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Lexical variation in the BBC Voices Recordings

An account of the lexical treasure trove discovered by the BBC Voices project and the challenge of making this available to the public

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 December 2012

Jonnie Robinson
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Extract

This paper presents preliminary findings from the lexicographic strand of a British Library (BL) project to document variation in British English. Voices of the UK (VoUK) is the first attempt to present significant amounts of raw data emerging from a nationwide survey of spoken English in the UK since the 1950s. The data derive from the BBC Voices Recordings: a set of group conversations about language, accent and dialect recorded in locations across the UK by BBC Local Radio in 2004 and 2005. The recordings capture speakers from all walks of life exploring their responses to an identical set of prompt words. The result is a large, rich but targeted corpus of lexical variation.

Type
Research Article
Information
English Today , Volume 28 , Issue 4 , December 2012 , pp. 23 - 37
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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