02 March 2010

The words that turned an academic into an Arctic explorer

Source: Yorkshire Post, 1 March 2010

Professor Joan Beal, from the University of Sheffield’s School of English, is interviewed about research she has done into the lyrics of Sheffield band the Arctic Monkeys.

When Alex Turner wrote Arctic Monkeys' hit Fake Tales of San Francisco, few people had heard of him or the band.

It was 2005 when the frontman penned the immortal line, "You're not from New York City, you're from Rotherham." Within two years, Arctic Monkeys had become one of the biggest bands on the planet and their unashamedly South Yorkshire lyrics had turned music industry heads.

However, while the band were in demand across the world, back in their home city they were also grabbing the attention of someone who wasn't a music critic, label boss or a pop-obsessed teenager.

Professor Joan Beal, accent and dialect expert at the University of Sheffield, was so struck by Arctic Monkeys' use of Sheffield English that she has just published a paper on the subject.

The aptly-entitled You're Not From New York City, You're From Rotherham is an academic analysis of the Arctics' regional references and a further contribution to the ongoing debate as to how dialect evolves through the generations.

"I noticed how journalists commented on the fact the band sang in a Yorkshire accent," says Prof Beal. "At first I thought, 'So what – they're from Yorkshire' and then I realised that this wasn't normal in pop music.

"There is a very famous linguist called Peter Trudgill, who wrote an article about British pop in the 1960s. He noticed that when the Beatles first started, they sang in American accents – like most British singers do – but when they became more established, they went back to using more British pronunciation.

"The Arctics didn't follow this route. They consciously sang the way they spoke. This wasn't because they didn't know any other way, but it was because they wanted to sound more authentic. It's a statement, it's a way of saying, 'It's our music and it's not manufactured'."

With phrases peculiar to South Yorkshire, such as "reight hard", "you've got the face on" and "now then mardy bum" peppering the band's lyrics and being adopted by fans many miles from Sheffield, Arctic Monkeys have in their own small way sparked a dialect revival.

According to Prof Beal, the word "mardy", which according to the Oxford English Dictionary had its first recorded use in the Sheffield and Rotherham Independent in 1874, has now been picked up in other areas of the country.

"If there's somebody as prominent as Alex Turner using a certain accent, it attracts attention," she says. "Nobody knew what it meant before, but thanks to them words like 'mardy' are being used nationally. The same happened in the 1960s with the Liverpool scene. Words that had been exclusively spoken by people on Merseyside started getting used more widely."

However, while Arctic Monkeys' lyrics may have provided Prof Beal with enough material to write an entire paper, their contribution is but a small chapter in the constantly evolving story of Yorkshire dialect.