Accent and Dialect Flashcards
What did a 2020 report into treatment of people based on where they came from at Durham uni find? What does this show us about attitudes to accent and dialect?
- One student had to receive counselling and another had to move home
- One student was denied entrance to college bars because staff didn’t believe he was at the uni (because of his accent) and he was made fun of for having to work to support his degree
What did a 2012 poll of business execs find about attitudes towards people with:
1) an Essex accent
2) a Scouse accent
3) a liverpool accent
4) a Brummie accent
5) a Home Counties (around London) accent
6) an American accent
7) a Scottish accent
8) a posh RP accent (like royal family)
1) Essex - 70% said they would have doubts about hiring them
2) Scouse - 49%
3) Liverpool - 40% associated it with a lack of success
4) Brummie - 33%
5) Home Counties - 61% said successful
6) American - 61%
7) Scottish - 47%
8) RP - nearly a third said they would have doubts about hiring someone
What did a 2020 study by York University and QMUL find about our attitudes to working class, minority ethnic and historically prestigious accents? What about accent bias in professional contexts?
- we tend to downgrade working class and some minority ethnic accents while we upgrade those associated with prestige
- accent bias is weaker in professional contexts but still influences how people are perceived
What did a 2013 ITV study find about how people viewed their own accents? And how many had been discriminated against? Where is prejudice most prevalent? Which accents were voted as: 1) most friendly 2) least friendly 3) most intelligent 4) least intelligent 5) most trustworthy 6) least trustworthy
• Some children were ashamed of their accent and felt it would affect their prospects (Middlesborough) • More than 1/4 • Along the North-South divide 1) Devon 2) Liverpool 3) RP 4) Liverpool 5) RP 6) Liverpool
Who researched perceptions of guilt in RP and Brummie accents using a matched guise technique? What did they find?
Dixon et al. 2002
RP considered less guilty on average
What did the Manchester Voices Project (2019) find about attitudes to accent and dialect, including one’s own?
People were aware of stereotypes and stigma associated with Northern accents
Also expressed pride in and an unwillingness to change their accent
Who argued that stereotypical negative attitudes towards certain accents are ‘snobbish prejudice’? Why?
Deborah Cameron
They are accents of old industrial cities (Glasgow, Liverpool, Birmingham) thought to be full of yobs and chavs
What did the 2005 BBC Voices project find about people from the South West’s attitude towards their own accent?
Over 1/4 said they didn’t like or weren’t proud of their accent
What is ‘The Beatles Effect’?
In the 60s, the Scouse accent was seen as cool because of them
How has the Queen’s accent changed over time?
She has downwardly converged (moved away from her very RP accent)
What is the Standard Language Ideology?
Lippi-Green 1997
A learned bias towards an abstract, idealised, homogenous language modelled on written forms and the spoken forms of those in power, esp. upper middle class
The idea that there is a single, right way to talk
What did a study of tourists in Scotland find about attitudes towards accent and dialect?
Tourists wanted to balance authenticity with intelligibility - wanted a Scottish accent but a light one they could understand
According to the Accent Bias Britain Study by QMUL:
1) Which accents have the highest and lowest prestige?
2) How do the results for attitudes towards accent labels compare to those from 15 and 50 years ago?
3) How did results for audio recordings differ according to age group?
4) Which group/region had the greatest bias against working class London accents? How can we tell?
5) Were the lawyers biased?
6) How was RP rated based on age? What about by lawyers?
7) How was MLE rated? Why?
1) RP, Queen’s English, French-accented, Edinburgh, one’s own accent/Indian and Afro-Caribbean, Cockney, Liverpool, Essex and Birmingham
2) Similar but ratings are less different overall (high-prestige accents now rated slightly lower)
3) Older people (45+) rate Estuary English and MLE much lower than the other accents whereas younger people rated all of them roughly equally
4) Older Southern people - even when the job interview answers were very technical, they still rated EE and MLE lower than other accents (in general, ‘expert’ answers were rated higher than ‘non-expert’)
5) No - they showed an ability to switch off biases (where they were from didn’t affect it) and rate answers on the quality of the content
6) Young people rated it lower than the other accents, lawyers rated it equally on hierability but lower on likeability
7) A heavy MLE accent was rated lower than a light one - people like it when the speaker is supposedly making an effort to reduce it
