Theorists Flashcards
Accommodation Theory – Howard Giles – 1973
Describes how speakers change their language to resemble that of their listener: convergence, divergence, upwards/downwards/mutual
William Labov –Martha’s Vineyard Study – individual speech patterns are “part of a highly systematic structure of social and stylistic stratification”
– Martha’s Vineyard is an island lying about 3 miles off New England on the East Coast of the United States of America, with a permanent population of about 6000. However over 40,000 visitors, known somewhat disparagingly as the ‘summer people’, flood in every summer.
a movement seemed to be taking place away from the pronunciations associated with the standard New England norms, and towards a pronunciation associated with conservative and characteristically Vineyard speakers – the Chilmark fishermen.
Young men
– The heaviest users of this type of pronunciation were young men who actively sought to identify themselves as Vineyarders, rejected the values of the mainland, and resented the encroachment of wealthy summer visitors on the traditional island way of life.
Fisherman
– A small group of fishermen began to exaggerate a tendency already existing in their speech. They did this seemingly subconsciously, in order to establish themselves as an independent social group with superior status to the despised summer visitors. A number of other islanders regarded this group as one which epitomised old virtues and desirable values, and subconsciously imitated the way its members talked. For these people, the new pronunciation was an innovation.
– This tendency noted by Labov – how covert prestige pronunciations can take hold and further entrench themselves – can be noted with many current variants in England. For example, the scouse accent is becoming more entrenched.
- Also, as young people are seeking to define themselves more and more as a group, outside of their gender or class types, the use of MLE can be seen to be getting more exaggerated, which happens either consciously or subconsciously
Trudgill (1974)
Looking at “walking”& “talking” as the standard form and “walkin’,” “talkin’” as the non-standard form peculiar to the local accent. Also considering at the presence or absence of the third person –s ending, as in “he go to the shop” or “he goes to the shop”.
– Found that class is more of a determiner of non-standard usage than gender, though women in all social classes are more likely to use the overt prestige or RP form
– Men over-reported their non-standard usage – implying that men wished to sound more non-standard, assuming that they used more of the covert prestige forms
– Women over-reported their standard usage – implying that women wished to sound more standard, assuming that they used more of the overt prestige forms
– Concluded that women are more susceptible to overt prestige than men (and men more susceptible to covert prestige)
– In the “lower middle class” and the “upper working class” the differences between men’s and women’s usage of the standard forms were greatest in formal speech, thereby identifying these classes as most susceptible to the prestige of the RP form, with women leading the way on this font
Estuary English-David Rosewarne describes a newly observed variety of English pronunciation.
Estuary English” is a variety of modified regional speech. It is a mixture of RP and local south-eastern English (Cockney) pronunciation and intonation.
E.g. an “Estuary English” speaker uses fewer glottal stops for t or d than a “Cockney” speaker, but more than an RP speaker.
“Estuary English” is attractive to many. The motivation, often unconscious, of
those who are rising and falling socio-economically is to fit into their new environments by compromising but not losing their original linguistic identity.
Accents - Giles’ Matched Guise Experiment
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.
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 - Capital punishment experiment
- 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.
Peter Trudgill on the link between social class and regional variation
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.
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.
What did Petty’s (1985) study find about dialect and accent in industrial West Yorkshire?
Found lower social classes had more ‘h’ dropping: Lower working class = 12% of ‘h’s used; Middle middle class = 93% ‘h’s used.
