Sonic registers of belonging: British mobile young people in UK higher education

ABSTRACT

Drawing on interviews with British passport holders who moved to the United Kingdom to start University, this paper explores slang and accent as sonic spatial identities. The paper analyses the inclusions and exclusions in belonging as articulated by British mobile young people through their sonic spatial identities. In doing so, the paper extends wider conceptual debates on embodied belonging by arguing for a need to further explore the sonic as a register of belonging. It argues that research on sonic spatial identities needs to be more attuned to mobility in order to explore and challenge wider discourses of exclusion. The article concludes by offering suggestions as to how to develop research in belonging and identity on an everyday sonic register.

Con base en entrevistas con titulares de pasaportes británicos que se mudaron al Reino Unido para comenzar la universidad, este artículo explora la jerga y el acento como identidades espaciales sonoras. El artículo analiza las inclusiones y exclusiones en la pertenencia articuladas por jóvenes móviles británicos a través de identidades espaciales sónicas. Al hacerlo, el documento amplía debates conceptuales más amplios sobre la pertenencia encarnada al argumentar la necesidad de explorar más a fondo el sonido como un registro de pertenencia. Argumenta que la investigación sobre identidades espaciales sonoras debe estar más en sintonía con la movilidad para explorar y desafiar discursos más amplios de exclusión. El artículo concluye ofreciendo sugerencias sobre cómo desarrollar investigaciones sobre pertenencia e identidad en un registro sonoro cotidiano.

En s’appuyant sur des entretiens avec des détenteurs de passeports britanniques qui se sont installés au Royaume-Uni pour y aller à l’université, cet article étudie le jargon et l’accent en tant qu’identités spatiales sonores. Il analyse les inclusions et les exclusions relatives à appartenance telles que ces jeunes britanniques mobiles les articulent à travers leurs identités spatiales sonores. Ce faisant, il amplifie les débats conceptuels plus généraux sur l’appartenance concrète en plaidant qu’on a besoin de plus de recherche sur le son en tant que registre d’appartenance. Il soutient que les travaux sur les identités spatiales sonores doivent être plus sensibles à la mobilité pour explorer et remettre en question les questions plus générales sur l’exclusion. L’article conclut en offrant des suggestions sur les options pour faire avancer la recherche sur l’appartenance et l’identité dans un registre sonore quotidien.

KEYWORDS:

• British migration
• embodied belonging
• belonging
• sonic
• accent
• slang

PALABRAS CLAVE:

• migración británica
• pertenencia encarnada
• pertenencia
• sónico
• acento
• jerga

MOTS-CLEFS:

• Migration britannique
• appartenance concrète
• son
• accent
• jargon

Introduction

‘Talk for Britain = an individual who is capable of talking for an extended period of time with ease’ – Entry from Slang Dictionary

The above is an entry taken from a slang dictionary, shared with me by Yasmin, a first-year British student at a British university. Attending university was the first time that Yasmin had lived in the United Kingdom. We were discussing Yasmin’s feelings of belonging: ‘And I found the slang really difficult, I … there’s just so much of it and that … and it was a bit of a joke at first and then it just became a thing where I’ve created this really long British slang dictionary.’ Like other interviewees, Yasmin discussed her belonging from the perspective of the sonic: the use of slang (language) and accent (voice), both of which act as a means of identification with place and mark the body spatially. Sonic geographers have argued for a need to consider how the aural shapes spaces and how spaces shape the aural (Doughty & Drozdzewski, 2022; Kanngieser, 2012; Matless, 2005; Paiva, 2018). Sound through talking is often one of the most direct expressions of a spatial identity, yet it is an under-studied area of geographical research on belonging and mobility. By exploring slang as a speech act and accent as voice in belonging, this paper begins to address this gap. It examines the spatialities of sonic identities through mobility, and how these sonic identities produce belongings.

Belonging is a political question, linked to inclusion and exclusion from space (Antonsich, 2010). Geographical discussions of belonging constitute this primarily in two intersecting domains: place-belonginess, the personal feelings of where you come from, as well as a politics of belonging, the ways in which the boundaries of belonging in space are policed by others (Yuval-Davies, 2011). Belonging is complex, multiple and hierarchical. Clarke (2020) provides a distinction between belonging in, belonging to and being of. Belonging in speaks of ways in which individuals and groups are seen to fit in to a location, one that may be locally as opposed to nationally bound. Belonging to looks at how embedded someone is in a national culture, articulated through the idea of being ‘born and bred’ in a location (Clarke, 2020). Being of reflects the ideas of roots and heritage within a national culture. Hierarchies of belonging are often researched amongst groups where belonging is in question, for example, in terms of migrants in relation to the nation (Botterill & Hancock, 2019; Clarke, 2021; Valentine et al., 2008) or working-class students in relation to middle-class spaces of the University (Donnelly et al., 2022; Finn & Holton, 2019; Hall, 2020). This research usefully produces insights into how boundaries of belonging are produced, examining how a distinction between someone who belongs and their Other is drawn at different scales.

This paper focuses on articulations of belonging amongst British mobile young people, like Yasmin, who spent some or all their childhood abroad but moved to the United Kingdom to attend University. University spaces provide an interesting context to look at entanglements of the sonic, belonging and mobilities. Although many students ‘live at home,’ for the majority of undergraduates in the United Kingdom going to University is associated with mobility to a new location (Finn & Holton, 2019). There is a construction of a typical student in the United Kingdom: British, middle-class, residentially mobile (Andersson et al., 2012; Finn & Holton, 2019). British mobile young people share these characteristics, with the key difference being that their mobility is international as opposed to national. This group can therefore be considered privileged in both their belonging to the university and their experiences of mobility. There are wider calls to examine hierarchies of belongings of groups who are ‘insiders’ or privileged (Andersson et al., 2012; Clarke, 2020). This paper takes up this charge by examining the ways in which the international mobility of British mobile young people is marked sonically, and how sonic differences produce inclusions and exclusions amongst more privileged middle-class groups.

The rest of the paper is structured as follows. The next section examines previous literature on embodied belonging, placing this in conversation with sonic geographies. After the methods section, the paper explores the spatiality of sonic identities and how the sonic in terms of slang and accent acted as markers of belonging for British mobile young people. The paper concludes by exploring ways that geographers can further incorporate the sonic in wider social and cultural discussions of belonging and identity.

The sonic and embodied belonging

Existing research on embodied belonging highlights different intersecting registers through which belonging can be read and understood at the scale of the body. First is research that explores how belonging is emotional and affective, examining the experience of belonging. Second is research which explores the body as a material space, a ‘corporeal representation’ of inequalities and difference (Mirza, 2013). Who is seen to belong in a place is related to the perception of their body within that space (Cresswell, 1996). This section of the paper reviews some of the literature on embodied belonging, focusing on the British context which is pertinent to the empirical case study in this paper.

Belonging is about feeling, the body is not only a material space but an emotional one: ‘our sense of who and what we are is continually (re)shaped by how we feel’ (Davidson & Milligan, 2004, p. 524). While this paper focuses on sonic markers of belonging, the paper will demonstrate how slang and accent make British mobile young people feel about their belonging. Previous research on embodied belonging explores how different emotions work to constitute feelings of place belongingness and feelings of otherness (Clarke, 2021; Morrison et al., 2020; Nayak, 2017; Walsh, 2012). This includes work which looks at dis/comfort, which drawing upon Ahmed, explores how comfort is ‘a negotiated bodily practice’ (Price et al., 2020, p. 6; also Owen et al., 2022). Feeling comfortable speaks to someone whose being or belonging to space is not questioned or challenged: ‘comfort is an affective encounter between our bodies and the audiences, objects and spaces which we negotiate’ (Johnson, 2017, p. 276). For example, Walsh (2012) explores frustration in encounters of British migrants in Dubai, arguing that frustration is a means through which us/them is produced in local spaces. Clarke (2021) similarly uses discussions of (dis)comfort to explore how white British people produce the Other in relation the nation. The dis(comfort) of the body in place emphasises feelings of or the ease of (non)belonging. However, as Ahmed (2014) highlights, emotions are not only individual, but collective: ‘it is through emotions, or how we respond to objects and others, that surfaces or boundaries are made: the “I” and the “we” are shaped by, and even take the shape of, contact with others’ (p. 10). This paper argues that how the body feels in space, place-belongingness, is shaped partly by how it sounds in relation to an imagined community in that space. While belonging can be shaped by the body as a material space, it is expressed through how the body feels.

Previous research on the socio-material body has emphasised the racialisation of belonging. A visual register of belonging demonstrates how the body acts as a surface or space onto which others respond (c.f. Ahmed, 2014). Research on embodied belonging has illustrated how visual markers of sameness or difference – such as race or clothing – work to both shape understandings of and to produce the self and Other (Clarke, 2021; Isakjee, 2016; Johnson, 2017; Lyons, 2018; Mirza, 2013; Nayak, 2017). Ahmed (2014) highlights how the stranger is produced through knowledge which frames mechanisms through which the stranger (or Other) is recognised in encounters between bodies. Lyons (2018) looking at national belonging for young British Muslim women highlights ‘how feelings of Britishness are shaped and made tangible through encounters and practices’ (p. 58) including, for example, the responses to wearing a headscarf. In discussions of affective encounters, Nayak (2017) demonstrates the importance of understanding the visceral aspects of race in the encounters of British Bangladeshi young women: ‘The encounters discussed are relational to the extent that they come to define self and other, but in ways that serve to amplify difference, fixing bodies through a visual register’ (p. 299). The visual register of belonging highlights the materiality of the body as a space. Race shapes understandings of a politics of belonging through how a body as a material space can be read as a stranger or Other. In research on British belonging, race as a visual marker of difference frames discussions of a politics of belonging where the non-white body is often discursively excluded (Clarke, 2020). The question of ‘where do you come from’ directed at the non-white body in the UK can be read as an exclusion from an assumed British spatial identity.

This paper does not eschew the importance of race in shaping embodied belonging, but rather situates the sonic as an additional register through which the stranger or Other is marked onto bodies. Arguing for a geography of voice, Kanngieser argues that ‘Qualities [of voice] such as pace, accent and dialect, intonation, frequency, amplitude and silence, invoke and reveal ways of being in these worlds, of class, gender, race, education and privilege’ (Kanngieser, 2012, p. 13). Voice conveys your identity and your background. Similarly, Brickell (2013) argues that ‘speech [i]s a practice that provokes meanings in, and of, different spaces’ (p. 207) – the act of speaking indicates a spatial identity. Both voice and speech are produced through a sonic register. To speak, to have a voice, in the most part, is to produce a sound. I argue in this paper that what you say – your choice of language – and how you say it – your accent – work to materialise the spatial identity of your body. The way you sound produces a body surface onto which belonging is projected by others (c.f. Ahmed, 2014). Language use and accent are part of speech acts, constituting a sonic register that works to fix understandings of belonging (c.f. Nayak, 2017). Discourses of exclusion suggest if you do not speak the language or do not have the accent of a place, the question of ‘where you come from’ is also raised.

Therefore, what the body sounds like becomes a socio-material manifestation of a spatial identity. Through language and accent, what you sound like reflects the places in which and through which you have been, it is an embodied performance of a spatial identity (Shuttleworth, 2018). In terms of language, Lulle (2021) shows how having a ‘migrant name’ signals to others a presumption of being from somewhere else. In relation to migration itself, research has shown how language shapes belonging to a location (Valentine et al., 2008). The use of language is a speech act, a spoken performance of (the spatiality of) the body (Brickell, 2013; Ogborn, 2020; Shuttleworth, 2018). Mavroudi (2020) argues for Greeks in Australia, speaking Greek is a means in which a Greek identity is both maintained and expressed. However, while a language is a direct expression of a cultural and spatial identity, this paper focuses more on dialects. Dialects as opposed to a distinct language are also part of a geography of voice (Kanngieser, 2012). In her research on asylum-seekers learning English in the United Kingdom, Shuttleworth (2018, p. 205) argues that ‘the way in which one speaks … work[s] to communicate information about oneself,’ including a choice of words. Slang is colloquial words within a language, which display idiosyncratic cultural knowledge in spoken language (Green, 2016). Therefore, slang, like other dialects, is derived from socialisation within a location. Slang communicates and materialises a spatial identity of the body.

A spatial identity of the body is also materialised through accent. How one acquires, maintains and changes an accent is as a result of socialisation with people and within spaces (Donnelly et al., 2022). Accents therefore reflect a spatiality (a place) and a temporality (time in that place). Thinking about accents as a marker of spatial identity and belonging has been suggested in previous research. For example, Hopkins (2004) looks at the intersections between race, religion and accent showing how Scottish Muslims use accent as a means through which to assert a place identity – their Scottishness; Boland (2010) explores identity in Liverpool by examining how race, place and accent play a role in constituting a scouse identity. These studies illustrate the ways in which spatial identities, inclusions and belongings are constructed through accents. Others highlight how a politics of belonging is marked through accents. Botterill and Hancock (2019) looking at Polish migrants in Scotland demonstrate that a non-British accent marks foreignness, a marker of difference which becomes seen as a threat post-Brexit. Devadoss (2020), exploring Tamils in the USA, describes the aural discrimination that this group face, that their Othering is tied to how they sound, in terms of language and accent. Hence, what the body sounds like through accent, fixes how a body can be read as a stranger or Other. This is because accent indicates a spatial identity and having a different accent from a location indicates mobility into that place.

Therefore, previous literature highlights the ways in which the body is a social-material space. Place belongingness, how someone feels they belong, shows that this type of belonging is always embodied. Belonging in space is intuitively linked to feeling comfortable in that space (Johnson, 2017). However, conceptualising the body as a socio-material space also emphasises the registers through which the body is marked by others. It shows the different registers through which the body is ordered and sorted as being in or out of place both by the self and by others. Dialects, such as slang, and accents, both signify a spatial identity. Therefore, through speech acts a bodily spatial identity is surfaced. The rest of the paper will explore the sonic spatial identities of British mobile young people and how the markers of sonic identities constituted hierarchies of belonging. The next section explores the methodology used to explore these ideas.

Methods

The data utilised in this paper was collected as part of a wider project that explored the categorisation and identities of British mobile young people in UK higher education. While research on British migrant is a growing sub-field (including Beaverstock, 2002; Benson, 2011; Benson & Lewis, 2019; Botterill, 2017; Cranston, 2017; Higgins, 2019; Leonard, 2016; Leonard & Walsh, 2019b; O’Reilly, 2000; Walsh, 2006, 2018), this project was designed to address a lacuna on research on British migrants which explores both young voices and the diversity of this population (Leonard & Walsh, 2019a). Due to a desire to capture a diversity of voices, participation in the research was open to anyone who fit the following criteria: a British passport holder, a university student in the United Kingdom and to have lived outside the UK for at least 2 years immediately prior to starting university. Research in reflexive migration studies highlights that the framing of migrants through place-based lenses (for example, Brits in Singapore) often essentialises experiences and differences as resulting from an assumed shared culture or ethnicity (Dahinden et al., 2021). This includes researchers seeking difference and ascribing difference to a migrant status. This paper explores belonging using a case study of a category of mobility (a group moving to their passport country to start higher education). It is for this reason that I deliberately refer to my respondents as British mobile young people as opposed to migrants.

Complexities in collecting comprehensive data on British migration mean the profile of this population is estimated (Leonard & Walsh, 2019a). Therefore, this research makes no claims to being representative of British mobile young people and is instead representative of the diversity of this population. The young people included in the sample have different mobility journeys, living abroad between 2 years and their whole lives; having lived in one location to five locations; moving to the UK from locations in Asia, Europe and North America. All of the participants were aged between 18 and 22 at the time of interview and the majority are female (73%). While the participant’s parents all have middle class jobs, they reflect different types of British migration: temporary professional migration, middling transnationals, and reverse migration (the out migration of British nationals with diasporic heritage; Leonard & Walsh, 2019a, pp. 4–6). All respondents have at least one British national parent who had lived in the UK for part of their lives. In the analysis below, I emphasise the accent of my respondent as either as ‘British’ (38% of respondents) or ‘international’ (62% of respondents) based on their self-description where possible. International denotes a placeless, but Americanised accent. I also include a description of the respondent’s ethnicity. While it is incorrect to assume a ‘normative whiteness’ (Benson & Lewis, 2019) of British migrants, a notable limitation of my sample was a failure to recruit black respondents (65% white, 35% Asian or mixed Asian and white). All the names used are pseudonyms.

Recruitment to take part in the research was primarily sought through Facebook groups of British Universities, where permission from the group moderators was granted. This paper draws on the interview part of the research. Eight pilot interviews were conducted in 2019 (in-person) and 18 further interviews in 2020 (online due to covid-19). Informed consent for these interviews was obtained prior to the interviews taking place, either as part of the interview meeting itself or via email for the online interviews. The interviews were recorded, transcribed and coded. Alongside elicitation exercises, the interviews asked questions which attempted to get the respondents to discuss their belonging in their own terms. As a result, the respondents discussed the ways in which they felt belonging was marked more generally, with the discussions of accent and slang not being pre-defined questions but rather bodily markers which were brought up by multiple respondents. Some respondents also discussed race and being visually the same or different as their peers, but this topic was discussed less than accent and slang. Indicative quotes from the interviews are used in the section below.

With the topics discussed in the paper, I occupied different and complex positionalities. In terms of slang, I had to ask the respondents to explain or even spell some of the slang terms they discussed as knowing/not knowing with me – placing me as a different generation in terms of youth cultures. The issue of accent is close to my personal biography, as I was brought up in a place where I did not have the local accent. However, I have a British accent and my respondents assumed I am British, with some of them apologising for critiquing British people or culture. Therefore, I shifted, often between question, in terms of my positionality to the respondent and cannot claim to know the impact that this had upon them (Rose, 1997). Rather, my focus in the interview was being empathetic and listening to their feelings of belonginess, so that the respondents felt comfortable explaining these. It is to sonic registers of belonging that the paper now turns.

Sonic registers of belonging

In this section, I explore the sonic spatial identities of my respondents and how these sonic spatial identities were discussed in context of the belonging of British mobile young people. In terms of place belonging, my respondent’s feelings of being British were often ambivalent and dependent on their mobility journey and family background. However, regardless of the mobility journeys of the respondent and how they framed their belonging to Britain similar markers of belonging were discussed – slang and accent. In the rest of this section, I situate slang in relation to belonging in a location and accent as belonging to Britain (c.f. Clarke, 2020). I highlight how the sonic body as a socio-material space helps (re)produce inclusions and exclusions relating to mobility and difference.

Belonging in- slang

In the context of my research, belonging in a locale is constituted in relation to the university that my respondents had moved to. My respondents were negotiating the independent mobility to, and living in, a new place in similar ways to their peers who had moved from other locations in the UK. Previous research has looked at the ways in which students form place-attachments to university spaces shaped around insecurities of fitting in (Holton & Riley, 2016). Similar ideas about place attachment and fitting in were reported by my respondents. Their discussions of belonging in focused less on location, but on how they felt they fitted in amongst their peers: ‘I want to like be seen as like a normal person and like someone who’s like at university in England, have a British passport, are English’ (Isla, White British, lived abroad for 6–10 years, moved from Europe, international accent). The quote from Isla typifies a desire to ‘fit in’ that expressed amongst my respondents, the ascription of ‘normal’ is a desire to be perceived as the same by others. Isla’s desire to be normal can be read as a desire to feel comfortable or an ‘ordinariness’ in her belonging where she does not stand out among Others (Price et al., 2020).

Within this context, belonging in the space of the University was constructed in relation to fitting into or feeling included in a British youth sub-culture, a collective of bodies (c.f. Ahmed, 2014) at a local level. As highlighted earlier, slang is idiosyncratic cultural knowledge often associated with a spoken as opposed to written word (Green, 2016). Historically slang is associated with sub-cultures and slang words are referred to cultural expressions of that sub-culture. For example, slang is seen as a practice of specific youth sub-cultures (Williams, 2007). My respondents suggested that the use of certain slang words acted as a signal of socialisation into a British youth sub-culture. Not knowing slang worked to indicate a different spatial identity. It acted to emphasise the mobility of my respondents into a British youth sub-culture.

Slang was used as a marker through which belonging in/fitting in to the space of the University was articulated. Not understanding slang as a spoken language was a means through which a spatial disconnect in belonging in the University space was articulated by my respondents. This was a point raised by Charlotte:

Some of the stuff that they say, I’m literally just like, I’ve no idea. Like they said something like, they called someone an OG the other day and I had no idea what that meant! And so … it’s original gangster, but I had no clue! And I like … because some of the slang that they just use that I’m so like … yeah, I just don’t use words that they do usually (White British, lived abroad 6 to 10 years, moved from Europe, British accent).

Not understanding others was presented as a form of frustration, it was a ‘struggle’ (Emma, White British, lived abroad whole life, moved from Asia, British accent). The uncertainty of what others mean becomes a source of discomfort (Owen et al., 2022), where a feeling of non-belonging becomes manifest in relation to a collective other. This is a way in which language plays a role in how young people make sense of their identity (Valentine et al., 2008). By not understanding others use of language, my respondents felt excluded from belonging in space. They felt that by not understanding slang, their bodies were spatially marked as belonging elsewhere.

However, the discussions of slang highlighted not only feelings of place (non)belonginess, but also a politics of belonging. Other respondents outlined their embarrassment at getting slang wrong, ‘slippages’ in the act of speech which marked them as different (Valentine et al., 2008). With Marta, she was discussing how slang was an aspect of living in the United Kingdom which surprised her: ‘When someone says, that’s so peak, I thought that meant … when I first heard it I was like, oh that means good, because a peak, you know, like high up. It’s the exact opposite, it means that’s so bad, and so I used that very wrong for the first couple of weeks’ (Marta, White British, lived abroad 2–5 years, moved from Europe, British accent). Like the quotes from Emma and Charlotte above, Marta highlights how an incorrect use of slang acted as a way that her body was marked as being spatially from elsewhere. She was less concerned about getting slang wrong in terms of her feelings of belonging, as opposed to what it signalled to others. By using slang incorrectly, my respondent’s bodies were marked as being different, meaning their spatial identity stood out on a sonic register. Their fitting in and inclusion within the space of the university could be questioned.

The quote from Marta also demonstrates the temporality present in the discussions of slang. Like Yasmin in the opening vignette, learning slang, like learning a language, was a process that my respondents undertook so that they could fit in. Lauren also articulated this use of slang:

A lot of like slang that’s used, I had never heard it before. And so … but … we turned it … I turned it into a joke and just got people to explain it to me. But yeah it was … actually I was very confused about it (Lauren, White British, lived abroad 6-10 years, moved from Europe, International accent).

Like other respondents, Lauren indicates how challenging or discomforting she found the use of slang. By sonically marking her body as different, it suggested to others a spatial disconnect in the belonging of her body. It marked her as Other. However, she used humour as a means through which to get others to explain terms to her. This masked how she felt excluded, whilst simultaneously helping her learn slang and thus feel included. As previous research on language learning has illustrated, humour is ‘a speech act that can be employed to reduce tension or potential awkwardness, but can also build similarities between people, which in turn helps friendships to be formed’ (Shuttleworth, 2018, p. 220). In their learning of slang, respondents utilised creative strategies to produce a different type of fitting in amongst their peers. In the longer term, by learning slang this speech act would not mark their body as being spatially from elsewhere in a politics of belonging.

Therefore, the understanding and use of slang terminologies was a marker through which belonging in the localised spaces of the University is discussed by British mobile young people. By viewing the use of slang as a speech act, we can see how slang acted as an everyday marker of a spatial identity. This was constructed in relation to interactions between the individual and a collective group of their peers, a way in which the ‘fitting in’ of the body was materialised. Speaking and knowing slang became a way in which inclusion and exclusion into the space of the university was framed. Clarke (2020) notes that fitting in to localised spaces can, but does not necessarily, scale up to signal belonging to Britain as a national community. Some of my respondents scaled up discussions of slang from everyday interactions with peers to discuss this in relation to a place-belongness to Britain. For example, when I asked Yasmin what she felt it meant to be British, she highlighted how a correct use of slang helped affirm her belonging to Britain: ‘I feel like if I use slang and like if I just like associate myself with British culture, like it’s not … it’s not like … (sighs) I don’t know if it’s the right word, but I don’t feel like I’m appropriating it, like I feel like it’s … I can take it … like it’s mine to take, I can use it’ (British Asian, lived abroad whole life, moved from Europe, British accent). Knowing and understanding slang helped to develop feelings of place-belongingness by enabling the respondent to feel comfortable interacting with others in these localised spaces. Learning slang became a way in which a British youth identity became manifest sonically. Similarly, not understanding slang was a means by which non-belonging to Britain was expressed. For example, Jessica emphasised how her not understanding slang made her feel as if she was excluded from local youth cultures: ‘it was like I’m new to this culture, like coming to the UK I really didn’t understand a lot … what a lot of people were saying, as in didn’t understand the slang’ (Jessica, White British, lived abroad since a baby, moved from Asia, International Accent). Therefore, while the discussions of slang focused on belonging in very localised spaces of a community of peers in the University, for some, it was scaled up more broadly into discussions of their place belonging to and spatial identity of the United Kingdom. It is to a further discussion of national belonging that the paper now turns.

Belonging to- accent

By distinguishing between belonging in and belonging to Clarke (2020) makes the distinction between fitting into a location and belonging to this place. Situated at a larger scale, belonging to speaks to how embedded someone is in a national culture, articulated through the idea of being ‘born and bred’ in that space (Clarke, 2020, p. 102). Whilst some of my respondents were born in Britain, none of them were ‘bred’ in the physical location of the UK for their entire childhoods. As Clarke (2020) suggests, one way in which being bred in a location is physically marked is through having the accent of that location. An accent acts as sonic identity that has both a spatiality and a temporality to it.

The respondents in my research had different accents. Some had British accents regardless of the time lived abroad. Notably, my respondents utilised the categorisation into British and international, collapsing differences between regional British accents into one category at a national scale. This was despite my respondents having different British regional identities, and not all respondents with British accents having the ‘norm’ of the Southern English accent (Donnelly et al., 2022). A British accent was a result of socialisation in British spaces – parents, trips to the UK, British TV, British international schools with a dominance of British staff and pupils. Therefore, while accents reflect a spatiality, they do not require a physical presence in a location. For example, Rosie illustrated this. Rosie went to primary school in the North of England. Although moving to a country in Asia, Rosie developed a Southern English accent most likely through socialisation in a normative British culture abroad. This meant that her university friends policed and excluded her from claims to a Northern identity: ‘a lot of my housemates joke that I’m like a fake Northerner’ (White British, 6–10 years abroad, moved from Asia, British accent). Hence, Rosie’s accent became a sonic and material manifestation of her mobility to a different location, even though this was a British accent. A British accent came to indicate a spatial identity associated with Britishness, though this was not necessarily physically located in the UK itself.

For the respondents with an international accent, their accent most likely reflects an international school environment. Marta was also brought up in the North of England before moving to Europe. She discussed developing an international accent through school: ‘when I went home, people said I was picking up like an Australian accent because my accent changed a lot when I went to the international school because there were so many different ones’ (Marta, White British, lived abroad 2–5 years, moved from Europe, British accent). Marta’s accent reflected a socialisation into space, meaning her accent became a manifestation of her mobility and a change in her sonic spatial identity. Craig emphasised how his accent was different from his parents due to the international school environment ‘my mum speaks Welsh, they both have really strong accents, I have the American accent unfortunately, or the international accent’ (Craig, White British, lived abroad 11–16 years, moved from Asia, international accent). An international accent worked to clearly indicate the mobility of my respondents through a non-British sonic spatial identity. For Craig, it indicated a different geographical childhood from that of his parents. These types of sonic spatial identities inflected through accent shaped discussions of belonging and inclusion amongst my respondents.

For the respondents that had British accents, the discussions of accent centred on how their accent signalled their belonging to Britain. One question I asked my respondent is whether their friends perceived them as being an international student. Michael typifies the type of response to this question which focused on accent:

I sound quite British, I think that … like the way you sound is a bit … or the way that you speak and the accent that you speak with is a very … I think it’s very powerful the way other people perceive who you are or where you’re from, especially the way you speak (White British, lived abroad 11-16 years, moved from Europe, British accent).

As Michael suggests, his friends naturally assume that he is British due to his British accent signalling a British spatial identity. He therefore creates a division between an ‘international’ student and a ‘British’ student based upon a sonic register of what speech acts sound like. Having a British accent creates a comfort in a politics of belonging where the British mobile young person’s inclusion in belonging to Britain is not questioned when they speak. Fiona also emphasises this point through her discussion of whether others perceive her as an international student: ‘Probably not, people who don’t know me, if that makes sense, who don’t know I live in [country abroad], they probably just assume oh she sounds British, she definitely is’ (Mixed White/Asian, Lived abroad whole life, Moved from Asia, British accent). In Britain, on a sonic register, the body with the British accent is familiar, undistinguishable as an Other. Their body is perceived as being spatially British and in place.

Research on comfort illustrates that feeling comfortable is often not noticed through its mundane nature (Owen et al., 2022; Price et al., 2020). This type of comfort in embodied belonging to Britain, expressed by Michael and Fiona, was not present amongst the respondents who had an international accent. These respondents often felt excluded from belonging. Elizabeth highlights that her peers do not consider her to be British because of the way she sounds: ‘because of my accent I think, because well I don’t really have like any kind of British accent!’ (Elizabeth, British Asian, Lived abroad whole life, Moved from Asia, International accent). Her accent is a bodily marker that marked a spatial disconnect in her belonging to Britain (Hopkins, 2004). It is a way in which her mobility and difference is fixed through a sonic register. While Elizabeth discussed her accent from the perspective of a politics of belonging, Isabella discussed her accent in terms of place belongness: ‘I do feel different, I think I always will feel different, especially with the accent, I feel like I’m the only person in my lecture group who has an American accent’ (White British, lived abroad since a baby, moved from North America, International accent). Isabella constructed her difference to her peers through the register of how she sounds. Her accent became a bodily marker in which mobility and her exclusions from British belonging could be articulated. Accent, a sonic register of a place identity, was clearly articulated in relation to how comfortable British mobile young people felt in their belonging to Britain.

Although there was a comfort in being marked as belonging to Britain by having a British accent, the respondents with British accents highlighted how their experiences living abroad were questioned. Both Harper and Sarah were ‘born and bred’ outside of the United Kingdom with University being their first experience of living in the UK. The questioning of how someone can live in a different country and still sound British indicates a way through which a spatial dichotomy is produced between Britain and the rest of the world. Harper and Sarah below are discussing the responses of their friends when they discuss their childhood experiences living outside the UK:

… because obviously I speak, when I speak, I sound probably English, so I think some people go, hold on, and so I guess are little bit of shocked (Harper, Mixed White/Asian, Lived abroad whole life, moved from Asia, British Accent).

I think it’s when they look at you and they … they’re interested, they’re always interested in how do you know much about the UK, how do you sound so British having lived abroad? (Sarah, White British, lived abroad whole life, moved from Asia, British Accent).

Harper highlights a discomfort (‘shock’) in her friends when their assumptions about what people who have lived abroad sound like. Similarly, Sarah suggests a questioning among her friends in terms of cultural knowledge and what she sounds like. On a sonic register, Harper and Sarah are perceived to be in place in terms of a politics of belonging to Britain, so it is the boundaries through which a us/them that becomes questioned. For Harper and Sarah’s friends, there is the assumption that to belong to Britain you need to have been ‘bred’ in this location (Clarke, 2020). The ability to have a British accent that was produced outside of the UK challenges the spatial conceptions of Others. It challenges the ability to be both British and to be mobile. It begins to challenge sonic spatial identities which are rooted in a temporality in a location – that what your accent is, is tied to the location where you are from.

However, like learning slang, the accent of some of my respondents changed while they were at university. The changes in accent were reported by those who had started university with an international accent, and through time developed a British accent. This reflects how a socialisation in place such as the university can change how someone sounds. Isla and Emily for example, discussed changes in their accents. Isla was discussing how she changed more generally since attending university: ‘my accent apparently has changed a lot according to people. Because when I came back to [country where parents live] everyone was like, you sound so much more English, you sound so much more British. And then … and then like when I went back to university after Christmas everyone was like, you sound way more like international and American’ (Isla, White British, Lived abroad 6 to 10 years, moved from Europe, international accent). Isla’s switching between a British accent and an international accent therefore reflected changing between a British spatial identity at university and an international community identity in the country her parents live. Emily, however, did not discuss switching accents, but instead changing to a British accent. She clearly encapsulates the role her changing accent had on her feelings of place belonginess:

for a while I sounded very American! I think my first few months of uni sort of knocked it out of me. […] I think the accent was actually quite a big part of it for me, because I felt a lot more British once I got my accent back. And … yeah, I mean I guess that’s sort of what makes it … I’ve never … yeah, I mean I don’t … when I meet someone, they can tell that I’m British, right away, without having to kind of ask and check or whatever, and I think that’s quite a big part of it for me (Emily, White British, Lived abroad 11-16 years, moved from Europe, British accent).

For Emily, getting her accent ‘back’ meant that she felt more British. Part of this feeling of being British was related to a politics of belonging – her British accent meant that her belonging to the UK was not questioned as she had a sonic spatial identity. She discusses a temporality from feeling excluded to feeling included in her belonging. Therefore, changes in accents indicate changes in sonic spatial identities, which impact upon belonging.

What one sounds like, alongside what you say, works to materialise understandings of sameness and difference onto the space of the body. Accent therefore works to mark the body on a sonic register as being in or out of place, where not sounding British was ‘homogenised and branded as ‘other’ (Devadoss, 2020, p. 5). This section has shown that accents acted as a spatial marker of the body, referencing a spatial identity. How the respondent sounded was frequently referenced in how it produced their body as being in/out of place. For the respondents with international accents, their accent fed into their ambivalence in belonging to Britain, even if they felt that they belonged in or that they are British. Sonically sounding ‘international’ meant that their bodies were marked as from elsewhere. For the respondents with British accents, their belonging to Britain was not questioned by others, enabling a comfort in belonging. Belonging therefore was marked on a sonic register, clearly emphasising the role this speech acts play in (re)producing belonging.

Conclusions

This paper has explored sonic spatial identities – slang and accent and how these are used in discussions of British mobile young people’s belongings. The paper has argued that, for this group of young people, what you say and how you say it shapes how comfortable they feel, and are made to feel, by others in space. The individual body acts as a socio-material space onto which belonging is felt and mapped in sonic ways. Sounding different, whether in terms of language used or accent, produces a spatial identity of the body from being elsewhere. The sonic therefore marks mobility.

The sonic, in terms of dialect and accent, acts as a way in which inclusions and exclusions in belonging are produced. In belonging, speech marks people who sound different, in terms of language used, and accent as Other. Wider research on accents in the UK looks at how regional accents act as a form of exclusion for working classes (Donnelly et al., 2022). Research that explores sound and migration explores how language use and accent marks foreignness (Botterill & Hancock, 2019). Within this literature there is a common-sense assumption that your language use and your accent reflect where you are from – it does not account for mobility. We need to move beyond a static interpretation, with future research further exploring how mobility and heritage shape sonic spatial identities. As Clarke notes that to produce more inclusive belonging we need to ‘attend to the re/production and maintenance of hierarchies of belonging among dominant groups for these have greatest potential to translate into real material differences of power, opportunity, and resources’ (Clarke, 2020, p. 106). For the middle-class students in my research, how they sounded produced questions over their belonging to and belonging in space, questions that my respondents found uncomfortable. Many of my respondents changed the way in which they sound to fit the norm in terms of slang and ‘British’ accent. They could feel silenced. Therefore, the exclusions and inclusions produced through sound are complex and insidious. Any form of small-scale, everyday difference in sound that marked a body as being spatially from outside of the UK acted as a form of exclusion from belonging. There is often an assumption that young peoplein particular, those who are globally mobile, are at the vanguard of more cosmopolitan futures (Cranston, 2020). However, the exclusions associated with mobility run counter to this assumption. We need to further explore, and contest, exclusions that are associated with the sonic spatial identities, beyond binaries of middle/working class and UK/international.

This paper therefore contributes to calls for researchers to explore speech utterances (Brickell, 2013) and the sonic (Boland, 2010; Doughty & Drozdzewski, 2022; Kanngieser, 2012) more explicitly in their research. Research in sonic geographies has tended to focus on the ways in which sound makes places, using a plethora of innovative methodologies that seek to capture and produce audio (Doughty & Drozdzewski, 2022). Social and cultural geographies of belonging, identity and migration tend to be characterised by interview methodologies, yet discussions of sound are often barely mentioned bar a note that the interview was audio recorded. Therefore, sound has always been a key part of how we understand the identity and belonging of our participants, but features rarely within our analysis which tends to focus on gender, ethnicity or religion, often essentialising these as categories of difference (Dahinden et al., 2021). This is by no means suggesting that we should eschew accounts of gender, ethnicity or religion for sound, rather it argues that intersectional analyses of identity could go further in addressing multi-sensory bodily registers through which belonging is constituted. As previous research on embodied belonging has usefully highlighted, belonging is individual, multiple and at times contradictory (Clarke, 2020; Isakjee, 2016). Further research could usually explore the intersections between the sonic and the visual in socio-material accounts of belonging, and how these are entangled (Devadoss, 2020). This is pertinent because the sonic has a temporality to it. To explore and challenge inclusions and exclusions to belonging, we need to challenge all discourses and practices through which Othering is produced.

In addition, further research is required to explore the different markers of the sonic body and sonic spatial identities in social and cultural accounts of belonging and identity. Brickell (2013), for example, has usefully explored proverbs and their role in shaping and challenging social relations. This shows that the sonic is more than just the use of different languages, the everyday choice of words can signal spatial and cultural identities. We can question how the use of certain words and phrases are used to (re)produce identities, from slang to dialects. How does the utterance of words become used to signal being part of a collective identity? Similarly, while accent is one way in which we explore the relationship between sound and place identities, pace and intonation of voice also signals emotion and identity (Kanngieser, 2012). What does how someone is speaking tell you about their relationship to place? Furthermore, in sonic geographies, researchers have highlighted challenges of incorporating sound into the textual outputs that dominate the academy (Doughty & Drozdzewski, 2022). What ways can we enliven written reports of our respondents with the everyday patterns and inflection of voice which shape our understanding of what they are saying? To develop our understanding of sonic spatial identities, we need to think about exploring the multi-sensory in both our research and our outputs.

Ethics

The research for this project has ethical approval from Loughborough University HPSC Reference Number: C19-18.

Acknowledgments

I thank my participants for taking part in the research, and both them and the funders (RGS-IBG) for their flexibility during the covid-19 lockdowns. Thanks also to Aija Lulle who provided feedback on an earlier version of this manuscript and to the reviewers and editor. Their kind, considerate and constructive criticism has improved the paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the RGS-IBG under Grant SRG 06/18.