1.1 What This Book Is About
This book is fundamentally a description of an ethnographic research project carried out among urban adolescents in Manchester, UK, between July 2014 and July 2016 by Rob Drummond and Susan Dray, two academics from different research backgrounds within the broad field of sociolinguistics. It is a deeply personal account of the process of research, with all the highs and lows, successes and failures, practical and theoretical challenges laid bare. It contains some linguistic description and analysis, particularly in Chaps. 6 and 7, but the overall focus of the book is on the context of the research and the process of carrying it out, from initial idea to the writing of this book.
I mention the fact that Susan and I came from different research backgrounds only because (a) this was a central and conscious decision in the setting up of the projectâto use two contrasting yet hopefully complementary approaches, and (b) these different ways of doing things (and different ways of even seeing the world) are responsible for much of the discussion and many of the insights in the following chapters. Within a month of starting the project, we knew that we should capitalise on the process of confronting our differing approaches to sociolinguistic research, as these differences generated such fruitful discussions between us and made us reflect on our own disciplines as much as on what we were learning about each otherâs. Very early on we decided that these challenges should be a key theme of the book, hopefully helping others to find their own way through a collaborative piece of research.
The fact that there is only one obvious author of this book might suggest that this collaborative experiment ultimately failed, but this is true only in a very limited sense. The project as it is presented here is immeasurably better, stronger, and more insightful than it would have been had we not been through the collaborative process. The fact that it is my voice which remains is simply due to the idiosyncrasies of academic life and the fact that as the instigator of the project, there is a sense in which it will always be âmineâ primarily. I canât help thinking that the book is more focused, accessible, and readable as a result of there being only one author (the different disciplines tend to write as well as conduct research in different ways), but this author could just as well have been Susan as me. Susanâs personal voice remains, especially in Chap. 5 which uses extensive extracts directly from her field notes, and Chap. 4, which is in part based on something we wrote together for another publication (Dray and Drummond 2018), but the themes and arguments are mine or are my interpretations of the many discussions we had. I say this not to take credit, but more to let Susan off the hook, as she might not agree with the direction or focus of some of the analysis.
The book is structured as follows. The rest of this chapter sets the scene for the research, explaining the purpose behind it and describing the journey towards getting it started. Chapter 2 provides the contextâit describes the research sites (two learning centres within the Manchester Secondary Pupil Referral Unit [PRU]), the staff, and, most importantly, the young people. Chapter 3 outlines our roles and identities within the research project; it looks at the different ways we were perceived by the young people, as well as how we perceived ourselves in each of the centres we were working in. Chapter 4 provides the methodology for the research and discusses the ways in which mine and Susanâs approaches often differed, sometimes clashed, and frequently enlightened one another, both theoretically and practically. In doing so, it offers insights into how one might approach such collaborative research in the future. Chapter 5 offers a unique view of life in the two centres, made up almost entirely of extracts from our research diaries written at the time. The narrative is interspersed with reflective comments on either methodological or linguistic points of interest, as they emerge. Chapter 6 is a descriptive linguistic illustration, offering a detailed overview of three aspects of the language of the young people: vowels, quotatives, and lexis. Chapter 7 provides, in many ways, a self-contained study of one particular linguistic featureâTH-stoppingâand its relationship with ethnicity by combining variationist and interactional analysis. Chapter 8 describes the impact of the project, highlighting the importance of ensuring our research has meaningful benefits to society, however defined. And finally, Chapter. 9 serves as a conclusion, bringing together the main themes and findings of the book.
1.2 Setting the Scene
Although the project itself officially began on 21 July 2014, the real beginning is much earlier. July 21st marks Susanâs first day at work, the first entries in our new fieldwork diaries, and the day on which we started discussing the practicalities of entering the research sites in the following September. But getting to that point was a small adventure all of its own. Iâm not talking about the ins and outs of securing research funding (although aspects of this will be covered in due course), but rather the process of getting to the stage whereby we were to be welcomed into two PRU learning centres with pretty much unlimited access. In some ways Iâd like to say that the journey to this point was a well-thought-out, well-organised, and entirely pre-planned series of events. Iâd like to say that I had identified an interesting sociolinguistic context, and, driven by some realistic and entirely appropriate research questions, had gone about ensuring the most effective and straightforward route towards a practical and timely investigation. In other ways, I look back with relish at the haphazard and incident-filled reality that had led me to where I was. Although the final project was indeed well planned, the underlying sense of unpredictability so evident at the beginning is much more in keeping with the tone of the project in general.
The âPre-pilotâ
SeptemberâOctober 2012
What I now call the âpre-pilotâ study began in September 2012, when I received a small amount of money from Manchester Met to carry out some exploratory work into what I was calling âMulticultural Manchester Englishââbasically seeing if there was any potential in looking for a Manchester equivalent of the Multicultural London English (MLE)1 identified by Cheshire et al. (2011). My inclination was that there would indeed be a comparable variety, as I had, for quite a long time, been aware of hearing young people use something that could be described along these lines. For the purposes of the pre-pilot, I was interested in analysing the speech of a few young people in Manchester, with a view to using the findings to inform a possible larger project. I wasnât aiming to be representativeâI simply wanted to find some likely users of an âurbanâ variety of language to see if there was something worth pursuing.
Having asked some colleagues for suggestions, I was given vague details of some kind of unofficial youth club, which was apparently based at a run-down cinema in a fairly deprived area of Manchester. I didnât know much more than the location of the cinema, and the fact that there were people there most evenings. Keen to make a start on the project, I soon found myself standing outside a boarded-up cinema in a not-so-desirable area of Manchester, in the rain, in the dark, on a September evening. After about half an hour of waiting, and not really knowing what to do, the fire door opened and two young men in their late teens asked what I wanted. I explained as best I could and was invited inside, up some stairs, to a forlorn-looking space, damp and badly lit, from which I could see the old cinema auditorium. To my left there was a small group of men of various ages gathered around an electric heater in a kind of side room. Again I explained who I was and what I was doing, constantly dropping in the name of the colleague who had given me the information, albeit to no recognition and a fair bit of bewilderment. After a while, it was suggested that it was âTerryâ I needed, and I was given a phone number, as he wasnât around today. I thanked everyone, said my goodbyes, and left, taking with me all my white middle-class awkwardness and already entering Terryâs number into the burner phone bought specifically for this project (yes, I had been watching The Wire, and no, it wasnât necessary).
Fast forward a few weeks and I find myself driving Terry in my car through the streets of Moss Side2 on a dark October evening, listening to The Specials in a naĂŻve bid to take the edge off my fish-out-of-water status. This was our second meeting and somehow I had graduated to being Terryâs personal driver, as there were some âthings he needed to take care ofâ. In return, he would introduce me to a few people who âowed him favoursâ and would therefore be happy to take part in my project. We did indeed meet some people, on the street, in their houses, in other peopleâs houses, and it gradually became clear that Terry was well known, well liked, well respected, and perhaps slightly feared. The various meetings were short, but I was gathering contacts all the same, making a mental note of who might be good to approach at a later date, in a perhaps slightly less bizarre context.
We ended the evening at a youth club. As usual, Terry was welcomed with open arms by the staff, and I was well treated by association. I got speaking to one of the organisers, who seemed genuinely interested in what I was trying to do and said sheâd be happy to help if she could. The problem, however, was that the kids there were younger than I wantedâI was aiming at the time for 16- to 18-year-olds and these were 10 to 14. She then suggested that I come along during the day, as the building was used for an organisation that caters for kids who have been excluded from mainstream school and they were a bit older. This, although I didnât know it at the time, was to be my first introduction to the Manchester Secondary PRU.3 Well, kind of.
I did go back during the day, and I met the staff, all of whom seemed interested and supportive. The place itself was quite unusual; what had seemed fine for a youth club the previous evening now looked wrong as a âschoolâ. There were no real classrooms as such, just a number of small rooms of varying suitability dotted around the building, with a large open space in the middle. One of the teachers was putting some kind of a display along one of the walls, although he told me later that such displays donât tend to stay up and in one piece for long. Then the young people started arriving. I was vaguely introduced where necessary, before attempting to melt into the background as the day unfolded. I didnât know what to expect, but I donât think it was this. Firstly, there were very few pupils, around eight or nine at most. But there seemed to be plenty of staff milling around, including one whose main job seemed to be to patrol the various rooms, steering people towards class and then making sure they stayed there, but all the time on the alert for an incident in another part of the building. Once in class, there was an attempt at getting the young people to do something approaching work, but it was mostly a fruitless endeavour. Members of staff encouraged and cajoled with various levels of insistence and commitment, but in return were largely ignored or sworn at. Attention was fleeting, engagement was almost non-existent, and actual productive âworkâ was entirely absent, at least to my untrained eye. Students were literally rounded up and contained for âlessonsâ, and then let loose again at the frequent break times to play pool, walk outside, and smoke. In between, I had permission to approach some of the young people and ask if theyâd mind talking to me, and perhaps be recorded at a later date. Every now and then Iâd get lucky and one would sit down with me for five minutes. Iâll be honest, we rarely got past the description of the project and the fact that I needed signed consent. Staff members were generally happy to talk to me, and I started to get a better sense of the situation they found themselves in. It was a situation in which they took whatever flack was necessary in order to make the occasional breakthroughs that might just give the young people a chance in at least some of their looming exams.
I did have some use...