Case studies Flashcards
Social groups include
-Gender
-Region
-Occupation
-Social class
-Religion
-Sexuality
-Age
-Family
-Friends
-Interest/hobby
-Academic
Factors of language
-Class
-Geographical
-Friend group/social group
-Social settings
-Economic factors
-Culture
-Age/generation
-Migration
William Labov (1963): Martha’s Vineyard
Social group, culture, geographical
-Population of 6000, however 40,000 tourists visiting per year.
-Fishermen on formed the most close-knit on the island. Annoyed by the tourists and subconsciously exaggerated tendencies already in their speech
-Other people viewed fisherman as upholding good old American virtues
-Interviewed 69 people from the island from different age, ethnic and social groups
-Found that younger speakers had diverged from standard New English forms and converged downwards towards a pronunciation associated with Chilmark fisherman
-Way to seperate themselves from tourists on the island and identify themselves as Vineyarders
William Labov (1966) New York Department Stores
Social class, economic factors
Labov believed social class affected how people spoke
He predicted that the higher the social class, the more people in NY would pronounce the /r/ sound. This is because the /r/ sound had considerable social prestige in NYC
Tested speech of sales assistants in three Manhattan stores: Saks (top), Macy’s (middle), Klein’s (bottom)
Labov found that the sales assistants from Saks used /r/ the most and those from Klein’s used it the least. Found that Macy’s showed the greatest upwards convergence when they were asked to repeat
Peter Trudgill (1974): The Velar Nasal /n/ in Norwich
Social class, gender
Trudgill believed people from lower social classes in Norwich would be more likely to pronounce words ending with the spelling -ng with an /n/ rather than the velar nasal sound
Sampled fifty speakers using a reading word list, passage,formal conversation, casual conversation
Found velar nasal and /n/ sound is not unique to Norwich, but unique to social class
1) In all social classes, the more careful the speech, the more likely people were to say ‘walking’ rather than ‘walkin’
2) Proportion of ‘walkin’ type forms was higher in lower social classes
3) Nonstandard -in forms occurred much more in men’s speech
4) Women thought they used standard velar nasal more often than they really did
5) Men thought they used nonstandard forms more than they did
6) Women are more susceptible to overt prestige, men more likely to covert prestige
Lesley Milroy (1987) Belfast Study:
Social class, economic factors, friend group/social group, identity
Studied three poor w/c areas with high unemployment in Belfast
Researched ways in which seperate communities spoke and how language represented the way that they intergrated into their community
Gave each individual she studied a Network Density Score
Score was 1-5 with 5 representing close, strong ties with people in the community
Measured each person’s pronounciation
Found that the higher the NDS, the greater the use of non-Standard local pronunciations. Those with lower scores had weaker regional accents.
For groups with high scores, their regional accents were associated with their personal and group identity, which means they sought covert prestige.
Basil Bernstein (1971) Restricted and Elaborated Codes:
Class
Showed pictures to children and asked them to describe what was happening
The w/c kids used language which showed they were occupying the same physical space as the researcher, where as m/c kids spoke as if the researcher wasn’t there
W/c speakers used a restricted code of language, relating to the here and now and m/c speakers used elaborated code which was much more explicit and independent of context
Could show that w/c kids are more aware of the nature of assessment and adapt their language accordingly
Penelope Eckert (2000) Jocks and Burnouts:
Friend group/social group
Observed the habitual social behaviours of American high-school students
Identified two distinctive groups: The ‘jocks’ and the ‘burnouts’
She found that people tended to speak more like those with whom they shared social behaviours and values with, convergence
Jocks spoke in a more socially prestige way, sometimes reflecting their m/c backgrounds
Burnouts exaggerated their pronunciations associated with the urban accent of their Detroit neighbourhood instead
Paul Kerswill- Milton Keynes
Used 48 children of mixed ages
First encouraged them to read out loud and do quizzes which got them to produce certain words
Secondly, recorded spontaneous speech by interviewing them
Caregivers interviewed next to see if their language affected the child
Results highlighted role of children in formation of new dialects
Found there was a lot of variation in parent’s accents, much less in children
Children’s accents also differed from the accents of speakers in the areas sorrounding Milton Keynes, even children whose parents were from the outside of the South East area, portrayed no trace of their parents accents
Kevin Watson: More or less Scouse?
Compared 13 older speakers to 13 younger ones
Wanted to see if /t/ and /k/ sounds were fricative instead of plosive
Wanted to see if dialect levelling had occurred (where regional variations in language are reduced due to a range of factors, such as widespread interaction and mobility)
Found that Liverpool English is certainly not in decline, young males and old males use nonstandard forms at the same rate, young females use more than older females
Scouse accent not dying out, instead becoming more prevelant
Example where dialect levelling does not occur
David Rosenware: Estuary English
Features: Glottal Stop
L- vocalisation in which /l/ is pronounced as a vowel or like a w eg in football
Confrontational tag questions: I said I would, didn’t I?
Speakers of estuary english thought to be aiming for a classless profile- avoiding the privileged and ‘unfriendly’ connotations of RP while also, for regional speakers, side stepping the tag of being ill educated
Estuary features can be heard all over the British Isles, which perhaps points to dialect levelling
Howard Giles- Matched Guise
Research technique where a single actor puts on different accents for different audiences but keeps the content of the speech the same
Tested responses to different accents using 3 main parameters: Status- how powerful and important the speaker appeared to be
Personality- Testing what traits of character come across
Persuasiveness- Testing how believable the person seemed
Results: RP- self confident, intelligent, ambitious, but also cold and ruthless
Northern accents- honest, reliable, generous, sincere, warm and humorous
Emma Moore- Bolton Study
Social groups
Investigated patterns and speech variations among teenage girls in Bolton
Found nonstandard speech still a robust feature in dialect- were instead of was
Followed girls at 12-13 at school over two year long period
Social Groups:
The Populars- engaged in rebellious activities w/ an anti-school attitude
The Townies- breakaway group who emerged from populars and engage in even riskier activities
The Geeks- ‘institutionally orientated’- took part in school activities
The Eden Valley girls- come from a desirable home area, school orientated, dancing and shopping
Findings:
Populars- neither favour nor disfavour use of nonstandard
3 speakers did not use nonstandard at all from higher social class groups
Townies- highly favour nonstandard. members from upper w/c or lower m/c
Geeks- Disfavour use of nonstandard
Engage with institutional norms of school and conform to standard forms, although all speakers from lower social class group
Village girls- Used standard almost all of the time and exclusively from the higher social group
Mark Thompson-
Direction of BBC general
2008- More regional accents called for to be apart of drive to end RP
The Daily Telegraph- Reported complaints from license fee payers
BBC ignoring large swathes of country by failing to employ people with regional accents- even on local news!
Lancashire study
A group of students were questioned as to how academically aspirational they were.
Students with supposed high aspirations had fewer local variations in their speech.
Students with supposed lower aspirations displayed more non-standard variations.
However, not all students fit this pattern and some students showed non-standard variations to fit in with their peers despite performing very well academically.
MLE: Multicultural London English
Becoming teenagers speech up and down the country, spread mostly by grime music as exemplified
Issue for linguists come when we have to draw the line between what an idiolect and a sociolect
Daily mail 2013-
Hybrid dialect dubbed MLE sweeps across the country
Most prevelant in east london
people with few oppurtunities
Much of slang is Afro-American or Jamaican in origin
First example of the language where the influence of native language is not as strong as the second language
Colley Lane 2013
Colley Lane Primary Colley Lane Primary in the West Midlands was one of the schools to make headlines in November 2013. A letter sent home with pupils asked parents to support the school’s efforts in making pupils aware of ‘the right language for the right context’ by avoiding what the school called the ‘top ten most damaging phrases’ that their teachers had identified.
