Introduction

I'm a final-year PhD student at the University of Manchester, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council. My research lies at the intersection between variationist linguistics, sociophonetics, and topics in phonological theory and language change; I also have a keen interest in northern English dialectology, and my work on (ng) variation touches upon all of these topics.

I'm currently writing up my thesis, 'Variation and change in Northern English velar nasals: Production and perception', which pursues a number of research questions regarding the synchronic and diachronic behaviour of /ŋg/ clusters in the North of England and how their variability is represented in speakers' grammars. During my doctoral studies I have been supervised by Maciej Baranowski and Ricardo Bermúdez-Otero (previously by Laurel MacKenzie).

Research interests

  • Variationist linguistics and phonological theory

    Much of my research deals with the variability inherent in language, and I am particularly interested in the effects of internal factors and what they tell us about how variation is represented.

    My ongoing research into diachronic and synchronic frequency effects in Manchester /t/-glottalling, conducted alongside Ricardo Bermúdez-Otero, Maciej Baranowski and Danielle Turton also engages with important issues of phonological representation.

  • The relationship between acoustics and articulation

    I'm also interested in articulatory phonetics, and in particular the mapping between acoustics and articulation. For example, I am currently involved in an ongoing research project using ultrasound tongue imaging to investigate /s/-retraction in British English (alongside Stephen Nichols), which explores how different articulatory mechanisms are used to hit similar acoustic targets. Read about it here and here!

  • Using Twitter in sociolinguistic research

    I also work a lot with large corpora of Twitter data to investigate regional variation and to explore innovative methods in variationist linguistics. I've already collected and analysed a 16 million tweet corpus of geotagged tweets, which you can read about here, and I've also organised a workshop on how to collect and analyse Twitter data for linguistic research (the materials are accessible here).

  • Dialectology and geospatial data visualisation

    I love data visualisation, and this goes hand in hand with my interest in dialectology and regional variation.

    I've been involved in a cool project with Laurel MacKenzie and Danielle Turton mapping regional variation throughout the UK, which you can see here. The project has also been used in a promotional video for the department.

  • Forced alignment software

    As a keen user of Forced Alignment software like FAVE, I have looked into the possibility of using such methodological tools to automate the detection of sociolinguistic variation.

    I've presented on this topic at NWAV (read about it here and here!) and I'm currently pursuing further ways to increase efficiency in variationist analysis and improve the accuracy of speech~text alignment.

Conferences

Invited talks

Year Title Abstract Slides
2016 Regional variation in 140 characters: mapping geospatial tweets
Paper presented at the Workshop on Using Twitter for Linguistic Research, University of Kent, 31st May

Selected talks and posters

Year Title Abstract Slides/
Poster
2018 Revealing covert articulation in s-retraction
Authors: Stephen Nichols & George Bailey
Paper to be presented at the 2018 Annual Meeting of the Linguistics Association of Great Britain, University of Sheffield, 12th September
2018 Gradience and categoricity in s-retraction: An ultrasound study of Manchester English
Authors: Stephen Nichols & George Bailey
Poster presented at the 2018 Colloquium of the British Association of Academic Phoneticians, University of Kent, 14th April
Winner of the Eugénie Henderson prize for best poster
2018 Retraction on Coronation [ʃ]treet: An ultrasound-tongue-imaging study of s-retraction in Manchester English
Authors: George Bailey & Stephen Nichols
Paper presented at the 8th Northern Englishes Workshop, Newcastle University, 28th March
2018 Emerging from below the social radar: Evaluation of post-nasal [g] in the North West of England
Paper presented at the 8th Northern Englishes Workshop, Newcastle University, 27th March
Winner of the best student paper prize
2017 Velar nasal plus in the north of (ing)land
Paper presented at UKLVC11, Cardiff University, 31st August
2017 Synchronic evidence for diachronic pathways of change: /g/-deletion and the life cycle of phonological processes
Paper presented at FWAV4, University of York, 29th June
2017 Synchronic evidence for diachronic pathways of change: /g/-deletion and the life cycle of phonological processes
Poster presented at the 25th Manchester Phonology Meeting, University of Manchester, 27th May
2016 Velar nasal plus in the north of (ing)land
Paper presented at NWAV 45, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, 4th November
2016 Ahead but not faster: The effect of high token frequency on sound change
Authors: Maciej Baranowski, Ricardo Bermúdez-Otero, George Bailey & Danielle Turton
Paper presented at NWAV 45, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, 4th November
2016 A stationary frequency effect in Manchester English
Authors: George Bailey, Danielle Turton, Maciej Baranowski & Ricardo Bermúdez-Otero
Paper presented at the LAGB Annual Meeting 2016, University of York, 8th September
2016 A stationary frequency effect in Manchester English
Authors: Danielle Turton, George Bailey, Ricardo Bermúdez-Otero & Maciej Baranowski
Paper presented at the 24th Manchester Phonology Meeting, University of Manchester, 27th May
2016 Velar nasal plus in the north of (ing)land
Paper presented at the 7th Northern Englishes Workshop, University of Edinburgh, 14th April
2015 A constant rate effect in Manchester /t/-glottalling: High-frequency words are ahead of, but change at the same rate as, low-frequency words
Authors: Ricardo Bermúdez-Otero, Maciej Baranowski, George Bailey & Danielle Turton
Paper presented at the Edinburgh Symposium of Historical Phonology 2, University of Edinburgh, 3rd December
2015 Orthographic reflections of (ing): A Twitter-based corpus study
Poster presented at the Manchester Forum in Linguistics, University of Manchester, 6th November
2015 Automatic detection of sociolinguistic variation in forced-alignment
Paper presented at NWAV 44, University of Toronto, 24th October
2015 Linguistic markers of England's north-south dialectal divide: An attitudinal study of bath and strut
Poster presented at UKLVC 10, University of York, 1st September
2014 East Fife, four... Forfar, five: Intonation of the classified football results
Paper presented at Manchester Forum in Linguistics, University of Manchester, 13th November
2014 Crowdsourcing dialectology in the undergraduate classroom
Authors: Laurel MacKenzie, George Bailey & Danielle Turton
Paper presented at Methods in Dialectology XV, University of Groningen, 12th August
2014 That's how people grow up: Language change across Morrissey's lifespan
Poster presented at Reflections on Language, University of Manchester, 10th May

Publications and theses

Year Title Abstract Full text
forthcoming Emerging from below the social radar: Incipient evaluation in the North West of England
Journal of Sociolinguistics
2016 Automatic detection of sociolinguistic variation using forced alignment
U. Penn Working Papers in Linguistics 22.2: Selected Papers from New Ways of Analyzing Variation 44
2015 Social and internal constraints on (ing) in Northern Englishes
MA dissertation, University of Manchester

Teaching

During my doctoral studies I have been a TA for a number of undergraduate courses:

  • Linguistics of Names Semester 2, 2015/6
  • Linguistics of American English Semester 1, 2016/7
  • Language Variation and Change Semester 2, 2016/7
  • Quantitative Methods in Language Sciences Semester 1, 2017/8
  • Handling Data Semesters 1-2, 2017/8

My roles include preparing and delivering seminars and guest lectures, marking student assignments, meeting with students in office hours to provide one-to-one support, and assisting the course unit director in other matters relating to teaching. I am also an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, having completed an accredited training course to receive formal recognition of my teaching ability.



Invited teaching

On the 16th June 2018 I gave an invited workshop at the University of Bern on 'When social media meets sociolinguistics: Using Twitter to study language variation and change'.

It covered how to use R to collect or 'mine' Twitter data, as well as all the analytical tools required to work with data on this scale and to use it in variationist linguistic study. The workshop was split into four parts:

  • (1) Collecting Twitter data
  • (2) Conducting geospatial analysis to investigate regional variation
  • (3) Conducting sentiment analysis
  • (4) A case study of variation in intensifier usage

The workshop materials can be accessed here. Feel free to send me an email if you have any questions about the content.

Experience and skills

Experience and responsibilities

Skills

  • Phonetic analysis and scripting in Praat
  • Ultrasound tongue imaging
  • Programming in Python, HTML, CSS, XML, and XSLT
  • R/ggplot
  • Curve modelling (e.g. Generalised Additive Mixed Models, Functional Data Analysis, Principle Components Analysis)
  • LaTeX
  • Version control software (e.g. Git)
  • Visualisation and statistical analysis of geospatial data
  • Forced alignment and automatic vowel extraction tools
  • Transcription using ELAN
  • Starring in departmental promotional videos!