Phraseology and Culture in English

4. Post-insularity and language change 
Mobility and immigration are generally considered as most powerful level-
ing forces operating on and leading to language development and change, 
in particular dialect erosion and dedialectalisation (Chambers 1995). The 
effect of population movements on language change has increased dramati-
cally in the last century, and there has been a recent upsurge in research on 
mobility-induced language change in formerly isolated communities. Due 
to their relative degrees of isolation and weakened ties with other dialects 
and their speakers, isolated communities are prone to develop and maintain 
local norms. On occasion, these features can attain psycho-social signifi-
cance, namely when they are perceived as distinctive local traits (for in-

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Daniel Schreier 
stance centralized diphthong onsets on the island of Martha’s Vineyard, see 
below), in opposition to other (usually neighbouring) communities or to lar-
ger groups of outsiders who move to the area or spend time in the commu-
nity. Several outcomes of such scenarios have been documented, and some 
of the most important findings are discussed in turn. 
4.1. Dialect erosion 
The most common scenario is one of thinning-out (and eventual loss) of 
specifically localised dialect features. Such patterns follow a similar tra-
jectory: a local community is socially outnumbered (or “swamped”, Lass 
1990) by larger groups who come to the area for various reasons, and the 
loss of linguistic norms from formerly isolated and endocentric vernaculars 
is a direct consequence of population movements and shifts in local demo-
graphics.
This process of dialect erosion has been documented in various post-
isolated places, for instance on the island of Ocracoke, one of the Outer 
Banks islands off the coast of North Carolina. Ocracoke was fairly isolated 
until World War II, and the community had few contacts with the mainland 
and was economically self-sufficient, based on fishing. Then, in the 1950s 
and 1960s, the island began to open up to the extent that it is now a popular 
holiday resort on the Atlantic Coast. More and more tourists came to spend 
their holidays on the Outer Banks, a regular ferry service was established 
with the mainland and other Outer Banks islands, and today Ocracoke at-
tracts tens of thousands of visitors from all parts of the US east coast. Mo-
tels, restaurants, Bed and Breakfasts were established, along with a variety 
of shops and entertainment places. 
As a result, the job market changed, and more and more locals were em-
ployed in the tourist industry, coming into contact with ever-increasing num-
bers of off-islanders. Consequently, traditional employment in the fishing in-
dustry declined and there are now very few O’Cockers (as the locals call 
themselves) who fish for a living. Moreover, hundreds of outsiders retired 
to the island and now live on Ocracoke permanently, which of course trans-
formed the community’s social life as well. Apart from contacts with tour-
ists and visitors during the summer season, there is also an additional all-
year contact with outsiders. All these changes had an impact on the lan-
guage of the O’Cockers, and younger community members have far fewer 
traditional dialect features (such as an /oi/ sound in words like high and tide,

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Greetings as an act of identity in Tristan da Cunha English 
365
or weren’t with all persons, such as it weren’t me) than their parents and 
grandparents (Wolfram and Schilling-Estes 1997). Ocracoke is therefore a 
pertinent example of the effects of mobility on language change, and the 
linguistic consequences of economic transformation are so far-reaching that 
Walt Wolfram and his associates, who studied the dialect, are concerned 
that the local dialect erodes more or less entirely and warn that it is in dan-
ger of disappearing altogether in the foreseeable future. 
4.2. Dialect intensification 
An alternative outcome of mobility and increasing dialect contact is the 
attachment of social significance to salient local language features. In this 
case, local norms, instead of being lost due to shifting demographics and 
competition with other (oftern more socially valued) features, are re-evalu-
ated and -interpreted, occasionally to an extent that they symbolize local 
values and thus serve as a linguistic emblem of insider group membership. 
This process has been documented in various locales, and the following 
two examples illustrate it. 
Certainly one of the most seminal studies on the intensification of an 
ongoing language change in insular communities is Labov’s (1963) land-
mark analysis of the social significance of raised onsets in /ai/ and /au/ 
diphthongs on the island of Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. The onsets 
(or first elements) of /ai/ and /au/ diphthongs are commonly realized as 
mid-central variants [ 
º ~ Ä ] when followed by voiceless consonants and 
as fully open [ a ] in other environments. “Canadian raising” (Trudgill 
1986: 32) is very common in most varieties of post-colonial English, par-
ticularly in the southern hemisphere. As Labov points out, this realization 
is a reflex of earlier forms of English rather than an innovation since “the 
first element of the diphthong /ay/ was a mid-central vowel in 16th- and 
17th- century English” (Labov 1972: 10). Complementing his own find-
ings with results from the Linguistic Atlas of New England, Labov found 
that the usage of centralized onsets was on the decline historically and that 
islanders had a strong tendency to accommodate to mainlanders by using 
more open onsets of /ai/. Then, however, the trend reversed and islanders 
born around and after WW II began to use significantly higher levels of 
centralized variants. Labov’s in-depth quantitative analysis revealed that 
this linguistic change had a social motivation. Most notably, it emerged 
that the trend towards centralized variants was led by the local fishermen, 

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