Accent and Dialect

Question 1

What is an accent?

Answer 1

How we say words.

Question 2

What is a dialect?

Answer 2

Words unqiue to that area.

Question 3

What % of the population speak RP?

Answer 3

2%.

Question 4

What is Dixon, Mahoney and Cocks study?

Answer 4

• Used a ‘matched guise’ approach.
• Explored the correlation between accent and perceived guilt.
• Suspects were perceived to be guilty if they had non-standard Birmingham form.

Question 5

What is Harringtons Study?

Answer 5

• Investigated Queen’s accent over 50 years of her Christmas speeches.
• Found that her accent was moving towards a general Southern English accent – due to interactions with non-RP speakers and gradual reduction on her language.

Question 6

What is Kerswills study?

Answer 6

• Studied dialect in Hull, Reading and Milton Keynes.
• The more people mix in different networks + more people moving in from elsewhere (social contact) = influences on accent variation.

Question 7

What is Labov’s Martha’s Vineyard study?

Answer 7

• Locals resisted dialect levelling due to ‘summer people’, claiming their identity as residents.
• Divergence was used to make change.

Question 8

What is Giles Matched Guise Experiment?

Answer 8

• Participants listened to a speaker using a guis and rated that accent on various features.

Question 9

What were Giles Matched Guise findings?

Answer 9

• RP = most intelligent and prestigious.
• Regional accents = friendly and honest.
• Brummie ranked least intelligent.

Question 10

Provide an contemporary example?

Answer 10

George Osbourne – during role of chancellor he seemed to drop his RP and move more to Estuary English, using ‘kinda’ compared to ‘kind of’.