Accent and dialect Flashcards
Giles CP
capital punishment experiment
5 groups of students
4 oral and 1 written script
spoken in different accents; RP, Somerset, Welsh and Brummie
RP - most competent and reliable, lowest in persuasiveness, seen as ‘snobby and posh’
AC Gimson
1962
RP could be a disadvantage
especially in social situations where empathy and affection needed
Linda Mugglestone
RP prestige is on the wane
Jonathan Harrington
investigated Queen’s accent
over 50 years of christmas speeches
believes started shifting to southern english accent
via interactions with non RP speakers and gradual reduction
George Osbourne
chancellor role drop his RP accent accent closer to Estuary English 'kinda' 'briddish' - 'kind of' 'british' RP in parliament
Giles and Powesland
speaker of psychology to two sets of students
RP and Brummie
RP ranked higher
Brummie least intelligent
Giles matched guise
accent put on by speaker rate on various features RP most intelligent and prestigious regional friendlier and more honest Brummie rated least intelligent
Worcester College
clips form police interview
Brummie labelled as guilty significantly more
Brummie labelled more likely to be poor and working class
Uni of Aberdeen
study of jokes
Brummie funniest
RP unfunniest
RP
‘standard accent’ of Southern England -OED
prescriptivisim
overt prestige - high status due to ‘establishment’ and ‘queen’s english’
artificial construct - regionless
oudated - 2%
universally recognised - ‘english’ by foreigners or when accent challenge
RP phonological features
trap/bath split - long a /a:/ e/g bath
h-retention - /h/ always pronounced in initial positioning e.g house
non-rhoticity - not pronouncing the /r/ at ends of words e.g mother
conservative vowels - sound like they ‘ought to’
yod coalescence - /j/ pronounced ‘y’ e.g rain, spain, tuesday
features known as shibboleths - feature of a group
Paul Coggle
EE never a good name but stuck with it accent of the lower middle classes in Greater London, Home Counties areas it is used by some younger people from upper class backgrounds probably influence the speech of power-holders in the Greater London area
Paul Kerswill
within 50 years, MLE will replace cockney completely
Trudgill variations
variations in relationships to show class and regional forms triangle shows as social class decreases, regional variation increases classify dialectal words - traditional and mainstream traditional - 'old', rural lexemes and grammatical constructions mainstream - more common lexical and grammatical constructions used majorly in a grammatical area lexical attrition process dies out traditional dialectal words
Cockney rhyming slang
dialectal variation found in London
originated from criminal underworld in 1800s
‘brown bread’ - dead
stopped being used by criminals when adopted by non criminals - stopped deictic
‘donkey ears’ - years ‘donks’ broadening and becoming common usage
dialectal terms rarely used
weakened version still in use e.g Eastenders
MLE
variation arisen from migration
bringing in speakers of ENFL
inner-London cities
spreading of MLE
mostly by grime music Stormzy part of teenagers speech difficult to distinguish of whether it is an idiolect or sociolect news publication 'jafaican'
MLE features
indefinite pronoun ‘man’ e.g man dem
‘why… for?’ e.g why you doing that for?
/h/ retention e.g house
jamaican slang e.g blood for friend
th-stopping (harsh sound instead of th) e.g MLE is a mad ting
Estuary English
David Rosewarne
occasionally ‘London Regional General British’
variation around River Thames
mix of RP and cockney
Estuary English features
glottal stop - missing out ‘t’ in middle of words e.g butter
dark l (/l/) - pronuncing ‘L’ sound with an (ow) sound e.g ull
mouth closer to /ea/ (air) in words like hair
th- fronting - ‘th’ with ‘f’ e.g fing
Mark Thompson 2008
conscious effort to move away from ‘BBC english’
wider range of accounts on BBC
Workman 2008
different accents looking at people’s photos and rating intelligence
yorkshire most intelligent
birmingham least intelligent
Malcom Petyt
omission of /h/ in speech (h-dropping) social climbing in bradford conscious effort moving up the social ladder and hyper correction lower working class 93% h-dropping lower middle class 12% h-dropping
Labov black venacular english 1972
independent dialect of english
incomplete form of expression
deprivation in the black community
Philip Howard 1993
the point of rp is to enable one tribe of pronouncers to feel superior
Tajfel 1978
personal v group identities
identify and adopt personas
milroy and milroy 1985
children struggle at school as SE is unfamiliar
all varieties of English should be valued equally and not discouraged
folkes and docherty 1999
suggested dialect levelling is a degree of standardisation
surviving forms not common to one region
milroy
open network - person whose contacts don’t know each other (low density)
closed network - person whose contacts know each other (high density)
milroy belfast study
correlation between the density of the network
the language was that the higher the density
the more there was use of vernacular or non-standard forms
labov new york department study
post-vocalic ‘r’ - prestige pronunciation in NY
investigated speech sales of sales assistants -Saks (H) Macys (M) Kleins (L)
Saks prestige ‘r’ the most when asked for directions
Kleins used it least
Macys greatest upward shift when asked to repeat
mark sebba
london jamaican english - phonological and grammatical elements of carribbean creoles, cockney, SE and RP
eveolved from language needs of immigrant countries
beryl bainbridge
all children should have elocution lessons to wipe out regional accents
taught to abandon her own Liverpool accent had helped her career no end
bainbridge criticised for falling into the pymalion trap; higher expectations = increased performance
paul coggle 1993 attitudes to accents
like accents for different reasons evaluated stereotypical attitudes towards different classes more soothing and friendly e.g geordie some reputable for poverty generalised so unrepresentative
howard giles
accommodation theory convergence upwards convergence downwards convergence divergence
choy and dodd 1976
teachers make judgements on students’ abilities and personalities based on how they speak
thomas pear 1931
people have different perceptions of a speaker according to their accent
halliday
social variation theory
forms of sociolect arise in order to support subcultures seeking a covert identity
kerswill - milton keynes
vowel fronting indicating influence of EE due to significant migration in the area from london
represents EE has a potential in dialect levelling
kerswill - survivor in dialect levelling
multiple negation use of aint absence of plural marking e.g 3 foot absence of adverb marking addition of present tense - s e.g i likes
trudgill norwich study
men and women from different social classes
women use overt prestige to appear higher social class due to social insecurity
men use covert to appear more down to earth and tough
looked at ‘g’ dropping, ‘t’ glottalisaton (wa’er), loss of initial ‘h’ (ave)
men and lower social classes dropped ‘g’ most
women over reported their use of standard seeking overt
men use more non-standard seeking covert
cheshire 1990s
children’s prestige
explore whether adults prestige stemmed from speech as a child
girls spoke to maintain/ create friendships
boys spoke to install a group identity
prestige - coined by labov, trudgill links to social values
overt - nationally recognised, offical context, high intelligence covert- loyalty and solidarity, working class with class and region using non-standard
kerswill dialect levelling
caused by movement of people leading to greater dialectal contact increasing social mobility has led to the consequent breakdown of tight-knit working -class communication
john honey
some prejudices about accents are reasonable
deeply ingrained they are unlikely to be eradicated
children are being disadvantaged - not equipped with an accent to succeed
SE should be taught in schools
status of accent reflects power and people who use it
hierarchy of accent in terms of social prestige and perceived attractiveness
