Accent and dialect Flashcards
Standard English
The generally accepted, prestigious form of the language; particularly lexis and grammar.
Accent
The sounds of an individual produced during speech; may be regional or social
Dialect
Variation in words and grammatical structures associated with a particular geographical region (regional dialect)
Prescriptive attitudes
the imposition or enforcement of a rule or method; insistence on particular lexis, grammar, phonetics etc.
Descriptive approach
describing what actually occurs in an objective and non-judgemenental
way
Recieved pronunciation
a social accent that is sometimes considered to be a standard accent of British English, even though it is estimated only around 2% of Britons speak it today. It is usually regarded as the most prestigious of British English accents, within the UK and around the world.
Originslie in the 14th century regional accent of the East Midland, a prestigious region at the time due to the wealth generated from the wool trade.
By the 16th century many of the accent features have been adopted by the social elite further suth such as the Royal Court.
It was adopted in 1922 by Lord Reith, the first General Manager of the BBC as a radio broadcasting standard, hence the term “BBC English”
Concervative RP
a very traditional variety particularly associated with older speakers and the aristocracy
Concervative RP
a very traditional variety particularly associated with older speakers and the
aristocracy
Mainstream RP
an accent that we might consider extremely neutral in terms of signals regarding age, occupation or lifestyle of the speaker
Contemporary RP
refers to speakers using features typical of younger RP speakers
Harrington et al. (2000)
Found evidence of RP accent change and influence of less
prestigious southern accents within Christmas Broadcasts made by Queen Elizabeth 2nd from the 1950s to the early 1970s. fe subjective adjective “happy” was originally pronounced /hæpɪ/ but later /hæpi/ with the length of the final vowel signalling the change.
Matched Guise Experiments:
Researchers (such as Giles and Trudgill - separately) found that
RP speakers tend to be rated more highly than speakers with a regional accent in terms of their general competence; intelligence; self-confidence; ambition; determination; industriousness.
RP scored less well for qualities such as: friendliness; warmth; talkativeness; good-naturedness; sense of humour.
Howard Giles (1973):
Capital punishment experiment investigating attitudes to RP, Somerset, South Wales and Birmingham accents.
The greater the accent prestige, the greater the perceived quality of the argument. Listeners were most impressed by RP speakers. However, those hearing regional spealers were most likely to have their minds changes. Because of social prestige attatched to RP, positive and negative discrimination may occur towards a person using it.
Dennis Freeborn (1986)
summarises negative attitudes to regional accents
1. The incorrectness view: All regional accents are incorrect compared to the accent of RP.
2. The ugliness view: Some accents don’t sound nice.
3. The impreciseness view: Some accents are described as ‘lazy’ and ‘sloppy’
Andersson and Trudgill (1990):
Argued that attitudes towards accents are based more on social connotations and prejudices surrounding the location or social group associated with that accent than on the sound itself, as demonstrated by experiments using outsiders.
E.g. American speakers who do not recognise a Birmingham accent, know anything about Birmingham (which has features such as slang “bab” a fronted clipping of ‘babe’ and h dropping such as of the exclamation “hello” as “ello”), even where it is, do not find the Birmingham accent unpleasant.
