This month’s podcast comes from Dr Lauren Hall-Lew, a lecturer in Sociolinguistics. With tourist season well and truly upon us it’s the perfect time to find out more about Lauren’s research into tourist attitudes to Scottish accents. Lauren and her team hit the streets of Edinburgh during a recent Edinburgh Festival Fringe to quiz tourists about their attitudes to Scottish accents in different contexts.
She shares some of her findings with us and we discuss whether we can think of accents as a commodity like shortbread or tartan, and what that might mean for tourism and tourism marketing. We also discuss whether authenticity matters to tourists, even if it means they can’t understand what someone is saying.
Further Reading
Lauren’s Blog: Vocalized/Vocalised: Voicings about language by an American Linguist in Edinburgh
Andy Stewart: The Rumour (a lexical ‘map’ of Scottish accents)