasiology

The semasiological data from the speaker’s responses is taken from the ‘who or what [else] is an emmet’ questions.
One speaker was not familiar with the word and was subsequently unable to provide an answer. One participant used the
‘ant’ sense exclusively. The remaining 78 of 80 speakers used emmet ‘tourist’. Thus, an analysis of the social variation of
emmet ‘tourist’ would not provide any meaningful insight, so I focus on the analysis on emmet ‘ant’. I consider whether
the speaker used ‘ant’ at all or if they used ‘tourist’ exclusively, Thus, where a speaker used both the ‘ant’ and ‘tourist’
senses they are coded as using ‘ant’. Eighteen speakers used emmet ‘ant’. The social distribution of this usage can be seen
in Table 5.

Table 5
The semasiological variation of emmet according to age, IdQ score, SEC, and CGP.

Variable Number of speakers who used emmet ‘ant’ Test Overall

Age <30: 1/40 Fisher’s exact test P  .001***
>40: 17/40
IdQ High: 15/45 Fisher’s exact test p ¼ .014*
Low: 3/35
SEC WC: 6/40 Fisher’s exact test p ¼ .180
MC: 12/40
Gender Male: 9/40 Fisher’s exact test p ¼ 1.00
Female: 9/40
CGP 0: 2/15 Logistic regression Wald c2 (df1, n ¼ 80) 2.442, p ¼ .118
1: 1/7
2: 3/16
3: 1/8
4: 11/34
24 R.J. Sandow / Language & Communication 93 (2023) 15–29

Fig. 5. A CHAID decision tree displaying the socially-conditioned semasiological variation of emmet (from Sandow 2021).
 R.J. Sandow / Language & Communication 93 (2023) 15–29 25

Interactions between these social variables on the semasiological usage of emmet is displayed in Fig. 5.
Fig. 5, which accounts for 86.3% of the variation, shows that the independent variable with the strongest statistical as-
sociation with the use of emmet ‘ant’ is age (p¼<.001, c2 ¼ 18.351, df ¼ 1, N ¼ 80). Other social categories also emerge as
statistically significant which further nuances the description of the social variation of emmet ‘ant’. Within the category of
older speakers, the next most significant difference in the use of emmet ‘ant’ is that of socioeconomic class, with older middle-
class participants being statistically significantly more likely to use emmet ‘ant’ than their working-class counterparts
(p ¼ .025, c2 ¼ 5.013, df ¼ 1, N ¼ 40). This variation can be further unpacked. Within the category of older-middle class
participants, those with a high IdQ score are significantly more likely to use the recessive ‘ant’ variant than those with a low
IdQ score (p ¼ .010, c2 ¼ 6.706, df ¼ 1, N ¼ 20). Overall, the group mostly likely to use emmet to mean ‘ant’ are older speakers
who are middle-class with a high IdQ score.
Younger participants, despite not being entirely familiar with the older sense, are often aware of its less than comple-
mentary connotations. For example, pp. NWM24, who, according to the who/what questions is unaware of the ‘ant’ sense of
emmet, describes the tourists in the casual elicitation procedure as ‘a pack of emmets’. This suggests that while many younger
speakers are not familiar with the older meaning, emmet ‘ant’, for at least some of these speakers, it remains as a ‘trace’ (see
Fitzmaurice 2017: 6). The trace of emmet ‘ant’ is evidenced by NWM24’s use of the collective noun pack which would typically
collocate with animals, such as ants. The collocation between pack and emmet remains in the speech of pp. NWM24 despite
his apparent unawareness of the sense emmet ‘ant’.

3.4. Recognition

79 of the 80 participants were able to identify emmet as Anglo-Cornish and were able to engage in a discussion of its usage
and perception. While no specific sense was specified in the questions posed, participants all went on to discuss the social
meaning of emmet ‘tourist’, not emmet ‘ant’, suggesting that this is its prototypical sense. Due to the high-rates of recognition
of emmet as being Anglo-Cornish, it is not suitable to explore patterns of social variation through statistical analysis. The one
participant who did not identify emmet as Anglo-Cornish is the same participant who was unable to complete the who/what
elicitation task for emmet.

3.5. Social meaning

Emmet ‘tourist’ is heavily laden with a range of nuanced social meanings which can account for the seemingly complex
patterns of socially-conditioned onomasiological usage (cf. Labov 1963). On the aggregate, the social factors which condition
the onomasiological usage of emmet vary between the younger and older speakers (see Fig. 4). This is mirrored by a shift in
perceived social meanings. Older and younger speakers tend to attribute distinct meta-pragmatic functions to the use of
emmet. These social meanings can be interpreted through the lens of chronotopic identities and shifting attitudes to tourism
in Cornwall.
Emmet can be used in order to confirm one’s Cornish provenance and highlight one’s status as a local. For example, pp.
KWM23 states that emmet is used by ‘proud Cornish people’ and TMF59 suggests that emmet is often used ‘as an identifier by
people who want to assert their local status’. The use of emmet is, according to pp. JMF75, ‘very much an identity thing, we are
Cornish and we are a unit and we are excluding you, there’s a whole load of cultural stuff within [the word emmet], there is
always that tone of us and them and it reinforces [Cornish] identity’. By othering non-Cornish people and reinforcing one’s
Cornish credentials, emmet serves to signal in-group membership. This distinguishes ‘the Cornish’ as a distinct group and
feeds into anti-tourism attitudes which other England and the English. This othering is consistent with the Industrial Celt
identity.
A common theme found in the meta-linguistic commentaries of emmet is that it indexes a territorial identity, which is
associated with the anti-tourism attitude which is characteristic of the Industrial Celt identity. Pp. JMF62 comments that the
use of emmet is indicative of a ‘Cornwall for the Cornish’ attitude. This perception is reinforced by pp. RWF48 who states that
emmet is used by ‘people who see non-Cornish people as an intrusion’. Similarly, pp. KMM22 who observes that ‘a lot of
people who use [emmet] are quite traditional and think Cornwall is its own place’. This index of a territorial identity is further
evidenced by pp. EMF21 who explained that emmet is used by ‘the Cornish people who are quite patriotic and kind of feel like
they are a bit more entitled because they are Cornish and can look down on others’. This is reinforced by pp. CWF49 who says
that emmet ‘can be used as a derogatory term to say ‘you don’t live here and you’re annoying’’. Indeed pp. RWM23 reports that
the use of emmet is used to signify ‘ownership’ and ‘taking Cornwall as your own’. This is echoed by pp. TMM23 who states
that he thinks that people who use emmet are:
mostly people quite heavy on localism. I don’t think it’s a particularly nice term [.] if we say emmets we are talking
down about someone [.] I think it’s a working-class thing [.] that’s because it affects us6 most [.] a lot of younger
people learn it from older people [.][my friends and I] would use it because we’re proud to be Cornish and a lot of

6
While TMM23 identifies himself as being working-class here, he was classified as middle-class by the social class index used in this study.
26 R.J. Sandow / Language & Communication 93 (2023) 15–29

people get angry at people coming down and while its good for Cornwall, it is still a pain in the ass, so we would use it
just because we feel like this is our place and they’re coming into it.
The use of emmet as a pejorative label which can be perceived to make a claim regarding the legitimacy of tourists in
Cornwall as opposed to bona-fide Cornish people, is consistent with the anti-tourism attitude which conceptualises tourists
negatively.
An anti-tourism stance can be indexed by emmet. This is exemplified by pp. JMF62 who states that emmet is used by
‘people who don’t realise how valuable tourism is to Cornwall’ and, according to pp. HMM23, it is used by ‘people who resent
tourists’. Indeed, pp. MMF25 states that emmet ‘is associated with a negative attitude towards tourism’ (also pp. LWF55, pp.
HMM23, pp. TMF22, pp. CMM24, pp. MMM46, pp. SMF46, p. JMM18, pp. EMF21, pp. MMF25, pp, RWM23, pp. TTMM24). These
meta-linguistic commentaries suggest that emmet can index both a territorial identity and a negative affect pertaining to
tourists. Thus, this use of emmet is consistent with the anti-tourist attitude.
Emmet can also index a frustrated interpersonal stance. This is exemplified by pp. MWF49 who states that emmet is ‘used
when frustrated’. The frustrated stance index is also commented upon by pp. SWM24 who states that ‘everyone from
Cornwall uses [emmet] in the summer, all ages will say emmet at one point or another out of frustration’. Participant JWM23
comments that it is ‘aggressive’ and pp. RMM67 suggests that emmet is a ‘term of abuse’. This is reinforced by the consistent
collocation with the intensifiers fucking and bloody. Participant SWM50 says that ‘if I got stuck in a traffic jam and it’s full of
holiday-makers, I’d just think ‘f-in emmets’’ and that ‘I’ve used [emmet] when I get teasy [frustrated] when you get stuck in
traffic full of holiday-makers and you’re thinking ‘bloody emmets! I just want to get home’’. This index of a frustrated stance is
reinforced by pp. SWM24 who suggested that when using emmet, one can ‘be really neutral with it or you could be like
‘fucking emmets’. If you’re Cornish you complain about emmets, it’s drilled into you from birth’. As a result, it has developed
an index not just of frustration, but of hostility towards holiday-makers.
The negatively-valenced social meanings of emmet are evidenced by graffiti observed in Cornwall. Cornwall Live (2021)
reported various graffiti at Pedn Vounder beach which included racist slurs, references to Covid-19 conspiracy theories,
rudimentary phallic drawings, as well as the phrase ‘emmets go home’. Just a week later, ITV online (2021) reported the use of
emmet in graffiti in the Cornish town of Hayle. A welcome sign to the town was graffitied in a number of ways, including with
the words ‘die emmet’s [sic.]’, ‘emmet’s r a cancer [sic.]’ and various drawings of what appears to be the Cornish flag, the flag
of St. Piran.
Many of the informants in this study, particularly those aligned with the pro-tourism attitude which is indicative of the
Lifestyle Cornwall identity, view the use of emmet as being incompatible with a progressive, inclusive worldview. For example,
pp. AMM65 states that emmet was used by people who are ‘bigoted [.] along the lines of nationalist beliefs’. Similarly, pp.
TMM49 comments that emmet is used by ‘the worst sort of Cornish nationalists [.] very inward looking’. Yet, many who
attest emmet’s indices of isolationism and antagonism towards outsiders, also use emmet themselves. The index of the bigoted
persona is parodied by many of those who orient towards the Lifestyle Cornwall identity. For example, pp. SMF46 admits to
using emmet ‘as a joke’ and pp. KMM22 uses it as ‘banter’ with his non-Cornish friends. There is a wealth of evidence from
participants’ meta-linguistic commentaries that emmet can index a humorous interpersonal stance. For example, pp. AWM24
states that he uses emmet ‘as a joke [.] it has become a self-aware thing in people in my generation, we don’t use it unless it’s
made in jest’. This is reinforced by pp. TMF22 who states that emmet is ‘used by bitter old people who are really against
tourists’ and then goes on to say that ‘I use it in jest’. Similarly, pp. SMF46 says ‘I think people who use that, it’s a bit
derogatory, they don’t really like people coming down on holiday [.] It’s a negative term, in a kind of racist way [.] I
wouldn’t use that, [but I would] in a jokey way’. These quotes demonstrate that emmet is being used to construct a humorous
interpersonal stance where the butt of the joke is not tourists in general, but their non-Cornish friends or older Cornish people
who they perceive to take anti-tourist stances. This humorous stance is only successful, that is, funny, when both the speaker
and hearer understand the frame of reference, which, in this case, is the perceived insularity of those who use emmet.
Emmet can also be used to parody anti-tourist and/or anti-English attitudes in Cornwall. This is evidenced by a group of
surfers in St. Ives (Cornwall) who, while wearing unflattering Donald Trump masks held signs which read ‘no more emmets’
and, paraphrasing Trump’s (in)famous slogan, ‘make Cornwall great again’. This example highlights a perceived parallel
between the anti-immigration of then U.S president Donald Trump and the anti-tourism sentiment in Cornwall. Such ex-
amples highlight that emmet indexes social meaning at the third-order of indexicality (Johnstone et al., 2006). The inclusion of
emmet on bumper-stickers and other commodified dialect objects, plus its widespread use in internet memes, speak to its
enregisterment (see Agha 2007; Ilbury 2020).
Many young people who align with the Lifestyle Cornwall identity and who use emmet to index Cornish in-group
membership and a humorous interpersonal stance also associated emmet with being ‘cool’. For example, pp. EMF21 states
that ‘people try and sound cool when they say it’ and pp. RWM23 comments that ‘it is seen as cool to say it’. The index of ‘cool’
and the parody of anti-tourist stances are often made use of by those who align with pro-tourism ideologies and the Lifestyle
Cornwall identity more broadly, as this identity is also considered to be ‘cool’.
The complexity of emmet’s indexical meaning potentials is exemplified by pp. NWF20 who reports that emmet is:
A bit of a bigotry [sic.] word. I take it in tongue-in-cheek. Young people do use it because they think it’s funny. It’s more
humorous than serious. Some people use that word very seriously, some use it humorously. I wouldn’t use that word to
people who were here on holiday because I wouldn’t want to offend them but I would use it with my peer group.
 R.J. Sandow / Language & Communication 93 (2023) 15–29 27

This highlights the diverse social meanings that emmet can index and, specifically, the age-related variation, with younger
people perceived to use emmet ‘humorously’ as opposed to their older counterparts who use it ‘very seriously’. I suggest that
these indexical meanings should be viewed in the context of attitudes towards tourism in Cornwall.
Pp. TMM24 very accurately predicts the quantitative distribution of emmet from his meta-linguistic commentary. He states
that:
Emmet is a word that is only likely to be used by Cornish people [.] it is a pejorative word for tourists [.] the sort of
person who is likely to use this word is someone with an inherent dislike of outsiders and who feels threatened by
influxes of tourism [.] I think that if there was a class thing to it, it would probably be used more by working-class
Cornish people. Gender, I don’t think it matters nor does age, I think it’s more of an identity thing, a national iden-
tity [.] I associate this word with a slightly insular quality based on a dislike of others, in this case, tourists. It is
reflective of a traditional attitude. I think people use it to advertise their Cornishness as a sort of Cornish badge of
honour to dislike tourism. I don’t find it problematic but I know lots of people who do.
As predicted by pp. TMM24, the use of emmet does not vary significantly according to gender or age but does reach
significance in relation to class and strength of local identity (see Table 4). Pp. TMM24 also touches upon the use of emmet in
the construction of local identities, e.g. ‘people use it to advertise their Cornishness as a sort of badge of honour’. Also, pp.
TMM24 discusses the link between the use of emmet and ‘traditional’ Cornish identity. This identity which is described as ‘a
national identity’ is associated with an ‘insular’ persona that emmet is widely thought to index.
The social meanings expressed by emmet can be visualised in an indexical field on the basis of the patterns of social
variation, meta-linguistic commentaries, and observations from ethnographic participant observation (see Eckert 2008). In
the indexical field presented in Fig. 6, I distinguish between the social meanings that are attributed to and attributed by those
who embody the Industrial Celt and Lifestyle Cornwall chronotopic identities. For example, those who align with Lifestyle
Cornwall may interpret the use of emmet to be ‘bigoted’ when used by someone they perceive to be an Industrial Celt, yet
‘humorous’ when used by a speaker who aligns with Lifestyle Cornwall. This reinforces the view that the social meaning of
linguistic forms should not be viewed in isolation, but in the context of a broader system of semiotic communication (see

Fig. 6. The indexical field of emmet (from Sandow 2021). Capital letters ¼ social groups. Regular text ¼ persona types. Italics ¼ stances.

Eckert 2008). Variation between the chronotopes is identifiable by the squares in the indexical field. Where social meanings
are shared across the identities, the visualisation accounts for this by locating these meanings at the intersection of the
relevant squares.
28 R.J. Sandow / Language & Communication 93 (2023) 15–29

4. Discussion and conclusion

The trajectory of ideological change and attitudes towards tourism in Cornwall can be traced by speakers’ use and
perception of emmet (cf. Remlinger et al., 2009). Shortly after the advent of large-scale tourism in Cornwall, Cornish people
developed a local word for tourists, a shibboleth of in-group membership. This shift reflects a generally negative affect to-
wards tourists, with the metaphor of TOURISTS ARE ANTS being predicated on some rather pejorative stereotypes. Older speakers
remain most likely to use the traditional sense ‘ant’ alongside the more recent sense ‘tourist’, with younger speakers using this
newer sense almost exclusively. As the Cornish population’s sense of place, most notably their attitudes towards tourism,
evolved, so too has the way we (the Cornish) speak about tourists. Typically, attitudes towards tourism and tourists are more
positive among the younger population, which is symptomatic of a broader shift in chronotopic identities in Cornwall. One of
the results of this attitudinal shift is that the social predictors of the use of emmet are changing, with IdQ score and socio-
economic class being the strongest predictors of its usage for older speakers and younger speakers, respectively. This reflects
changes in its indexical field (Eckert 2008), from displaying negative affect to tourists, to showing positive affect though
mock-impoliteness. Speakers’ meta-linguistic narratives highlight the sets of norms associated with this local dialect word as
well as its role in forming and developing inter-personal relationships with members of the in-group/out-group (cf. Johnstone
and Baumgardt 2004).
Emmet can index stances associated with two distinct Cornish identities, which supports Remlinger’s (2009: 121) claim
that ‘values associated with particular features can shift over time, indexing different ideologies for different speakers, even at
the same time’ (see also Remlinger et al., 2009). Speakers’ meta-linguistic commentaries evidence a shift in the perceived
social meaning of emmet which reflects a shift in the relationship between the tourism sector and the Cornish population.
Through the use of emmet, speakers not only make a claim to be Cornish, but a specific type of Cornishness, embedded in
ideologies of place and of attitudes towards tourism in Cornwall. This showcases the close relationship between language and
society as a shift in local attitudes to tourism is mirrored by a shift the perception of a local word, emmet.
The stylistic variation of emmet suggests that this word is being used to perform social identity work, it is being used to
style a contextually desirable identity (see Sandow 2022). Many Industrial Celts style shift towards the use of emmet in careful
speech styles as they seek to construct an identity based on a Cornish identity that is largely critical or sceptical of tourism.
Yet, many of those who align towards the Lifestyle Cornwall identity are likely to avoid the use of emmet due to the very same
social meanings. However, the indexical association between emmet and an Industrial Celt persona is parodied by other
speakers in order to index alignment to Lifestyle Cornwall. As emmet can index alignment to both chronotopic identities, I
suggest that it has bivalent chronotopic indexicality (cf. Cotter and Valentinsson 2018), as the same form can index traditional
and more modern Cornish identities. This accounts for why, onomasiologically, emmet does not exhibit quantitative age-
related variation, yet there are age-related interaction effects with socioeconomic class and strength of Cornish identity.
This article began with a claim from Stockwell & Minkova (2001) regarding the sensitivity of lexis to cultural change.
Emmet has served as a case-study to exemplify their assertion. From both semasiological and onomasiological perspectives,
emmet reflects (and reconstructs) social and attitudinal changes in Cornwall. This evidences the ways in which lexical vari-
ation can provide unique insights to the sociolinguistic endeavour and tell new stories about language and society.

Declaration of competing interest

The author declares none.

Appendix A. Supplementary data

Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langcom.2023.08.002.

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