Accent and Dialect Flashcards
Accent
The way in which people pronounce sounds
Dialect
Vocabulary and grammar choices
Received Pronounciation
Accent associated with education, prestige and upper-class speakers. Unlike other accents, it doesn’t not indicate a speaker’s regional origin, although it is widely associated with Southern England
Standard English
Dialect associated with educated users that is considered to be formally ‘correct’ and is used in written texts. Like RP, SE does not indicate regional origin; it can be spoken with a regional accent
Distribution
A features used within the language inventory of an individual or group
Estuary English
A recent accent variety used in south east England which combines RP with some aspects of regional southern accents. ‘Estuary’ refers to the Thames Estuary area
Dialectal levelling
This term refers to the standardisation of dialect that we are now seeing. Traditional rural dialects are dying out and more complex urban varieties are on the rise (e.g. Estuary, Posh Scouse)
Isogloss
A geographical boundary indicating where certain items of language are used
Slang
Language used in informal contexts that is widely recognised and not restricted to a particular region
Prescriptivism
Prescriptivists favour rules that identify ‘correct’ language usage. They disapprove of uses of language that break these rules.
Descriptivism
Descriptivists seek to describe, as accurately and objectively as possible, how a language is used. They do not attach value to a particular use of language
Multicultural London English (MLE)
A sociolect of English that emerged in the late 20th century: spoken authentically by working-class, mainly young people in London (certain features are spreading further afield); has elements of Caribbean, South Asian and African American English
Creole
Variety that has developed from a ‘pidgin’ or trade language to become a stable language used by speakers as their mother tongue
Patois
An alternative term for creole, sometimes spelt ‘patwa’ to distance the language from apparent connections to Europe, and to suggest how it should be pronounced
Pidgin
Grammatically simplified form of a language, typically English, Dutch, or Portuguese, some elements of which are taken from local languages; used for communication between people not sharing a common language
Code-switching
Describes how speakers move from one language to another for more extensive periods of time
Code-mixing
Refers to the occasional insertion of vocabulary items from one language into another
Rhotic
Accent where speakers produce the post-vocalic /r/, such as in many rural accents in the south-west region of the UK
Glottal stop
A closure of the vocal chords. This can be used to replace /t/ in some regional accents
Resistance identity
An identity that goes against mainstream culture
Labov - New York Department Store study
- Looking for social stratification of post-vocalic ‘r’
- Believed that the higher the social class of a speaker, the more frequent the occurrence of rhotic /r/ in their speech
- Looked at the speech of sale assistants in three Manhattan stores and ranked them according to social class
- SAKS (Upper Class), Macy’s (Middle Class), Klein’s (Lower Class)
- Each sales assistant was asked directions to a certain department up on the 4th floor of the store (expecting to get the answer ‘fourth floor’) and asked them to repeat this in order to see if they used ‘careful speech’
- Found SAKs used rhotic accent the most - standard NYC accent favoured rhoticity as it was used by a higher social class
- When using careful speech, the employee used the rhotic accent more than during spontaneous speech
Labov - Evaluations
- What constitutes to being a social class? Labov merely assumed that the stores he conducted his observation in were lower, middle and upper class respectively; lowers validity and generalisability
- Only conducted in American department stores so may not generalise to department stores worldwide
Giles - Matched guise experiment
- RP was seen as the most intelligent and prestigious
- Regional accents were seen as friendlier or more honest
- Brummie was ranked bottom for intelligence
- CONCURRENT VALIDITY W. AZIZ INDEX
Giles - Capital punishment experiment
- 5 groups of students were given the same script (4 oral and 1 written)
- All were spoken in a different accent: RP, Somerset, Welsh and Brummie
- RP was rated highly in competency and reliability, but was rated low in persuasiveness and was seen as ‘posh and snobby’
Gimson
- There are times where RP could be a disadvantage such as social situations where empathy and affection are needed
- This is backed up by Mugglestone, who believes that RP’s prestige is on the wane
Brummie Accent
- Dixon et al. - played ps clips from a police interview and Brummie suspects were significantly more likely to be labelled as guilty, poor and working class
- University of Aberdeen - Brummie was deemed the funniest accent
Trudgill - categories of dialectal words
- Traditional dialects - use ‘old’ and often rural lexemes and grammatical constructions
- Mainstream dialects - more common lexical and grammatical constructions, used by a majority within a geographical area
- Through a process called lexical attrition, the traditional dialectal words are dying out
Dialect levelling - Estuary English
- An English variation that arose from around the Thames Estuary
- Paul Coggle suggests that it acts as a bridge between Cockney and RP speakers and so serves as a bridge between classes in SE England
