Accent and Dialect
- Generally accepted, prestigious form of the language
Standard english
- Sounds of an individual produced during speech
Accent
- Variation in words and grammatical structures associated with a particular region
Dialect
- Imposition or enforcement of rules or methods
Prescriptive attitudes
- Describing what actually happens in a non-judgemental way
Descriptivist approach
- Most prestigeous form of uk english
- Social accent considered to be the standard british accent
Recieved pronounciation
- Very traditional accent assocaited with older speakers and the aristocracy
Conservative RP
- Extremely neutral in terms of signals regarding age, occupation and lifestyle
Mainstream RP
- Refers to the use of features typically seen in younger peoples accents
Contemparary RP
- Found evidence of RP accent change and influence of less prestigeous southern accent within the Queen's christmas speech
Harrington (et al)
- Researchers found that RP speakers tend to be rated more highly than speakers with a regional accent
- This rating could be informed due to intelligence, self-confidence, ambition etc
Matched Guise Experiment's
- Capital punishment experiment investigating attitudes to RP
- The greater the accent prestige, the greater the percieved quality of the argument
Giles
- All regional accents are incorrect in comparison to RP
- What negative view on accents?
Freeborn (Incorrectness view)
- Some accents just don't sound nice
- What negative view on accents?
Freeborn (Ugliness view)
- Some accents are described as 'lazy' and/or 'sloppy'
- What negative view on accents?
Freeborn (Impreciseness view)
- Attitudes towards accents are more likely based on social connotaions and biases towards a specific region rather than the accent itself
- Bias and judgment
Andersson and Trugill
- Study that 28% of brits felt discriminated against due to their accent
- Particularly the Liverpool, Cockney and Brummy accent
ITV Tonight and ComRes study
- Identified that super urban accents seem to be spreading out from the traditional bases and into a new territory
Watt
- Different social groups on an island use different dipthongs in certain pronounciations
- Mickey mouse in a thong
Labov
- Mapping of variation in the uk of certain lexical items and phrases
Manchester University
- Survey of 30,000 people to create a world-map of britain
BBC voices
- The process by which language forms of differrnt parts of the country converge and become more similar over time, with a subsequent loss of regional features and reduced diversity in langauge
Kerswill (Dialect Levelling)
- Argued that increased geographical mobility leads to the 'large-scale' disruption of close-knit communities and localised networks that have historically maintained a highly systematic and complex set of structured lingustic norms.
Milroy
- National survey showed that the use of 'them' as a demonstrative was reported by 97.7% of the schools who took part
Cheshire and Edwards
- Describes the use of the word 'aint' and found that it may be linked to the vernecular subculture of adolecent peer groups.
Cheshire
- Proposed that cockney rhyming slang is dying out and Londoners no longer understand phrases such as 'motherhubbard' for cupboard
Museum of London
- Cockney rhyming slang isnt dying out but being reincargnated with some additional modern terms
- Wallace and Gromit = Vomit
Crystal