Mrs Katiuska M Ferrer Portillo

My research analyses the diversity, limits and extension of Bristol dialect areas based on the speakers’ own perception of their individual linguistic variety, as well as, providing academic evidence on Bristolians’ collective belief that a north-south division of Bristol English exists.
In this way, this study contributes to fill the existent gap of perceptual dialectological studies in the south of the UK (Montgomery, 2007: 352-3), and expands sociolinguistic research on Bristol English (Coates, 2016: 1; Wakelin, 1986: 197).

The use of a tripartite approach, involving the ‘draw-a-map’ task (Preston, 1999), the ‘ranking and voice placement’ method (Preston, 1999), and the use of the acoustic analysis PRAAT software, will enable speaker-focussed’ evidence to be obtained for viability of different Bristol English categories. Moreover, a final acoustic scrutiny of voice samples from the perceptual dialect areas, will help to perform an empirical check on the veracity of local perceptions.

This thesis’ findings will break ground on the nascent perceptual studies in the south of UK by establishing a plausible perceptual division of Bristol English, and by providing acoustic evidence about the interrelation between folk’s dialect perception and speech production.