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In this volume, professor Emilia Di Martino analyses celebrities’ use of Geordie variety in a series of public performances in order to study the nexus between accent, identity and prejudice. The aim of this paper is to show how language constructs identity, in which “language” does not only include its verbal part (phonemes, syntax, lexemes), but also body language and facial expression. The main core of the study analyses the association of Geordie variety with certain stereotypes and how some celebrities (ex. Cheryl Chole and Sting) use Geordie variety in public events in order to construct their public identity as a Geordie. Geordie variety refers to the inhabitants of the Tyneside area of North East England. It’s a highly stereotyped accent (Geordie people are said to be kind at heart, they are generally perceived as simple people almost kinda rough, and it is also said that it’s simpler to sell them things). Geordie is a very distinctive variety; it was generally considered as a tick accent and that’s why it didn’t have chances to elevate itself in the society. CHAPTER 2. HIGH PERFORMANCE OF GEORDINESS This chapter focuses on two events that made year 2002 a nice candidate for an imaginary watershed to represent the acceleration of the processes that have led to what can retrospectively be seen as un “upward flight” of the Geordie variety – that means that Geordie reached a peak of acceptance that year. 1. The first event was the broadcast of “Dick&Dom in da Bungalow”, a CBBC entertainment television series presented by Richard McCourt and Dominic Wood (Dick and Dom), broadcast on weekend mornings on various BBC television channels between 31 August 2002 and 11 March 2006. The program brought regional accents to a nation-wide attention. (It must be said that, at the beginning of the XXI century, only people with perfect English accent was accepted on national TV programs). 2. The second event was the start of Cheryl Cole’s career as a singer on X-Factor, she’s a proud Geordie and she’s the first celebrity who changed the stereotyped concept of being Geordie. Since she was such a beautiful and friendly girl- but also laid- back and down to earth- Cheryl slowly made her way into all British people’s hearts, to the point that she still is considered to be the nation treasure. In interviews, people would hear Cheryl’s Geordie variety and – because of her cool attitude- they started to consider her as a celebrity whose persona had a “Relatable Coolness”, meaning that she was very close to people. Because of the two main events mentioned above, there has been a sort of “U-turn” in the perception of Geordiness. After Cheryl’s debut and “Dick&Dom in da Bungalow”, Geordie was voted as the sexiest accent in the UK (2002) by BBC news. 2.1 The Role of Geordie in the ‘Rise of the Regional’ The second chapter is inspired by Nikolas Coupland’s book “Style: Language Variation and Identity” in which the author affirms that such TV shows as “Dick&Dom” are crucially important in order to raise awareness about English varieties and North accents more specifically. Dick&Dom is CBBC program (for 6 to 12 years old children), nevertheless, some segments of the show were also meant for adults, so the parents had to watch the show together with their kids. On D&D, odd characters were invited to play all sort of games in a free atmosphere, but some of these games were considered “naughty” and not intended for kids. Because of this naughty edge, the TV show earned a reprimand from Watchdog O.F.C.O.M. (Office of Communications –it’s the UK’s communication regulation, it regulates the TV, radio and video on demand sectors etc.). For example: Once Dom wore a T-shirt with the words ‘Morning Wood’ on the show- Morning Wood means booner/morning erection. As if it wasn’t enough a debate in the UK’s Parliament occurred to discuss about Dick&Dom’s lavatorial content because of some weird games:  “Make Dick sick”, a game in which Dick vomits;  “Creamy muck muck”, a game in which a Geordie character, playing the role of a police man, spatters the mac cream on Dick and Dom and the kids to punish them- muck muckis the Geordie for “mac” (some people said that muck muck is an analogy for marijuana, so this game represents a fake drug bust on TV);  “The sticker game” in which Dick and Dom try to stick some stickers on strangers on the street;  “Bogies” in which Dick and Dom had to shout the word “Bogies” in public places; 1

 “Nee-Naw game”, a game in which children had to blow in fake plastic dolls -that represent patients- in order to save their life (this game usually has spatter content). Coupland affirms that the TV show was intentionally provocative. He also affirms that the Northern accent of Dick and Dom (the Sheffield one) was used to index a relaxed attitude in a relaxed setting (the Bungalow). Through their accent, Dick and Dom showed their disregard towards convention because they represented anarchic personas. Coupland also affirms that it is acceptable to watch such TV shows because it’s a vaguely carnivalesque micro-world: Dick&Dom is an upside-down world where good manner and polite language are contested, and bad manners and bad language demanded equal dialogic value in such atmosphere of “jolly relativity”. Analysing Geordie characters’ discourse in Dick&Dom Harry Batt is a fictional detective/police officer that appears in “Dick&Dom” in 2004 for the first time, to punish presenter Dominic Wood (Dom), who had cheated in a game, replacing a jar of yoghurt with garlic mayonnaise. The ‘police officer’ forced Wood/Dom to eat the garlic mayonnaise as a punishment. Harry Batt is famous for its line “NAE BODY MOVE”- Geordie for “Nobody moves!”. He later shows up with his assistant named Tynan Weir (his name is the Geordie pronunciation of “Tyne and Wear”, the metropolitan county in the North East region of England in which Newcastle upon Tyne is located). Tynan Weir mimics Harry Batt because he is being trained into the profession of the police man. Analysing the Geordie characters’ discourse in a snippet of the program, we found some typical Geordie characteristics: 1. The use of a plural noun by Geordie characters even when they’re talking to a single person; 2. They tend to end almost every sentence with the word “like”: 3. Using “me” instead of the possessive “me” (ex. “watch me suit” instead of “watch my suit”); 4. “Doon” = down; 5. Bungalow Heads= people who are located in and around the “bungalow” – main setting for the program; 6. Aye= yes; It is clear that Dick&Dom use a non-standard accent, the Geordie one. (usually, in British programs, only villains had a foreign accent). The value behind the Geordie accents used in Dick&Dom is pretty clear: breaking the link between Geordie a crime. Harry Batt is a police man/detective and Tynan Weir is his assistant, so people speaking Geordie accents in the program appear honest, frank and good. A certain accent is intentionally used to project a particular (good) persona. In this case a TRANSFER OF QUALITIES happened= Geordie has been delinked from its stereotyped and low-class identity. We just demonstrated that language can create identity. We always try to style our language to perform various roles in life (ex. people from Southern Italy put on a Northern accent when moving to North Italy in order to not being recognized as Southerners) The phenomenon of stylizing language is called VARIATION. Identities are a product of style choices: individuals acquire, cultivate and use different ways of speaking and writing in social encounters, in order to point at a specific social meaning. So, in D&D, Geordie is used to an achieve a jolly relativity and resistance to authority; characters try to point to a certain pronunciation and social meaning (ex. The Sheffield accent used by Dick and Dom made the anarchic, naïve and playful personas1). Harry Batt and Tynan Weir also have another function in the show: to control and mediate the disciplinefree environment of the Bungalow. Dom is reported to have said in an interview: ‘Dads like us, students like us, the kids obviously like us … it’s only mums that don’t tend to get it, and try to stop kids watching it. They think it’s too loud, and too naughty’. Harry Batt was probably purposely given the role of ‘fun-policing’ mothers on the show; its character was created simply to offer an ‘adult-punitive’ counterpart to the Dick and Dom couple. 2.2 Cheryl as a Characterological Figure In 2002 the TV show “Popstars: The Rivals” wanted to put up a girl band and started to interview and test girls from all over UK. That’s how the band “Girl Aloud” was created and Cheryl Cole was in it. Although Cheryl’s Geordie accent was immediately noticeable the moment she uttered her first spoken words on 2

Popstars, the public at large only became fully aware of it with the group’s first interview, broadcast by FHM in the same year. Cheryl had a warm voice, beautiful looks, wit, the gift of the gab [aveva la parlantina], high emotional reactivity, vulnerability and adopting private styles in public contexts. In short, a series of features emerged that many people would perceive as denoting a ‘cool’ yet relatable persona. In so doing, she made efforts to resist Geordie ‘stereotypes: she constructed a new identity for herself and a new “persona” and she contributed in re-inscribing the Geordie category. She became the “NATIONAL TREASURE”. 2.3 American English as the Default Accent in Pop Music Although being Geordie, Cheryl sings in an American accent. Cheryl’s singing voice is evidence that American English was still widely perceived to be the accent to adopt in pop music at the time she started her career. Trugill analysed the singing accents of a range of British artists from the 1950s to the mid-1970s, identifying a set of features associated with American accents in singing:  intervocalic /t/ in words like “better “as [ ḓ] (a voiced alveolar flap of some kind) instead of [t] or [ ʔ], which are the sound patterns used by most British speakers;  the “bath” vowel in words such as “dance” and [æ] in “half” and “can’t”;  post-vocalic /r/ in words like “girl” or “more”;  the “price” vowel in words such as “life” as monophthong [a ː];  [ə·] in words such as “love”, “done”;  the “lot” vowel in words such as “body” and “top” as unrounded [ ɑ] instead of the more usual British [ɒ]. Simpson (1999) later took a longer diachronic view, including analysis of performers from the late 1980s and 1990s (the era of Brit-pop), who merged the set of features associated with this stylized American accent, and labelled it the ‘usa-5 model’. Trudgill explained that because American artists had dominated the music landscape before the Beatles gained popularity, British musicians were motivated to ‘converge’ towards them. Thus, British artists often produced a mixture of British and typical American features in their singing output, features that were actually associated with the southern states or African American pronunciation – since American pop singers themselves displayed a strong tendency to modify their pronunciation when performing, ‘to sound like an American’ (Trudgill 1997). 1 when we talk about “persona” we mean the character adopted by an author or an actor. It’s the aspect of someone’s character that is presented to or perceived by society. The word is derived from Latin, where it originally referred to a theatrical mask. Trudgill’s reflections how to explain this variation in singers? (Hypotheses) 1. Hypothesis 1= Communication Accommodation Theory (CAT): the relational context of an interaction is crucial; speaker’s variation is a predictable effect caused by the sender’s psychological, playing on the attraction produced by similarity. Speakers choose their linguistic behaviour based on a specific addressee. This suggests that a speaker’s identity is constantly renegotiated based on interlocutors and social approval is a crucial factor in language variation (HOWARD GILES, PETER POWESLAND, “Speech Style and Social Evaluation”, New York, Harcourt Brace, 1975). "Communication accommodation theorists focus on the patterns of convergence and divergence of communication behaviours, particularly as they relate to people’s goals for social approval, communication efficiency, and identity". Convergence refers to strategies through which individuals adapt to each other's communicative behaviours to reduce social difference. Divergence refers to the instances in which individuals accentuate the speech and non-verbal differences between themselves and their interlocutors. In short: CAT consists in the permanent or temporary appropriation of the interlocutor’s pronunciation (or other linguistic traits) when the speaker highly values such an interlocutor and wants to mirror/identify with them. This may cause a loss of the speaker’s individuality and produce a distance from the speaker’s own variety. Does this actually apply to singing? Singing does not normally happen in CAT-related contexts (an exhibition is not a binary process: artists are 3

unlikely to change their singing style based on the audience). However, some CAT factors do apply to musical contexts. (Peter Trudgill, “Acts of conflicting identity: the sociolinguistic of British pop-song pronunciation, in sociolinguistics: a reader and course book, a cura di Nikolas Coupland e Adam Jaworski, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 1997). 2. Hypothesis 2= the sociolinguistic notion of “appropriateness”: different contexts and topics inevitably produce the adoption of a specific stylistic register. for example, we may say that a certain pronunciation is “appropriate” for the English pop-rock genre. However, Trudgill thinks appropriateness is not reason enough to explain and understand the rules of behaviour regulating singing, or why this domain is characterised by certain trends rather than others. Then Trudgill takes a further step towards the comprehension of variation of singers’ accents during performances. 3. Hypothesis 3= the sociolinguistic notion of “appropriateness”: Le Page’s theory: speakers’ linguistic behaviour is motivated by the wish to sound like those in a group we identity with from time to time: According to this theory, we may say artists singing in English modify their pronunciation to sound like a specific group they wish to identify with: Americans. But why Americans? If we consider the music genres which originated in the xx c., we realise most of them are of (Afro-)American origin. this has inevitably caused imitation: whoever aims at an international market, tries to modify their singing style to sound as close as possible to the American model. The enormous popularity of the Beatles, which extended to the USA by 1964, and, in their wake, of other Liverpool-based (and other British) groups, led to a change in the pattern of cultural domination. British pop music acquired a validity of its own, and this has been reflected in linguistic behaviour. The strength of the motivation towards the American model diminished from 1964 on. British singers were indeed trying less hard to sound like Americans; but it cannot be said that they were actually trying to sound more British. nor does it actually appear to be true. British features, predominantly from working-class accents, have gradually become more evident, especially after the emergence of British punk music in the mid-1970s. Trudgill explains the resulting constructed accent as the effect of acts of conflicting identities: singers have multiple affiliations and competing motivations. Beal analyses the rise of a number of indie bands in Britain, particularly the Arctic Monkeys, who have abandoned ‘American’ pronunciation in favour of regional British accents, also including dialect words and very local references in their lyrics to index authenticity and independence from the corporate structure of the music industry. Beal argues that, in time, the usa-5 model stopped indexing ‘American’ and began indexing ‘mainstream pop’ and was employed ‘as a matter of course without any conscious act of identity’s taking place’ (Beal 2009: 229). SUMMING UP: The audience is a driving force behind singing style trends, and there is growing awareness that ‘artists carry a certain responsibility to uphold cultural and linguistic values, and counterbalance the American dominance’3 (Jansen, 2018). As a result, the fact that ‘[o]verall, it is viewed positively when British artists stick to their accent and reflect local and linguistic pride’ (Jansen 2018: 131) suggests that Cheryl’s use of Geordie in her interactions may be an attempt to compensate for adopting the usa-5 model when singing. A further reason may be the recognition within the British music world of the equation between workingclassiness and pop music membership (Bradby, 2016), which adds to the working- classiness and regional accent/dialect equation. Looking at Cheryl’s music discourse in general terms, the place American English and Geordie hold in it may seem to be a case of competing authenticities, with the vernacular authenticity of Geordie foregrounded and validated in the artist’s speaking style over the establishment authenticity of American English, which is instead highlighted and substantiated in her singing style. CHAPTER 3. Detachability of Geordie Indices This chapter shows how Cheryl seem to have changed her repertoire of Geordie, becoming its “reference standard” and unconsciously offering herself as an image of personhood that is performable through a semiotic display or enactment. Cheryl's massive presence in the public sphere has not only amplified the reality of Geordieness, making it memorable and therefore reusable, but it seems to have also transformed it into something cool. 4

3.1 Cheryl’s Identity Negotiation and Geordie's Fortune Over the last decades, the study of identity has converged from several traditions, each characterized by a different perspective. All these traditions share a view of the self as a social construct. Identity is not a fixed category but a resource that is constantly shaped, is a discursive construct that emerges in interaction constantly created and re-created in communicative practice. Within this process, the characteristics of individuals (age, gender, class, ethnicity, etc.) are usable across all social situations and can be made relevant in conversation or left totally irrelevant. Furthermore, such transportable identities can be drawn upon selectively (we may act more or less middleclass, more or less female, and so on, depending on what we are doing and with whom. The transportable identity that the press was starting to construct for Cheryl when she began her career, was based on specific social attributes. It was potitioning her as a talented young woman from a working-class background. This construction could have become a permanent part of the singer's own sense of self, potentially contributing as much to shaping her future in a negative as in a positive sense. In 2003 Cheryl was charged with attacking a nightclub toilet attendant in a dispute over a handful lollipops, and despite eventually being cleared of racially aggravated assault, she was nevertheless found guilty of assault causing actual bodily harm. This meant there was a strong risk of her accent combining with her working-classiness and all the stereotypes associated with both to brand her as a “chav”. On 5th November 2003, an interview was broadcasted by GMTV in order to help Cheryl to renegotiate the meaning of the unfortunate event in a more positive way. She openly apologized to the people she had disappointed, her emotional involvement strongly displayed in the vernacular use of “me” as 1st person singular possessive instead of the Standard-English “my” (I’m sorry to me mam, to the girls and to the fans). Such an interview was imperative to manage and moderate the divergence between identity Cheryl claims for herself and the identity the others imposed to her. However, the epithet chav, meant as a ubiquitous term of abuse for the white poor. The media resonance and stigmatizing force of the event was so strong that Cheryl's name still recently occurs as an exemplary instance of chav to illustrate the concept to those are not familiar with it: the etymology remains uncertain but the term charver holds...