TH-Stopping, Ethnicity, and Grime

Abstract

This chapter explores (and challenges) the role of ethnicity in the language of the young people at the two learning centres by focusing on a particular feature, TH-stopping (‘ting’ for ‘thing’), which has strong associations with black varieties of English. More than anywhere else in the book, this is where insights from the two approaches—variationist sociolinguistics and ethnographically informed interactional sociolinguistics—come together. Quantitative statistical analysis and qualitative interactional analysis are combined to make the argument that TH-stopping is being used more or less strategically (and more or less successfully) by individuals in this context to align themselves with a particular ‘street’ identity made available through association with grime music.