Language, Performance and Region: Discourse and Sociocultural Identity in the wider western Midlands

This project seeks to investigate the relationship between a specific discourse practice - imaginative and stylized performance - and connections performance may have with language and identity linked to place. Specifically, it investigates the part played by performance in creating, maintaining and challenging imagined communities; the extent to which local linguistic forms are present within performance data and the ideological implications of such use.
It addresses four further research questions:

Which kinds of performance texts are dominated by dialect use?
To what extent do audiences have any affinity with the linguistic variation shown by performers (artists, writers, poets, comedians, broadcasters) and the ideology produced and reinforced by them?
What is the nature of the relationship between performers of any kind (artists, writers, poets, comedians, broadcasters) and the communities they purport to represent?
Can the claim that speakers can, when confronted with social and economic change, use linguistic features associated with a traditional place identity as a way to resist change be substantiated?
By addressing these questions, the project will give a clear picture of the role played by performance in the maintenance of a specific social, cultural and regional identity in a way never before attempted.