A hand holding a chisel, cutting an inscription into stone

IS THE SHEFFIELD ACCENT SET IN STONE?

Client - Sheffield University Festival of the Mind

This was a really interesting collaboration with Johanna Blakey, a linguistics PhD researcher at Sheffield University who is looking into how the Sheffield accent has changed over the last 100years. Our project for the Festival of the Mind was called - Is the Sheffield accent set in stone?

We took phrases from the audio archive Johanna is using for her research, and carved them in pieces of Yorkstone. Along with a Sheffield Vowel Key, our Rosetta Stone! Johannas research focuses on the a in face and the o in goat.

The International Phonetic Alphabet symbols are included in the carvings to chart the changes. They are on separate pieces of stone so they can be added to in another 100years.

Two people considering a design. Collaboration between an academic and a craftsperson

Two people in a workshop looking over designs for a public art project

Text from a phd study cut into stone. Sheffield accent

Pieces of rectangular stone with snippets of text from a phd thesis on the Sheffield accent Phonetic alphabet

Sheffield accent carved in stone with International Phonetic Alphabet for certain vowel sounds

Picture of a public inscription of phd research into the sheffield accent