Accent + Dialect

Question 1

Who did the studies of capital punishment and matched guise ?

Answer 1

Howard Giles

Question 2

Explain the matched guise study

Answer 2

METHOD
- 2 actors put on 3 different accents ( RP , Somerset , Mid South Wales )
- This was played to the participants who were asked to evaluate the voices on 18 adjective traits.

FINDINGS
- RP speakers were favourable for competence but unfavourable for integrity. ( Shows clear stereotype which is attached to accents )

CONCLUSION
- RP association with intelligence and competence but not with warmth or integrity , opposite in terms of regionality.

RESPONSE
- COVERT PRESTIGE - Regionality correlates with integrity because speaker reveals about their back ground - associated with honesty.

• OVERT PRESTIGE - RP correlates with power because of the history and association of those that use it - wealth and education.

Question 3

Explain the aesthetics judgements study.

Answer 3

BACKGROUND
- People who live in England had a pre-existing knowledge of locations. Therefore, judgements by the English participants were based on pre-existing social connotations and RP was favourable.

CONCLUSION
- Most benign common place aesthetic judgements about how an accent sounds are really disguised value judgements about the speaker’s place or the social group that is known to use their accent.
- Notions of desirability have nothing to do with aesthetics and everything to do with social stigma, stereotypes and prejudice. All point back to the individual communicative capabilities of the given person.

FINDINGS
- RP mostly always favourable to English listeners.
BUT…
-Non-English listeners (without social connotations) didn’t favour RP. There was no overall agreement of trends relating to articles.
-Judgements about accents are based on pre-existing social connotation and can be used ( WRONGLY ) as value judgments to make inferences about people’s individual characteristics or traits.

Question 4

Who did the aesthetics judgements research?

Answer 4

Giles and Trudgill

Question 5

In the research from October 2024, what did teenage girls from Essex feel they were being prejudiced as?

Answer 5

“ The perception is that an Essex girl is unintelligent, uncreative, and they don’t feel that stereotype represents them at all “

• Can only be assumed that this has a huge effect on one’s self-perception and confidence in their abilities. -> if they are being judged on accent more than knowledge, that will be focused on more and actual retaining of knowledge is irrelevant. -> This is not only dehumanising but also just irrelevant to capabilities.

“ It puts them out there for a listener to hear and gives you an opportunity to change someone’s mind about you “

• Exposing the girls to the real world and teaching them how to overcome the stereotypes and prejudice which they are already facing but that they shall continue to face.

Question 6

From the research in June 2022 at Northumbria university , what was the stereotype about speakers in the North of England?

Answer 6

“ People do think that speakers in the north of England are less intelligent, less ambitious, less educated and so on, solely from the way they speak “

• Found huge differences between the explicit and implicit attitudes
• Aim of the project long-term is to make accent a protected characteristic under the equality legislation in the UK

Question 7

What is the damp spoon approach from the prescriptivist perspective?

Answer 7

That there are “ lazy “ non-standard varieties.
For example the use of glottal stops (eg. be(??)er)

Question 8

What is the crumbling castle view according to the prescriptivist judgement?

Answer 8

• Treats English language like an ornate building of national importance that needs to be preserved - ‘ruination’ or ‘decay’

Question 9

What is the infectious disease view according to the prescriptivist judgment?

Answer 9

• Epidemic in speech
• Non-standard variation is “catching” like a disease
• “Infectious” - we do code switch to accommodate speech.
• CONVERGE !
• “Disease” - must ‘want’ to catch it / CORRUPTION is a CHOICE.

Question 10

What is mutual intelligibility?

Answer 10

The ability to be understood by everyone.
Required in the classroom for all students to be able to understand teacher fully.

Question 11

What does the descriptivist view suggest?

Answer 11

• Describes language use , accounts for it and seeks to understand it
• Sees how it meets the social, psychological and communicative purposes