Audio-Recording Papers

Description

Typed items relating to aspects of the audio-recording of Survey of English Dialects (SED) informants. This includes Harold Orton's proposals for an anthology of dialect recordings and a linguistic atlas of England; orthographic transcriptions of field recordings from SED localities; records of the SED recording programme and the existence or otherwise of field recordings for SED localities; and correspondence relating to the copying and use of SED field recordings in research.

Biography or history

The decision to make audio-recordings of Survey of English Dialects (SED) informants' speech was made soon after fieldwork began, with Peter Wright and Stanley Ellis being the first of the SED team to experiment with the use of a tape-recorder in the field. Harold Orton would ideally have liked to mechanically record the responses of all informants to the Questionnaire, but cost made this prohibitive.


The recording of an individual informant from each locality had become part of the Survey's general structure by 1953. The recordings collected consisted of spontaneous speech, often based around reminiscences, opinions and occupations. Although Survey fieldwork was formally brought to a close in 1961, the audio-recording programme continued until 1967 in order to include those localities visited prior to the tape machine becoming part of the fieldworkers' regular equipment.


The tapes themselves were not preserved as they were expensive, could be re-used, and there was little or no suitable storage facility for them. Material selected by individual fieldworkers was copied onto 12" gramophone discs under the supervision of Henry Ellis of the University of Leeds' Phonetics Department. The BBC also made permanent pressings of this material for its Sound Archive.


In the introductory volume to the SED basic material, Orton describes the audio material collected as mechanically recorded specimens of authentic regional English from the mid-twentieth century. He had intended, as part of the SED publication programme, to release an anthology of selected samples of some of the recordings of free conversation with informants, and a book of transcriptions. Neither were published.

Access and usage

Reproduction

Access

Access to the manuscript and printed items in this subfonds is unrestricted. Mini disc copies of the audio tape recordings are available for consultation in the searchroom of Special Collections, University of Leeds. Access copies of the gramophone disc recordings are not available.

Copyright in all Survey of English Dialects material resides with the University of Leeds.

© University of Leeds

Related material

Audio samples from the SED audio recordings are available online through the British Library's Collect Britain: English Accents and Dialects (http://www.collectbritain.co.uk/collections/dialects/) web pages.



The discs of the SED audio-recordings are held at LAVC/SRE/D/2, and BBC copy sets at LAVC/SRE/D/4. Further SED recordings, retained on quarter-inch audio tape and made between the late 1950s and the mid 1970s, are held at LAVC/SRE/A761r -857r.


A file of transcriptions of audio recordings made for the SED is held with Dialect File items at LAVC/FLF/19/14.

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