Were you interviewed about local accents by a university researcher in Norwich in 1968?
One aim of our research is to explore whether accents or dialects can change over a person’s lifetime. To do that, we’re tracing people who took part in Professor Peter Trudgill’s original 1968 Norwich study, where he interviewed people about their speech in homes and a handful of schools across the city.
We’re inviting these people to share their speech with the world again in 2026, making history in the longest accent-and-dialect study ever undertaken, spanning almost six decades. If you, or someone you know, might have taken part – for example a grandparent, great aunt/uncle, parent or school friend – please get in touch.
Were you interviewed about local accents by a university researcher in Norwich in 1968?
One aim of our research is to explore whether accents or dialects can change over a person’s lifetime. To do that, we’re tracing people who took part in Professor Peter Trudgill’s original 1968 Norwich study, where he interviewed people about their speech in homes and a handful of schools across the city.
We’re inviting these people to share their speech with the world again in 2026, making history in the longest accent-and-dialect study ever undertaken, spanning almost six decades. If you, or someone you know, might have taken part – for example a grandparent, great aunt/uncle, parent or school friend – please get in touch.
Professor Peter Trudgill, 1968
How will I know if I took part?
→ You may have taken part if you were aged 11–15 in 1968 and still at school in Norwich at the time. Most of the children who took part attended the City of Norwich School, although some were attending other local schools in the area.
→ You may also have taken part if you were aged 16+ in 1968 and had already left school for work, college, or other training. Although these participants were no longer at school when they were interviewed, many had attended local schools in Norwich before 1968, including:
Hewett Secondary School, St. Georges College, Thorpe House School, Wensum View School, Willow Lane Catholic School, Colman Road School, Lakenham School, Lakenham Secondary Modern School, Earlham School, larkston Junior School, Gurney Secondary Modern School, Colman Infant and Junior School.
What were the interviews like?
→Most interviews took place in participants’ homes, with only a small number taking place in schools, including CNS.
→All participants were interviewed by either Peter Trudgill or Adrian Hannah — both Norwich-born university researchers, aged 24 at the time.
→During the interview, you discussed your views on Norwich and its local accents, as well as your feelings towards your own accent. You were also asked by the researcher to complete a number of tasks, such as reading a story and a list of words out loud as quickly as you could.
Why finding the original participants matters
Peter Trudgill’s Norwich English study became one of the most important and widely cited pieces of accent-and-dialect research in Britain and, indeed, the world. The 1968 recordings contributed to university research that went on to shape how language is taught and studied worldwide, even if the original participants never knew how far their contribution travelled.
Finding the original participants and recording their speech lets us measure how Norwich accents and dialects have changed since 1968. It also gives us a rare opportunity to study how an individual’s speech changes across their lifetime. This is hard to do because tracing people decades later is so challenging.