Dialect Flashcards
Manchester Dialect
Features regional dialect lexis such as:
‘Soz’ = ‘Sorry’
‘chuddy’ = ‘Chewing gum’
‘Nowt’ = ‘Nothing’
Paul Kerswill
Dialect Levelling - Regional dialects are dying out because of geographical mobility, causes contact with other dialects, and social mobility, causes breakdown of tight-knit working class communities
Surrey Dialect
The Surrey Dialect has practically died out. Features include:
‘timmersome’ = ‘timid’
Non-Standard copular ‘be’ - ‘How be you?’
Forest of Dean
Isolated, rural community with very closed networks so a very distinct regional variety.
‘How bist dau, but?’ = ‘How are you, mate?’
‘Dree on’t’ = ‘Three of us’
Jennifer Cheshire
Studied a group of truanting teenagers in Reading with 11 non-standard features such as:
Non-standard ‘s’ - ‘They calls me names’
Multiple Negation - ‘You ain’t no boss’
Cheshire - Boys
Used 10 of 11 features more than girls, positive correlation between social network and 6 features.
Cheshire graded the boys by status with the ‘Vernacular Culture Index’ measuring their coolness.
Non-Standard ‘s’ was heavily linked to status, it was most used by higher status boys
Cheshire - Girls
Divided into ‘Good Girls’ and ‘Bad Girls’ based on truanting and shoplifting
Bad Girls used more non-standard features than Good Girls
Howard Giles - Matched Guise Experiments
1 actor did an RP and then Birmingham accent. The RP accent was seen as more intelligent and their arguments about the death penalty were more convincing than the Birmingham accent.
Perception of Regional Varieties
Birmingham is the least liked.
RP is seen as intelligent but cold
Urban varieties rated low
Rural varieties rated highly
Prescriptivism
Says what language should be like. RP is the best accent and Standard English is the best dialect.
Descriptivism
Describes what language is actually like, no right or wrong.
No variety is inherently better than an other, some have overt prestige, RP and some have covert prestige, cockney
