Language DIversity and Change

Question 1

Bradford Study - Accents & Dialects

Answer 1

• 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.

Question 2

Received Pronunciation - Accent and Dialect

Answer 2

• 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

Question 3

Regional Accent and Dialect

Answer 3

• 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 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”

Question 4

Teen Speak - Accent and Dialect

Answer 4

• Unni Berland 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 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 says ‘Teensa 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 Findland says ‘Teens contribute significantly to linguistic evolution’. He research also found that teens affect most vowel pronunciation e.g ‘cul’ instead of ‘cool’

Question 5

Standard English

Answer 5

*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”

Question 6

Language in Gender

Answer 6

*Linguist Judith Baxter says “Gender neutral term does help people change their view of reality over time”
*Jean Scott wrote that gender is not just about sex it also signifies a relationship of power
*Oxford dictionary defines the word ‘rabid’ with the example ‘rabid feminist’
*Julia Stanley found that 26 nouns denote male promiscuity and 220 nouns denote female promiscuity.
* Motschenbacher found cases where female terms were placed before male terms it was to depict traditional social roles of women
* If the English language had been properly organised there would be a word that meant both ‘he’ and ‘she’

Question 7

Reading Study - Language in Gender

Answer 7

• Jenny Cheshire
  *The aim was to gain data about the relationship between the use of grammatical variables and adhering to a peer group culture of boys and girls
  *She found that social group had an impact on your language
  Group A girls who disapproved of swearing and carrying weapons were less likely to use the non-standard ‘s’, ‘was’, ‘what’, ‘come’, ‘ain’t’
• While Group B girls who approved of swearing and carrying weapons were more likely to use all non-standard except for ‘has’ and ‘never’.

Question 8

Norwich study - Language in Gender / Social class

Answer 8

• Peter Trudgill
• The aim was to find how and why people’s way of speaking varied.
• He studied the final consonant in words like walking, reunning
• He found that in all social class, the more careful they speech the more likely they were ‘walking’ rather than ‘walkin’
• The people in lower social class were likely to say ‘walkin’
• Women tend to think they say ‘-ing’ than they actually did.
  Men tend to say they use the non-standard ‘-in’ than they actually did.