Accent and Dialect Flashcards
What are the four main studies used to prove accent and dialect stereotypes?
- Worcester College
- Giles
- Giles and Powesland
- University of Aberdeen
What theory did the University of Aberdeen carry out?
What were their findings?
The university of Aberdeen decided to see what happened when the same joke was told in different accents, including RP and Brummie.
Their findings were that the joke, when told in the Brummie accent, was found the funniest. Contradicting to this, they also found that when told in the RP accent, the joke was deemed not funny by the audience.
What theory did Worcester College carry out?
What were their findings?
Worcester College decided to see what happened when police interviews were reenacted, using people with different accents, including RP and Brummie.
Their findings were that suspects with the RP accent were deemed as innocent, whereas suspects with the Brummie accent were found guilty.
What theory did Howard Giles carry out?
What were his findings?
Giles decided to see how people, when reading out the capital punishment, came across to others, when they each had different accents; such as Welsh, RP, Western, Brummie and one written.
His findings were that the Western was most favoured, the RP was the nicest sounding, the Brummie was the worst sounding and the Written was deemed the best.
What theory did Giles and Powesland carry out?
What were their findings?
Giles and Powesland decided to see what happened when the same lecture was taught to two groups of students, one lecturer with a Birmingham accent and one with an RP accent.
Their findings were that students responded better to the RP lecturer, sending him positive feedback and better reviews. Meanwhile, the Brummie lecturer received notably less feedback and positive reviews, than the RP lecturer.
What was the order in which people ranked accents, according to Trudgill?
- BBC accent
- Welsh
- Yorkshire
- Irish
- Geordie
- West Country
- Glasgow
- Liverpool
- Birmingham
- Cockney
What is L - vocalisation?
The dropping of the ‘L’ in words
e.g. milk becomes miwk
What is H - dropping?
The dropping of the ‘H’ in words
e.g. have becomes av
What is a glottal stop?
The dropping of double T’s in words
e.g. bottle becomes bo-ul
Whay is a YOD coalescence?
The ‘you’ sound disappears
e.g. news becomes noows
What is TH fronting?
Where the TH sound becomes an F sound
e.g. thing becomes fing
What is a diphthong?
Where two letters create one vowel sound
e.g. bae, coin, sound
What is prescriptivism?
Where someone disagrees with language change, typically old people who may not agree with evolving languages, such as MLE
What is descriptivism?
Where someone agrees with language change, typically younger people who are actually a part of the language evolution
What is overt prestige?
Socially accepted language forms which many will use if they want to feel included in society
