DIALECTS

Language Variation and Change

This station hosted three activities designed to introduce visitors to the dialects of English spoken in the UK.

A dialect mapping activity invited visitors to place a coloured pin, representing the dialect variant they use, on the place in the UK where they grew up. There were three A1 sized maps mounted on foam board and held on easels, representing lexical variation (pants vs. trousers), phonological variation (the pronunciation of the vowel in 'strut'), and syntactic variation (acceptability of 'give it me').

Laptops were available for visitors to visit Our Dialects, a dialect mapping project by undergraduate students at The University of Manchester. This gave visitors the chance to look at different UK dialect maps in further detail.

Finally, a 'Decipher the Tweet' quiz allowed visitors to test their new knowledge of UK dialects by translating tweets in dialect into Standard English and guessing the area of the UK that the tweet came from.

What Did and Didn't Work

Interactive use of laptops was popular.

Visitors enjoyed the link between their data collection on the day and Our Dialects.

Creation of materials was made easier by using Our Dialects.

This was the visitors' second favourite station at the event, and the dialect maps were especially enjoyed.

VS

Pins were a safety hazard and would go through to the other side of the easel.

Children would play with the pins and place them on the map randomly.

Table was messy and cluttered.

Improvements

Allow for one table per activity to reduce clutter.

Attach two layers of foam board to the back of maps to prevent pins from sticking out of the other side.

Tape the boxes of pins to the table using double-sided tape to prevent spills.

Train volunteers to be extra vigilant of children misplacing pins on maps.

Clarify that pins should be placed where visitors grew up and not where they currently live.