Dialect Levelling

Question 1

Leslie Milroy 2002

Answer 1

Increased geographical mobility leads to the ‘large-scale disruption of close-knit, localised networks’

Question 2

Paul Kerswill’s paper ‘Mobility, meritocracy and dialect levelling: the fading (and phasing) out of RP’ statistics and what do they show?

Answer 2

1831- 34% lived in cities
1981 80% lived in cities
1991- 90% lived in cities
1990s- 1.2% working in agriculture

Therefore shows that social mobility has increased

Question 3

What has increased social mobility led to, according to Kerswill?

Answer 3

‘The consequent breakdown of tight knit working class communities’

Question 4

What does Kerswill feel is a possible cause for dialect levelling?

Answer 4

‘Increased interaction with people of other speech varieties’

Question 5

Kerswill summarises possible causes of dialect levelling:

Answer 5

The movement of people led to greater dialect contact
The movement of people led to radical changes in people’s social network, away from strictly local ones comprising family and neighbours to ones that encompass far more strangers and people in different walks of life

Question 6

What argues against dialect levelling

Answer 6

Some regional forms surviving like the addition of present tense -s in some verb formations in South and South West of England and multiple negation
Use of ain’t

Question 7

Yet how can this be flipped to say there is still elements of standarisation?

Answer 7

The survivors are not common to one particular area but can be seen as characteristic features of a range of dialects

Question 8

What is seen as the sexiest accent in the UK according to newspaper polls?

Answer 8

Geordie

Question 9

What did The Daily Telegraph say that the British public felt about pilots with London accents?

Answer 9

The least reassuring

Question 10

In another article from The Daily Telegraph, what did business executives admit?

Answer 10

If you have a working-class Essex accent, they might have doubts hiring you

Question 11

What did Thomas Pear find in 1931?

Answer 11

People had different perceptions of a speaker according to the accent they heard them speak with

Question 12

What approach did Howard Giles use and what does this mean?

Answer 12

The ‘matched-guise’, participants listening to a range of different accents and then passing judgement on each different variant

Question 13

When did Howard Giles use this approach?

Answer 13

1975 when researching the perception of RP and the Birmingham accent by 2 groups of 17 year olds

Question 14

Although it was the same speaker using two different accents when speaking about psychology, which accent did the teenagers rate higher and on what grounds?

Answer 14

RP speaker in terms of competence and intelligence

Question 15

In 1973, Giles conducted a further study in support of this. What did he find?

Answer 15

British teenagers were presented with the same speech arguing against the death penalty, spoken in different accents.
Teenagers more likely to value the argument and the content if speaker used a more prestigious accent

Question 16

Who supported Gile’s theory of biases against accents?

Answer 16

Dixon, Mahoney and Cocks 2002

Question 17

What was their study?

Answer 17

They used the ‘matched guise’ approach to see if there was a correlation between accent and how we perceive someone’s guilt.

Question 18

What accent did they use as the non-standard form?

Answer 18

Birmingham

Question 19

What did students do in the 2002 study?

Answer 19

Listened to a dialogue between a policeman and a subject

For some the subject spoke with a Birmingham accent, while others listened to a recording when the subject’s accent was more standard.

Question 20

Results of 2002 study by Dixon, Mahoney and Cocks

Answer 20

The subject was perceived to be significantly more likely to be guilty when he spoke with the non-standard Birmingham accent

Question 21

Teachers’ perceptions of students were heavily influenced by their speech, according to who?

Answer 21

Seligman, Tucker and Lambert in 1972

Question 22

What did Choy and Dodd find

Answer 22

1976. Teachers make judgements on a student’s ability and their personality based on the way they speak.

Question 23

What are people stereotyped based on?

Answer 23

Their accents

Question 24

A study by the company Sitel surveyed more than 2000 people and found that:

Answer 24

The Geordie accent is the friendliest accent in the UK and most likely to put you in a ‘good mood’
Geordie amongst the top 5 accents in the categories of trustworthy, helpful and efficient
Traits respondents cited as important when speaking to call centre representatives