Region Flashcards
What is accent and dialect?
Accent is the way someone’s voice sounds depending on where they’re from
Dialect are words and grammar used in relation to region
What was Lesley Milroy’s theory?
People belong to either closed, open or multiplex networks.
Closed networks are where all contacts tend to know each other
Open networks are where contacts tend not to know each other
Multiplex is where contacts have multiple connections
What was Milroy’s research on network strength?
She studied in Belfast in three towns. Two Protestant and one catholic.
The network strength score reflected the amount of contacts and she heard the pronunciation of the ‘th’ sound.
High scores correlated with non standard accent.
Men had more close knit networks in Protestant areas because of higher employment rates.
Explain Lave and Wenger’s theory
Communities of practice
Defined social networks, people who come together to do something but are not defined by a place or population, instead through shared beliefs and values.
What was Howard Giles’ theory?
Capital punishment experiment
500, 17 year olds were given a questionnaire on CP.
Giles chose 5 groups of 50 with equal ratio of boy: girl and for: against.
They were either presented with RP, typescript, Somerset, south welsh or birmingham.
This used the matches guise technique.
What were Howard Giles’ findings?
Speakers who heard RP rated the presentation as authoritative and intelligent.
However, regional accents were more persuasive.
What was Malcolm Petyt’s theory in 1985?
Studied speakers pronunciation of /h/ at the start of words
Researched in Bradford.
Upper- middle class had 12% h dropping.
Upper working- 67%
Lower working- 93%
He also found that moving up in class led to hyper correction.
What did Peter Trudgill look at?
He looked at class differences between middle- middle class, lower- middle class... Found that middle class people were less likely to drop their g’s and h’s He also found there was a bigger variation in accents in social classes, less in upper-class
What was Labov’s theory?
Martha’s vineyard
Do individuals pronounce /r/ in different stores in New York
Lower class didn’t, upper class did.
What is the Ed Stourton case study?
BBC presenter lost his job for being too posh
BBC were dumbing down
Label some grammar features of non standard dialect
Loss of concord- I were late Multiple negation Possessive pronoun use in place of determiner- I’ve lost me head Object pronoun ‘them’ instead of those Unmarked plurality Relative pronoun- that was the guy what done it Reflexive- hisself Plural- yous
What was Kerswell and Williams’ study?
Milton Keynes
48 children interview, 24 boys
3 age groups
1 parent each also interviewed
Asked to read a list, recorded pronunciation
Children after starting school adopted new accent, different to parents
Distinctive features like glottal stop and /r/ dropping
What is Estuary English?
David Rosewarn described it as a variety of modified region speech, mix of non regional and local pronunciation and intonation
It features glottal stops, l vocalisation, ch- sound, yod dropping and confrontational tag questions
What was Basil Bernstein’s theory?
Restricted code- working class, more pronouns
Elaborated- middle class, logical connective, formal syntax
Two 5 year olds shown three pictures and asked to describe them
What was Jenny Cheshire’s theory?
Looked at grammar
Researched boys and girls in reading in a playground
Group A girls were ‘ good’
Group B were ‘bad’
Group B had much more non standard grammar
Lots of covert prestige
