Accent Theories Flashcards
Dr Lance Workman
Accent and perception of Intelligence and physical attractiveness
Workman’s findings
Pictures of women to go with each accent - to see the perceived attractiveness
There was no correlation between accent and physical attractiveness
Findings: (Perceived intelligence)
Yorkshire
RP
Silent condition / Brummie (tied last)
Howard Giles 1970
Tested the following:
- Personality - testing what traits of character come across
- Persuasiveness- testing how believable the person seemed
- Status- testing how powerful and important the speaker appeared to be personality - testing what traits of character come across
Giles’ findings
Status could easily be ranked in the following order:
RP
National Accents
Regional Rural Accents
Regional Urban Accents
Personality
RP = cold, ruthless, intelligent, ambitious
Northern = warm, sincere, funny
What are the possible issues with Giles’ study?
Often used the Matched Guise Technique
One person is doing multiple accents so it might not be representative/ accurate to the actual accent
Accommodation Theory
Howard Giles 1970
Suggests we adjust our speech to ‘accommodate’ the person we are addressing. This may result in convergence or divergence.
Convergence
This is more common and occurs when we move our speech closer to that of the other person - decreases the social distance between people
- Downward convergence: someone with an RP accent ‘toning down’ their accent to speak to someone with a ‘lower class’ accent
- Upward convergence: someone with a ‘working class’ accent trying to eliminate some of the stronger regional features of their speech for a job interview with an RP speaker
- Mutual convergence: if both participants in a conversation converge towards the other
Divergence
when people’s speech styles move further apart - has the effect of emphasising the differences between people
What are some other similar studies?
Dixon, Mahoney & Cocks: Accents of guilt
Participants listened to an identical exchange between a male suspect and male police officer
HOWEVER, some suspects spoke with RP and other suspects spoke with Brummie accent
What were the findings of the ‘Accents of guilt’ study?
This suspect was viewed as significantly more guilty when he employed a Brummie accent rather than RP. This suggests that an individual’s accent plays a big role in how they are perceived. The combination of a Brummie accent, black suspect who had performed a blue collar crime was the most guilty.
What are some possible issues with perceptions when looking at accents?
SUBJECTIVE
Eg. Giles:
All of his conditions (personality/ persuasiveness and status) are up for interpretation - can depend on how you are perceived
What is Estuary English?
accent that spreads outwards from London that is a combination of both RP and London speech.
Being ‘classless’ - moving away from links with accent and class
