“You’re Not from New York City, You’re from Rotherham”

This paper investigates the use of local accent and dialect features in the performance of Arctic Monkeys, a very successful indie band from Sheffield in the north of England. Previous work on variation in the sung pronunciation of British pop musicians by Trudgill (1983) and Simpson (1999) is revie...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of English Linguistics
Main Author: Beal, Joan C.
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: SAGE Publications 2009
Subjects:
Online Access:http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0075424209340014
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0075424209340014
Description
Summary:This paper investigates the use of local accent and dialect features in the performance of Arctic Monkeys, a very successful indie band from Sheffield in the north of England. Previous work on variation in the sung pronunciation of British pop musicians by Trudgill (1983) and Simpson (1999) is reviewed. A qualitative analysis of an Arctic Monkeys performance is carried out to determine the extent to which features of northern and/or more specifically Sheffield English are used by Arctic Monkeys. The results are then discussed within a language-ideological framework, where it is argued that Arctic Monkeys are using features of local accent and dialect to index values such as authenticity and independence from the corporate machine.