ACCENT AND ETHNICITY theories

cockney to the king - amanda cole + patrycja strucharczuk

• three groups of speakers; british english (SSBE), multicultural london english (MLE), and estuary english (EE)

• people who share same accent also share linguistic features and have similar characteristics socially and physically

martha’s vineyard theory - labov

• small island off of new england, young speakers were adopting the older people’s accent which was associated with working class middle aged fishermen

• this was because lots of tourists were coming into the island and they wanted to socially distance themselves from the tourists

• eventually, this accent became the norm of the island

the bradford study - gary ives

• school in bradford students asked about their language use

• 95% from pakistani backgrounds.

• the students thought they spoke the way they did because it was natural but it was actually influenced by many factors

• they mixed punjabi taboo slang in their speech and distanced themselves from the ‘freshies’ pakistanis that had just moved to england

south london study - gary ives

• school in south london students asked about their language use

• students from a wide range of backgrounds

• they used lots of slang terms and turned out lots of their speech was made from a mix of lots of different languages etc because of the mixed cultural and ethnical backgrounds

• they used terms without realising background of them

howard giles study

he wanted to see if people spoke differently in birmingham in casual vs uncasual situations

• teenagers are more likely to value an argument if the speaker uses a more prestigious accent

• the 17 year olds rated the RP speakers as more intelligent

• giles’ theory supports ‘dixon, mahoney & cocks’ about crimes and ‘choy & dodd’ about teachers bias

why the long face? - shivonne gates

researched the idea that MLE is ‘ethnically neutral’ in an ethnographic study.

• 27 y10 students age 14-15 (19 girls + 8 boys)

• gates analysed if there were differences in the way they spoke depending on factors like ethnicity, social groups, diversity of the friend groups

• results were that ethnic identity had a part to play in how they all spoke

• white british boys didn’t speak notably different to the students from other ethnic backgrounds but white british girls had a very diff way of speaking (more similar to cockney)

• ethnic identity and having heritage languages at home may be more important than having a diverse network in determining whether someone speaks MLE or not

speaking roadman - christian ilbury

• linguistic features of MLE have been enregistered as a ‘roadman’ persona

• ilbury documented the linguistic features + characteristics, habits + appearance the tiktok creators draw on when parodying a roadman

• creators use MLE features, depicted as male, associated with grime music and being tough and aggressive, streetwear, overt masculinity and heterosexuality

• slang like leng for nice, shank for knife, ops for rivals

• dh-stopping (dat) and th-stopping (ting)

• syntactic features like ‘man’ instead of ‘i/me’

• often links to negative racist stereotypes of black working class young men