Keith Malcolm Petyt (; born February 1941) is a

sociolinguist Sociolinguistics is the descriptive, scientific study of how language is shaped by, and used differently within, any given society. The field largely looks at how a language changes between distinct social groups, as well as how it varies under ...

and

historian A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human species; as well as the ...

. As a native of

Bradford Bradford is a city status in the United Kingdom, city in West Yorkshire, England. It became a municipal borough in 1847, received a city charter in 1897 and, since the Local Government Act 1972, 1974 reform, the city status in the United Kingdo ...

, he investigated the speech of

West Yorkshire West Yorkshire is a Metropolitan counties of England, metropolitan and Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the Yorkshire and the Humber region of England. It borders North Yorkshire to the north and east, South Yorkshire and De ...

in his early work. His first publication, ''Emily Brontë and the Haworth Dialect'', compared the speech of the servant Joseph in ''

Wuthering Heights ''Wuthering Heights'' is the only novel by the English author Emily Brontë, initially published in 1847 under her pen name "Ellis Bell". It concerns two families of the landed gentry living on the West Yorkshire moors, the Earnshaws and the ...

'' with information on the Haworth dialect from two informants, and concluded that Emily Brontë had been accurate with her depictions. He was one of the first to apply Labovian methods in Britain with his research in 1970–1 on the speech of Bradford, Halifax and

Huddersfield Huddersfield is a town in the Metropolitan Borough of Kirklees in West Yorkshire, England. It is the administrative centre and largest settlement in the Kirklees district. The town is in the foothills of the Pennines. The River Holme's confl ...

. He concluded that the speech detailed in most of dialectology (e.g. A. J. Ellis, the

Survey of English Dialects The Survey of English Dialects was undertaken between 1950 and 1961 under the direction of Harold Orton of the English department of the University of Leeds. It aimed to collect the full range of speech in England and Wales before local differe ...

) had virtually disappeared, having found only one speaker out of his sample of 106 speakers who regularly used dialect. However, he found that differences in speech persisted as an indicator of social class, age and gender. This PhD dissertation was later adapted into a book, ''Dialect and Accent in Industrial West Yorkshire''. The work was criticised by Graham Shorrocks on the grounds that the sociolinguistic methods used were inappropriate for recording the traditional vernacular and that there was an inadequate basis for comparison with earlier dialect studies in West Yorkshire. In a review in ''Language in Society'', Joan Beal methodologically critiqued Petyt's decision to categorise the social class of women according to their husband's occupation. His 1980 book ''The study of dialect: an introduction to dialectology'' was a critical history of dialect studies. He also wrote a review of the very successful textbook ''Accents of English'' by

John C. Wells John Christopher Wells (born 11 March 1939) is a British phonetician and Esperantist. Wells is a professor emeritus at University College London, where until his retirement in 2006 he held the departmental chair in phonetics. He is known for ...

, which was generally positive but criticised the uneven coverage and the inconsistent attitude to the Survey of English Dialects. In Spring 1982, he was a co-presenter of the

BBC Radio 4 BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC. The station replaced the BBC Home Service on 30 September 1967 and broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes from the BBC's headquarters at Broadcasti ...

series ''Locally Speaking''. Having spent most of his career lecturing at and working at the

University of Reading The University of Reading is a public research university in Reading, Berkshire, England. It was founded in 1892 as the University Extension College, Reading, an extension college of Christchurch College, Oxford, and became University College, ...

, he published the book ''The Growth of Reading'' in 1993. He retired to the Yorkshire Dales and wrote a review of dialect studies in the

Sedbergh Sedbergh ( or ) is a town and civil parish in the ceremonial county of Cumbria. It falls within the historic boundaries of the West Riding of Yorkshire. Since April 2023, it has been administered by Westmorland and Furness local authority. Th ...

area in 2014, which he donated to both the Sedbergh and District History Society and the

Yorkshire Dialect Society Yorkshire dialect, also known as Yorkshire English, Broad Yorkshire, Tyke, or Yorkie, is a grouping of several regionally neighbouring dialects of English spoken in Yorkshire. Yorkshire experienced drastic dialect levelling in the 20th cent ...

. He is currently the Yorkshire Dales National Park's Member Champion for Recreation Management and is a vice president and former chairman of the Yorkshire Dales Society.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Petyt, K M Linguists from England Writers from Bradford Sociolinguists Dialectologists Living people 1941 births