England 15

Listen to England 15, a 34-year-old man from Wigan, Lancashire, in northwest England. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 34

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 11/08/1966

PLACE OF BIRTH: Wigan, Lancashire

GENDER: male

ETHNICITY: white

OCCUPATION: civil servant

EDUCATION: university

AREA(S) OF RESIDENCE OUTSIDE REPRESENTATIVE REGION FOR LONGER THAN SIX MONTHS:

The subject also lived in Cardiff, South Wales, for four years while attending university.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH: N/A

The text used in our recordings of scripted speech can be found by clicking here.

RECORDED BY: Lise Olson

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 05/07/2000

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

I was born in Wigan on 11th August, 1966. I’m currently a civil servant, and I work at a place called Hinley Prison, which is a youth remand centre for, er, offenders between the age of 16 to 21. The prison’s got about 500, er, inmates in, in the, er, establishment at the moment, and we’re basically responsible for holding those, erm, who have not yet been convicted- of an offence who are awaiting trial. It’s quite a large prison, erm, and in 1988, it took over, from Manchester prison, which is a big local establishment, just to take over the young offenders. Erm, I work in what’s known as the Discipline Office, where I am responsible for collating all the records and making sure records have been made(s) are updated, and the information is ready for officers if they need it, and also all the holding warrants, which are basically the legal documents that we, that we keep hold of, which authorizes us to keep somebody in custody. I’ve got to make sure they’re all up to date as well. Ah, I’m also fo- responsible for calculating sentences, err, arranging transfers to different establishments, speaking with different police authorities, and talking with the courts. Erm, it’s very interesting job; uh, I’ve been there for a number of years now, and er, I’ve recently been pro-promoted to erm, administrative officer. I’ve only actually been out of Wigan for a four-year period, erm, when I lived in Cardiff. Err, I was a student at, err, the university there, erm, and ever since leaving college, ah, I more or less returned, erm, and started working for the Home Office in Wigan then. Wigan is, ah, quite a sizeable town; it’s actually called a metropolitan borough…

TRANSCRIBED BY: Marina Tyndall

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 03/01/2008

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:

This is an excellent example of the Wigan dialect. Although the tune can be similar to nearby Manchester, the quality of the sound is less nasal. Older residents speak in a Wigan dialect that uses elisions and contractions, truncating known words into new ones, and often eliminating articles in written and spoken English.

COMMENTARY BY: Lise Olson and Heather Jewell

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A

The archive provides:

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• Text of the speakers’ biographical details.
• Scholarly commentary and analysis in some cases.
• In most cases, an orthographic transcription of the speakers’ unscripted speech.  In a small number of cases, you will also find a narrow phonetic transcription of the sample (see Phonetic Transcriptions for a complete list).  The recordings average four minutes in length and feature both the reading of one of two standard passages, and some unscripted speech. The two passages are Comma Gets a Cure (currently our standard passage) and The Rainbow Passage (used in our earliest recordings).

 

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