Accent and dialect

Question 1

standard English

Answer 1

dialect of English that is considered to have the most prestige

Question 2

dialect

Answer 2

the lexical / grammatical features of a certain group

Question 3

RP

Answer 3

• received pronunciation
• aka queen speech
• considered to have most prestige and exemplary for English language

Question 4

accent

Answer 4

the way you pronounce certain words depending on your group

Question 5

neologisms

Answer 5

creation of new words in dictionaries e.g. selfie

Question 6

prescriptivist

Answer 6

• thinks rules of language must be followed / protected

- usually don’t want traditional rules of language to change

Question 7

descriptivist

Answer 7

don’t perceive language change as bad, more open to change language

Question 8

H dropping

Answer 8

evident in cockney accent

‘oliday, ‘appening

Question 9

glottal stop

Answer 9

dropping ts in words

Question 10

Estuary English

Answer 10

• recent accent variety
• using in south east England
• combined RP with aspects of regional southern accents
• more glottal than RP
• Ricky Gervais

Question 11

dialect levelling

Answer 11

when the variation / diversity of dialects decline

Question 12

Context of RP

Answer 12

• established mid 19th century
• emerged in private / boarding schools e.g. Oxford and Cambridge
• large middle-class basis
• more popular in 20th century with BBC

Question 13

slang

Answer 13

• informal vocabulary
• neologisms
• semantic shift
• can be exclusive
• often reflects multiculturalism

Question 14

John Honey

Answer 14

• 1977
• prescriptivist
• children should be taught Standard English in schools in order to have equal opportunities in their later life

Question 15

Peter Trudgill Norwich Study

Answer 15

• 1974
• women were more likely to use overt prestige and me were more likely to use covert prestige
• found variation of speech styles parallels variation across social class

Question 16

William Labov’s New York Study

Answer 16

• 1966

- concluded that individuals internalise class hierarchy and act it out - often unconsciously

Question 17

Beryl Bainbridge

Answer 17

• 1999
• prescriptivist novelist
• believes all children should have elocution lessons to wipe out regional accents
• said that being taught to abandon her own Liverpool accent had helped her career

Question 18

Lance Workman

Answer 18

• 2008
• to discover accent stereotypes
• Yorkshire accent = most intelligent + Birmingham accent = least intelligent

Question 19

Howard Giles

Answer 19

• 1970
• After shown a presentation of arguments against the death penalty, students ranked RP accent the most convincing and Brummie the least

Question 20

William Labov: Martha’s Vineyard study

Answer 20

Older islanders such as fisherman subconsciously maintained a dialect with vowel sounds being shifted backwards in an archaic manner

they were diverging from traditional American pronunciation and maintain their own

Question 21

Worcester College Study

Answer 21

• 2002
• suggested that speakers with a Birmingham accent may be more likely to me presumed guilty when suspected of a criminal offence

Question 22

John Pitts

Answer 22

Black speakers felt they were ignored and neglected from society, their own dialect began to emerge and to resist this, emerged MLE

Question 23

Gary Ives

Answer 23

Interviewed Pakistani students who spoke different sociolects at home compared to school that outsiders didn’t understand. Potentially to diverge and rebel due to neglect from society.

Question 24

Howard Giles Accommodation Theory

Answer 24

• 1973
• People change their speech, vocal patterns and gestures to accommodate others
• Divergence: aiming to be independent with lang
• Convergence: aiming to conform to lang standards of a certain group

Question 25

Kristen Sellars

Answer 25

‘Speech codes’ are like dress codes, we change our language based on etiquette and perceptions wanted

Question 26

Paul Kerswell: native speech

Answer 26

• Our native speech changes when we migrate
• we don’t want to stand out
• we want others to understand us

Question 27

AAVE

Answer 27

African American Vernacular English

Question 28

Fasold and Wolfram

Answer 28

• Studied AAVE

- perceptions of it are that it is thuggish, poorly educated, crime link

Question 29

Phonological features of AAVE

Answer 29

• consonant clusters “wes side”
• th fronting “nuffin”
• th stopping “dem”

Question 30

Grammatical features of AAVE

Answer 30

• non standard negative “ain’t”
• double negatives “ain’t seen nuffin”
• verbs don’t correlate with number of people being talked about “they has a big house”

Question 31

Paul Kerswill: MLE

Answer 31

• Low income, high density regions, particularly cities
• most prevalent in East London, amongst people with few opportunities
• People who are discriminated against or are struggling to make progress in life change their language to sound different to others and use it as an exclusionary strategy

Question 32

David Crystal: slang popularity

Answer 32

becoming more popular because of:

• Use in modern media
• nations obsession with celebrity culture