Important Theorists and Concepts

Question 1

Rosewarne (1984)

Answer 1

Estuary English falls on a continuum between RP and Cockney; it’s an umbrella term covering a range of accents. Speakers using it were thought to be aiming for a “classless profile” and avoid the privileged connotations of RP/the uneducated Cockney label. Common features of Estuary English include glottal stops and L-vocalisations e.g. they’ll pronounce the L-vocalisation in ‘milk’. People correct their speech for social aspiration e.g. RP speakers using Estuary English to sound less ‘snobby’

Question 2

Labov’s Social Stratification of English in New York City (1966)

Answer 2

nvestigated the presence/absence of the post vocalic /r/ (overt prestige) in the noun phrase “fourth floor”. Middle-class shoppers strove to us the prestigious form the most. There was found to be an upward shift in the working class during careful speech (prejudice to themselves and don’t feel like the norm).

Question 3

Dixon, Mahoney and Cocks (Matched Guise Approach)

Answer 3

There’s a correlation between a persons accent and how we perceive guilt. i.e. in dialogues between policemen and suspects, the Birmingham accent sounded the most guilty.

Question 4

Who looked at ethnocentricity and non-native accents (Matched Guise Approach)

Answer 4

Neuliep and Hansen Looked at ethnocentricity and non-native accents. Listeners ranked speakers on attractiveness and credibility. Ethnocentric people rated non-native speakers lowest, showing how accents form part of our identity.

Question 5

Giles (Matched Guise Approach)

Answer 5

Same speaker spoke with a range of accents and listeners passed judgement. Aged 17 listeners rated RP speakers more intelligent than Brummies, despite them both talking about psychology.

Question 6

The University of York

Answer 6

Forecasts suggested accents would merge into a national way of speaking, however, experts have found that the Geordie, Scour and Brummie accents are becoming more distinct. Watt (a lecturer in forensic speech) stated: “People want to protect their identity”.

Question 7

Workman 2015

Answer 7

Paired random faces to accents and listeners rated speakers on their attractiveness and intelligence. The study was made reliable using a silent condition and randomised faces. Yorkshire accent found to be most intelligent, Birmingham accent least intelligent. Reinforces negative stereotypes and low sample sizes.

Question 8

Trudgill Accents

Answer 8

RP speakers perceived as ‘haughty and unfriendly’. Students with regional accents are perceived by teachers to have less educational potential.

Question 9

Professor Setter (2014)

Answer 9

9/10 people who speak RP are thought to be more attractive and intelligent

Question 10

Pear (1931)

Answer 10

People have different perceptions of a speaker according to their accent.

Question 11

Cheshire’s Reading Study (1982) -

Answer 11

Playground in Reading, asked children whether they approve/disapprove of criminal activity. Those who approved of criminal activity used more non-standard forms (covert prestige). Concluded variation in dialects is a conscious choice influenced by social groups

Question 12

Labov Martha’s Vineyard (1961) -

Answer 12

Vineyard to island popular with tourists. Interviewed speakers from different age and ethnic groups. Vinyardians had a ‘them and us’ mentality so exaggerated their vineyard vernacular to establish their own identity and show resentment to the tourists (especially Chilmark fishermen due to covert prestige). There was no dialect levelling on the island, despite increased influence from the mainland via the education system.

Question 13

Kuiper (1991)

Answer 13

Male rugby team talk, men use less face-saving acts and insults to express solidarity.

Question 14

Labov (1972)

Answer 14

“There is no such thing as a single style speaker and all speakers have a repertoire of styles they can use at their disposal” LINKS TO GILES AND AS WELL CODE SWITCHIBG

Question 15

Pilkington (1992)

Answer 15

Women in same-sex talk are more collaborative and polite when they don’t agree, men are less supportive.

Question 16

Giles Communication and Accommodation Theory (1973)

Answer 16

People adapt their language to signal their feelings via convergence (moving language towards other individuals to show solidarity and acceptance) or divergence (speaker exaggerates differences in speech).

Question 17

Coggle (1993)

Answer 17

“Accent stereotypes are a living reminder of Britain’s ever-continuing class system.”

Question 18

Goffman (1955)

Answer 18

Sociologist, individuals have positive and negative face needs

Question 19

Zimmerman and West’s Dominance Model (1975)

Answer 19

Men interrupt more as they are more dominant and wish to assert power. Data collected using recordings from routine locations and middle-class white civilians were the participants. They observed: the number of silences (women used more as uncertain about partners interest), overlaps (used more by males to show disregard to what females are saying) and recovery time after interruption (men were quicker to regain control).

Question 20

Milroy’s Belfast Study

Answer 20

1987. Members of speech communities are connected by either open/closed social networks, she called them ‘a web of ties’. SHe visited 3 working class communities (Hammer, Clondard and Ballymacarrel) and played the role of a ‘friend of a friend’. SHe gave each area a network strength score based on their knowledge of others and found that a high score correlated with the use of non-standard forms. Closed networks enforce linguistic norms and non-standard features are less evident in women as they belong to less dense social networks.

Question 21

Foules and Docherty (1999)

Answer 21

Dialect levelling is due to Standard English spreading across the country e.g. /th/ has been replaced by /f/ or /v/, which began in London and, despite being the non-standard form, has spread. Dialect levelling occurs due to standard forms spreading. Non standard also spread

Question 22

Good key term

Answer 22

Homogenisation (dialect levelling)

Question 23

Coggle

Answer 23

Accent stereotypes are a living reminder of britains ever continuing class system.

Question 24

What does EE show

Answer 24

People correct their speech due to social aspiration.
This means less grammatical non standard features due to the stigma and becoming ‘socially acceptable’.
Estuary English-between cockney and the queen

Question 25

. Aleeyne

Answer 25

Strong accents can restrict job opportunities

Question 26

Baratta

Answer 26

People modify accents in fear of being mocked. Ashamed to hear their accent on a recording.

Question 27

Lamb

Answer 27

RP speakers deliberately dumb down their accent so it is more socially acceptable. However majority of English people would rather have RP on their satnav.

Question 28

Choy and Dodd

Answer 28

Teachers make judgements on a child’s personality and ability based on their accent.

Question 29

Lakoff’s Deficit Model (1975)

Answer 29

Male speaking normal and more prestigious. Our language is impacted by social status and societies expectations (more important to women). Women use more: hedges, polite forms, tag questions, empty adjectives and special lexicon. SHe suggested that socialisation has ensured that the female language remains deficient, so differences are socially constructed and are therefore not biological constructs.

Question 30

Drew and Heritage (1993)

Answer 30

Members of discourse communities share inferential frameworks where asymmetrical hierarchies of power exist (made obvious through the pragmatics behind language use). E.g. the inferential framework of a classroom means that no taboo topics that break the maxim of manner should be discussed.

Question 31

Kerswill’s Milton Keynes Study (1990’s)

Answer 31

Investigated 10 speech sounds with different pronunciations in Milton Keynes. He focussed on the /ou/ diphthong and /u:/ long vowel. 48 children and caregivers participated, recordings were divided into elicitation tasks and spontaneous speech. Children fronted their vowels more than adults, demonstrating how Milton Keynes is an area where dialect levelling has occurred. “Working class communities have broken down”.

Question 32

Lave and Wenger’s Communities of Practice (1991)

Answer 32

they have their own sociolects. mutual engagement (regular interactions shape the culture of the group), joint negotiated enterprise (shared purpose) and shared repertoire (assumed knowledge). E.g. A + E medical professionals have a joint negotiated enterprise to save lives and a shared repertoire, hence their use of complex jargon like FBC (an initialism to refer to a type of blood test).

Question 33

Bernstein (1971)

Answer 33

The restricted code has a loose syntax, use fillers such as ‘like’ and ‘but and conveys emotions. The elaborated code has a ‘correct’ syntax and if used to convey ideas. He originally stated that middle-class children use the elaborated code and working-class children use the restricted code. He later modified this and stated that they difference relies on the occasions the codes can be used.

Question 34

Tannen’s Difference Theory (1990)

Answer 34

Males and females converse differently. It begins in childhood when parents use more abstract nouns about feelings in front of their daughters. In her book ‘You Just Don’t Understand’, she claims that males and females belong to different sub-cultures and that women: talk too much, use too many overlaps and manipulate their language to build relations. She found 6 mains differences between how males and females use language e.g. status vs support (men visualise language as a means of asserting dominance; women as a way of confirming ideas).

Question 35

O’barr and Atkins (1980)

Answer 35

n courtrooms female lawyers are assertive and interrupt, whilst all witnesses use Lakoff’s ‘weak female language’, so they concluded it’s ‘powerless language’.

Question 36

Milroy (2002)

Answer 36

Geographical mobility is the main cause of dialect levelling. “Large-scale disruption of close-knit localised networks”.

Question 37

Swales (2011)

Answer 37

Discourse communities share common goals (like a joint negotiated enterprise), communicate internally, use specialist jargon and a required knowledge is needed to participate. E.g. a netball team will share common goals and use specialist lexis in elliptical phrases like “blue centre” and “pivot goal attack”.

Question 38

Baratta (2014)

Answer 38

People for the prejudice of being marginalised so they change their language e.g. by flattening their accent

Question 39

Trudgill’s Norwich Study (1974)

Answer 39

Studies final consonants /n/ (non-standard) and /ŋ/ (standard) in words like ‘walking’ and ‘talking’. Women were more likely to use the prestigious form than men no matter what class. In reported speech, men exaggerated their use of the non-standard form (covert). “Nearly everywhere in the English-speaking world we find this alternation”, so it is not unique to Norwich.

Question 40

Beattie (1982)

Answer 40

Criticised Zimmerman and West’s findings by stating that one voluble man could have caused the results to be invalid so they aren’t a fair representation of all one-to-one mixed-sex conversations.

Question 41

Ives

Answer 41

Visited a West Yorkshire secondary school and investigated the features of speech used by 17-year-olds. Features included: taboo lexis as part of their vernacular (e.g. ‘***’ used as an intensifier), dialectal lexis and grammar, slang not to be understood by their elders (e.g. the quantifier ‘bare’) and informal lexis linked by common themes like relationships.

Question 42

Stenstrom

Answer 42

Wrote a book called ‘Teenage Talk’. Language features used by teenagers includes: irregular turn taking, overlaps, indistinct articulation, verbal duelling and abbreviations e.g. bro and sos.

Question 43

Eckert (1998)

Answer 43

“Age is a person’s place at a certain time” e.g. you can’t say that the language of a 22 old single student would be the same as a 22-year-old female with children. You, therefore, shouldn’t over-simplify the term ‘age’.

Question 44

Bigham

Answer 44

Important life events occur post 18, which he labels as the period of ‘emerging adulthood’.

Question 45

Ives 100%

Answer 45

Asked 63 teenagers of various ages “Does your age impact on how you use language?” 100% said yes. This study may be subject to the observer’s paradox and over-reporting.

Question 46

Eckert (2003) slang

Answer 46

Slang is used by teenagers to: establish a connection to youth culture, set themselves apart from the older generation and signal coolness. Language change is more common in teenagers as they are more likely to coin their own lexis. Adolescents don’t all talk alike however, and the differences between groups of teenagers is greater than any other age group.

Question 47

Odato (2013)

Answer 47

Odato (2013) - Explored the use of the filler ‘like’ in children’s speech e.g. in the elliptical phrase ‘like really annoying’. He found they go through stages of learning it and those as young as 4 will use it through imitating older children.

Question 48

Martinez (2011)

Answer 48

Teenagers use more negatives than adults as they’re more direct and less conscious of threatening the face of their listener. E.g. ‘no way’ and ‘dunno’. Adults use more euphemisms.