Seneca Flashcards
Giles
Giles’ research details that RP (received pronunciation) was seen as the most intelligent and prestigious, whereas regional accents were seen as friendlier or more honest.
Ranked bottom for intelligence was the Brummie accent.
Phonological features of RP
The phonological features of RP are defined by:
Use of the trap/bath split – the long a (/a:/) in words like ‘bath’.
H-retention – /h/ is always pronounced in initial positioning in words like ‘house’.
Non-rhoticity – Not pronouncing the /r/ at the end of words like ‘mother’.
Conservative vowels – sounds like they ‘ought to’.
Yod-coalescence – includes the /j/ (pronouned ‘y’) sound in words like ‘rain’, ‘Spain’ and ‘Tuesday’.
Shibboleths
We call these features shibboleths which means they are a feature of a group.
In this case, they are features of the RP accent.
Ways of looking at RP
RP is prescriptivist (prescriptivism is all about there being right and wrong uses of English. Prescriptivists believe we should promote the right uses and shun the wrong uses) – it is associated with Standard English (SE).
RP carries overt prestige (a very open form of status) – it has high status due to association with ‘The Establishment’ and is labelled ‘The Queen’s English
Ways of looking at RP 2
RP is an artificial construct – it doesn’t offer any clues about background (and so is regionless).
RP is outdated – only about 2% of the population use it.
RP is universally recognised – it is the most widely recognised ‘English’ by foreigners.
Who investigated Queen’s ENGLISH In Christmas speeches
Jonathan Harrington has investigated the Queen’s accent over 50 years of her Christmas speeches and believes that her accent has started to move towards a general Southern English accent.
This has been done via her interactions with people who don’t speak RP and a gradual reduction in her accent.
Case study: George Osbourne
Whilst in his role as Chancellor, Osbourne was seen to drop his RP accent and use an accent closer to Estuary English (see section on Estuary) when speaking to workers.
He used things like ‘kinda’ and ‘Briddish’ instead of ‘kind of’ and ‘British’.
He was seen to be using his RP again in Parliament.
Giles and RP
In Giles’ Capital Punishment experiment, five groups of students were given the same script (four oral and one written).
All were spoken in a different accent: RP, Somerset, Welsh and Brummie.
RP was rated highly in competency and reliability, but was rated low in persuasiveness and was seen as ‘posh and snobby’.
Giles and Powesland RP
Giles and Powesland had a speaker who delivered a talk about psychology to two sets of students.
One set had the talk performed with an RP accent and the other had the talk performed with a Brummie accent.
The group voted the RP speaker as higher saying that the Brummie was less intelligent.
AC Gimson
AC Gimson argued in 1962 that there were times that RP could be a decided disadvantage, especially in social situations where empathy and affection are needed.
This is backed up by Linda Mugglestone who believes that RP’s prestige is on the wane.
Accent discrimination- Brummie. Worcester College
Worcester College played participants clips from a police interview.
Brummie suspects were significantly more likely to labelled as guilty. Participants labelled the Brummie accent as more likely to be poor and working class.
Peter Trudgill on accents
Peter Trudgill has investigated variations in relationship to show variations of in class and regional forms. The triangle shows that as social class decreases, regional variation increases.
The University of Aberdeen on accents
The University of Aberdeen conducted a study of jokes, and they found that Brummie was often the funniest and RP was the unfunniest.
One of the easiest ways to map dialectal variations
is to look at what names people give to things.
E.g. The bread in the picture can be called a bread roll, barm cake, bap, cob, roll, or bun.
Peter Trudgill on dialectal words
Peter Trudgill believes that we can classify dialectal words into two categories – traditional and mainstream.
Traditional dialects use ‘old’ and often rural lexemes and grammatical constructions.
Mainstream dialects are the more common lexical and grammatical constructions, used by a majority within a geographical area.
Through a process called lexical attrition, the traditional dialectal words are dying out.
London Case Study- CRS Cockney Rhyming Slang
Cockney rhyming slang (CRS) is a dialectal variation found in London (not really anymore, though) that originated from the criminal underworld in the 1800s as a way of communicating without the police knowing of their doings.
Examples include ‘brown bread’ for dead and ‘trouble and strife’ for wife.
CRS stopped being used by criminals when it was adopted into common usage by non-criminals. In other words, it stopped being deictic.
Spreading of CRS
‘Porky pies’… ‘donkey’s ears’- You probably know it as ‘donkey’s years’ or simply ‘donks’ – here, you can see how the dialectal term has broadened and become part of common usage.
CRS ON EASTENDERS
While the dialectal terms of CRS are very rarely used now, a weakened version of the Cockney accent is still in use, propelled by the popular TV soap ‘Eastenders’.
London Case Study- Estuary English
Linguist David Rosewarne coined the term ‘Estuary English’ (occasionally called ‘London Regional General British’) to describe the variation that arose from around the Thames Estuary.
This is defined as the mix of RP and Cockney.
EE Features
The accent has the following features:
Glottal stop (missing out the ‘t’ in the middle of words like ‘butter’).
The dark l (/ɫ/) – pronouncing ‘l’ sounds with an ‘ulll’ sound.
The /aʊ/ (ow) pronunciation in words like mouth closer to /eə/ (air) in words like hair.
TH-fronting – pronouncing the ‘th’ words with an ‘f’ sound. For example, ‘thing’ becomes ‘fing’.
Bridge between Cockney and RP
Estuary English acts, as Paul Coggle suggests, as a bridge between Cockney and RP speakers and so serves as a bridge between the classes in South East England.
In addition, Estuary English has spread all over the UK with there being speakers with EE elements spotted as far away as Glasgow. Almost classless
London Case Study- Multicultural London English
Multicultural London English (MLE) is a variation that has arisen from migration bringing in speakers of English where English isn’t their first language.
These groups of speakers have led to this new variation being spoken very broadly in diverse inner-London cities (like Hackney).
Paul Kerswill believes that within 30 years, MLE will replace Cockney completely.
Spreading of MLE
MLE has spread, and is now becoming a part of the speech of teenagers up and down the country, spread mostly by grime music as exemplified by Stormzy.
This issue for linguists comes when we have to draw the line between what an idiolect (your personal language), sociolect (the language of a social group) and dialect.
Many news publications will use the term ‘Jafaican’ to describe MLE (fake Jamaican).
Features of MLE
Indefinite pronoun ‘man’: man’s not hot.
‘Why…for?’ question frame: why you revising English for?
/h/ retention (keeping the ‘h’ sound in): house.
Jamaican slang like ‘blood’ for friend.
TH-stopping (creating a harsh stopped ‘t’ sound instead of a ‘th’ sound): MLE is a mad ting.
