Language and Accent & Dialect Flashcards
Relevant studies
Bradford Study - Accents & Dialects
- Gary Ives
*8 teenage boys - They said it was the way they were born and it was natural
- But when further asked they said they mix Punjabi and English
- They also said they speak English to their parents and Punjabi to their friends.
- They created a term called ‘freshies’ as a term for those born in Pakistan and moved to England
- Most of the slang they used was gotten from hip-hop and rap e.g ‘sick’ ‘swag’ ‘killed it’
- They code-switched to exclude others deliberately.
Received Pronunciation - Accent and Dialect
•RP
•It doesn’t have a geographical locations but it associated with the south of UK
•RP is an accent
•Jonathan Meades “Some say RP should be championed and used to better oneself”
•Academic Chi Luu RP “sound like a good start for a villain”
•RP is only spoken by 2% of the UK
Standard English
•David Crystal “to enable the members of a community to understand each other which leads national institutions to adopt a Standard English”
•Janet Holmes says standard English is “generally one that is written and undergone some degree of regularisation or codification”
Linguist expert Dr Ian Cushing on Teenager Language
“Banning language and non-standard grammar is punitive practice which can make people feel stigmatised, discriminated against and that their language is worthless”
Tony Thorne - views on accent
•a language consultant in King College London
•”It shouldn’t be about good or bad language. It should be about appropriate language for the context”
The Euphemism Treadmill
•proposed by Stephen Pinker
•This is the idea that relabelled a concept doesn’t necessarily reduce the stigma or improve people’s attitude to the activity or thing
E.g, the toilet has different names due to people viewing it as unpleasant or embarrassing it was a latrine, then water closet, then toilet, and now restroom
Survey on Slanglish
A survey found that slanglish was the most common reason for GCSE failures
Matched guise study
•by Howard Giles
•He found that RP was seen as most intelligent and prestigious
•Whereas regional accent were viewed as friendlier and more honest
•And brummie accent was ranked bottom for intelligence
Labaov (1966) - Department store study
•He looked at the link between accent and overt prestige
•He investigated the sound /r/ in words such as ‘fourth’ and ‘floor’
•He visited 3 different stores in New York one representing upper, middle, and lower class
•He found that the pronunciation of /r/ increased as the class of the store increased
Labov - Martha Vineyard
•He studied how people use accent to show group membership and exclusion from others
•He found that people tried to use a more distinctive accent to exclude themselves from the tourists
Research on Accent and Dialect
•Research found that people from the North will worry that their accents could count against them in higher education
•MP like Angela are mocked for using their regional accent
•Research by the University of London found that 40% of workers face criticism about their accent
•Research found that defendants with a Birmingham accents are 2x more likely to be convicted than those speaking standard english
•Research shows that women are more likely to change their accents more than men
•Linguists say “ your accent is your flag or badge of your social standing”
Dr Robert Mackenzie - Accent
Dr Robert Mackenzie who leads the Northumbria University project says ‘ Just as people shouldn’t hold gender bias or bias against fat or thin people we shouldn’t have bias against accents”
Unni Berland study on Teen speech
•She found that ‘innit’ was used more commonly among working-class teenagers while ‘yeah’ was common amongst the middle-class group. She also found that boys use ‘okay’ more than girls
Igancio Palacios on Teen speak
He found that adults tend to be more conscious of their language while teenager are blunt and direct in their speech, he also found that teens use more negation
Jean Gros - Teen speech
•She is a linguist writer
•She says ‘Teens are spending more time communicating by electronic media and text messaging which is short and brief’.
•She also argues teen have only 800 words in their vocabulary.
Valerie Finland - Teen speech
•She says teens contribute significantly to linguistic evolution’. He research also found that teens affect most vowel pronunciation e.g ‘cul’ instead of ‘cool’
