Geographical Variation Glossary Flashcards
Accent
The way that people pronounce sounds
Inventory
A list of items. For example, in phonology, a list of the sounds used in a person’s accent
Distribution
Where a feature is used, within the language inventory of an individual or group
Received pronuncation/ non-regional accent
A prestige accent associated with high social status, historically based largely on the south East’s of England and London
Standard
Used or accepted as normal or average. In language study, socially agreed usage that is familiar to most language users
Non-standard
Different from normal or majority language
Phonetic alphabet
An alphabet designed for transcribing the sounds of all the world’s languages
Covert prestige
Status gained from peer group recognition, rather than public acknowledgement
Overt prestige
Status that is publicly acknowledged
Self-reported usage
People describing their own language use (as opposed to being recorded using language)
Isogloss
A geographic boundary indicating where certain items of language are used
Matched guise technique
An experimental technique where a single actor puts on a different accent for audiences but keeps the content of the speech the same
Estuary English
A recent accent variety used in south east England which combines RP with some aspects of regional southern accents. “Estuary” refers to the Thames Estuary area.
Multicultural London English
A recent variety combining elements of the language of different ethnic groups, particularly Afro-Caribbean English. The variety arose in London but has spread to different parts of the UK.
Which accents were judged the top 3 most attractive?
1) Southern Irish
2) RP
3) Welsh
Which accent was judged as the least attractive?
Birmingham
Giles
- Matched-guise technique
- Involves participants listening to the same speaker using a range of different accents and then passing judgements on each different variant
- 2 groups of teenagers rated RP speaker higher than Birmingham accent in terms of competence and intelligence
Dixon, Mahoney, Cocks (2002)
- Used “matched-guise” approach to see if there was a correlation between accent and how we perceive someone’s guilt
- Participants listened to dialogue between a policeman and a suspect
- Suspect was perceived to be significantly more likely to be guilty when he spoke with the non-standard Birmingham accent over a more standard form
Nevliep and Speten-Hansen (2013)
- Used “matched guise” to research attitudes from an ethnocentric viewpoint
- Participants asked questions to deduce how ethnocentric they were (e.g. my culture should be the role model for the world)
- Participants were split into 2 groups and each watched a video of the same male speaker
- First video he spoke with a “non-native” accent with no detectable regional, ethnic or national associations
- Second video spoke with standard American accent
- Had to rank for attractiveness and credibility
- Ethnocentric gave lower ratings to non-native speaker
Choy and Dodd (1976)
Teachers make judgements on a student’s ability and their personality based on the way they speak
Which accent was considered “worse than staying silent” (Hannah Furness - journalist)
Brummie accent
A reason why there is negative assumptions about the Birmingham accent
Flat vowels e.g. pronunciation of “pie” as “poi”
Paul Coggle “the stereotypes are the living reminders…”
“Of Britain’s continuing class system”
Peter Trudgill quotes (Accent)
“RP speakers are perceived as soon as they start speaking as haughty and unfriendly by non-RP speakers”
“Children with working class accents and dialects may be evaluated by some teachers as having less educational potential”
Howard Giles (1973) death penalty talks
- Teenagers rated RP argument more impressive than those in regional accents
- Those who listened to the regional accent speech were more likely to have been persuaded to change their minds than listeners to the RP speech
Seligman, Tucker and Lambert (1972)
Teachers’ perceptions of students were heavily influenced by their speech
Which accent is the friendliest in the UK?
Geordie
- Most likely to put you in a good mood
- f.Sitel Company Survey of more than 2,000 people across the uk
An example of downward convergence
Someone with an RP accent “toning down” their accent to speak to someone with a “lower class” accent
An example of 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
Where both participants in a conversation converge towards each other
John Honey (1997)
- Regional dialects should be discouraged - most linguists disagree
- Standard English is superior to all other dialects and children should be taught that this is true if they are to succeed in life
William Labov Martha’s Vineyard Study (1963)
- Focused on dialectology in Martha’s Vineyard (an isolated island only accessed by boat or air)
- Labov was interested in the pronunciation of two diphthongs (/au/ and /ai/)
- Interviewed 69 people from different social groups (age, occupation, ethnicity)
- Asked the participants specific questions which would encourage them to uses words that contained these vowels. Participants were not aware of what he was looking for or researching
- In a small group of fishermen, people between the ages of 31 and 45 and up-islanders all pronounced the diphthongs differently
Watt (2005)
- Dialect levelling case study - Newcastle
- Others accommodate towards these new accent forms due to their ‘social attractiveness’
- They didn’t wish to show disloyalty to their geographical area by showing massive variation
- They avoided certain variants or marked features of the Geordie dialect, whilst adopting some features not linked to their dialect
- Motivation for linguistic changes came from young speakers who wanted to dispel the ‘cloth, cap and clogs’ image and sound more like modern northerners
Malcom Petyt (1985)
- Bradford dialect case study
- Study into the socio-economic variable associated with h-dropping e.g. ‘at’ instead of ‘hat’
- People with upward social mobility were more likely to alter their accent and dialect to conform more towards RP
- h-dropping was more likely the lower the socio-economic class
Sharma (2011)
- Showed how individual speakers altered the frequency of Indian and British variants depending on who they were speaking to
- Sharma found that the younger speakers did not adjust their speech so much, arguing that there is perhaps less need to do so due to the different social environment in which they have grown up
- Participants recorded their daily speech to avoid the artificial situation of an interview
Anwar (41 yo)
- 100% Indian when speaking to a Sri Lankan maid
- 100% British when speaking to a ‘cockney’ mechanic
- Perhaps he felt the need to be able to adapt socially and linguistically in order to fit into a society that was hostile to immigrants
Anwar had a wide ethnolinguistics repertoire
Penny Eckert
- White varieties of English are categorised into various regional dialects
- Non-white varieties tend to be bundled together as ethnolects, ignoring any possible variation they might show
- In USA, ‘the White Anglo variety’ is considered a regional dialect while African American and Latino varieties are considered ethnic dialects
Kara Becker
- Agrees with Penny Eckert
- Too often we prioritise ethnicity when describing and explaining linguistic differences between groups of speakers ignoring other aspects
- African American English (AAE) - ‘Its very name captures a variety defined by ethnic identity’ (2014)
- This name is despite well-established fact that not all African Americans use AAE and not all AAE speakers are African American
What do they call a bread roll in Yorkshire?
Stotty
What do they call a bread roll in Scotland?
Morning roll
Examples of banned phrases at Colley Lane school
They was
Somefink
I ain’t
Woz
Gonna
Quotes from Colley Lane School
‘It’s all about getting these children ready for that job interview when they can hold their own with people from across the country’
‘We value the local dialect but are encouraging children to learn the skill of turning it on and off in different situations’
What did parents accuse the teachers of doing to their kids?
‘De- Black Countrying’
Which accents can be traced back to the Anglo Saxons?
Brummie and Geordie
Words used in South London
Bare (lots of)
Calm (positive)
Bredrin (good friend)
Possible causes of dialect levelling
- Lesley Milroy (2002) argues that increased geographical mobility leads to the ‘large-scale disruption of close-knit, localised networks that have historically maintained highly systematic and complex sets of socially structured linguistic norms
- Paul Kerswell thinks its due to an increase in social mobility leading to ‘the consequent breakdown of tight knit working class communities’
Paul Kerswill’s Milton Keynes Study
https://aggslanguage.wordpress.com/2009/09/20/dialect-levelling/#:~:text=Kerswill%20investigated%20the%20changes%20in,one%20caregiver%2C%20usually%20the%20mother.
- Dialect levelling (Milton Keynes, Reading and Hull)
- Interviewed local residents of different ages and studied their pronunciation of certain speech sounds
- His participants were generally children aged 4, 8 and 12 as well as one caregiver (usually the mother)
- Recordings were from specific tasks given to the children such as quizzes or from playground speech
- Milton Keynes was viewed as a town with high social and geographical mobility.
- Milton Keynes - Parents spoke with a variety of regional accents , Children spoke like their parents for the first 4 years and the shifted to
- kerswill found that there was a gradual move among adolescent, southern speakers towards the more standardised , less localised variation of speech as social
Malcom Petyt (1985) Bradford H-dropping study
- Focused on the omission of the phonological variable /h/
- Tried to show the link between h-dropping and class
- Lower working class - 93% of frequency of h-dropping
- Upper middle class - 12% of frequency of h-dropping
- People of a lower social class are more likely to use h-dropping
