English Language - Geography

Accent

Phonological and pronounication

Dialect

Lexical and grammatical

Distribution

Where a feature of language is used, within the language inventory of an individual or group

Inventory

A list of items e.g. in phonology a list of sounds used in an accent

Rhotic

The hard pronounication of the ‘r’ sound (e.g. car)

Received Pronounication

What is seen as the ‘standard’ or ‘proper’ accent

Glottal Stop

The omission of the ‘t’ sound e.g, wa’er, bu’er

‘h’ dropping

e.g. -appy instead of happy

Post-vocalic ‘r’

When the ‘r’ sound is produced in a word when it a occurs in the spelling of a word after the vowel e.g. work

Convergence

To lower or higher your language (accent + dialect) to show that you and the other person are equals and that you respect them

(The opposite, doing it to show difference, is divergence)

Overt prestige

Everyone/Society thinks it is prestigious

Covert prestige

Only a certain group of people think it's prestigious (solidarity and group loyalty)

Dialect levelling

A form of standardisation where local variation of speech lose their distinctic features in favour of a mainstream dialect

Trudgill (2000)

-RP speakers are perceived as haunghty and unfriendly by non-RP speakers

-some teachers evaluate children with working class accents and dialects as having less educational potential

Howard Giles (1970)

-Tested responses to different accents using 3 main parameters:

-Status (how important speaker was perceived to be)

-Personality (what traits of character came across)

-Persuasiveness (how persuasive the person seemed)

Results:

RP - Self confident, intelligent, ambitious, cold, ruthless

Northern - Honest, reliable, generous, sincere, warm, humourous

Match Guise

An experimental technique where a single actor puts on different accents for different audiences but the content is the same (criticism: whether or not the accents are convincing)

Cockney rhyming slang

Examples:

-Pork-pies = lies

-Donkey’s ears = years

-Scooby Doo = clue

Believed to have originated in the mid 19th century in the East End of London and that it might have been a cryptolect at first

Not used commonly anymore due to dialect levelling

Standardisation

A process where language shifts towards a "standard” commonly accepted variety

Milroy (2002)

Increased geographical mobility leads to the “large-scale disruption of close-knit, localised networks that have historically maintained highly systematic and complex sets of socially structured linguistic norms”

Kersmill (2001)

Reduction in rural employment and construction of suburbs causes social mobility and “the consequent breakdown of tight-knit working class communities”

Stats:

1831 - 34% of people live in cities (in England)

1992 - 90% of people live in cities (in England

Descriptivism

Objectively analyzing and describing how language is actually used (or how it was used in the past)

John Honey

-Prescriptivist who wanted only Standard English

-Criticised the idea of language inequality and believes that the standards of English are falling

-Adovcated setting up a governing agency to regulate language standardisation

David Crystal

Descriptivist

Estuary English - David Rosewarne, 1984

‘A variety of modified regional speech […] a mixture of non-regional and local southern English pronunciation and intonation (Estuary English is perceived to be in the middle of RP and London/Cockney accents)

Started to develop after WWII when many Londoners left London for the surrounding counties like Surrey, Kent and Essex

People who have it are more likely to be able to code switch

Features of EE - Pronounication

-Glottal stop

-L vocalisation (“wawk” instead of “walk”)

-TH fronting e.g. “fink” instead of think

-H dropping

Features of EE - Grammar

-'Confrontational' question tag e.g. “didn't I?” and “innit?”

-Certain negative forms e.g. “never” refering to a single occasion (I never did)

-The omission of the -ly adverbial ending (e.g. you’re turning too slow)

Basil Bernstein - Codes (1971)

-felt that working class people had a ‘restricted code’, which meant that they weren't able/less likely to change your language/register

-felt that middle class people had a ‘elaborated code’ could change their register as they have more access to talking to others more and are more educated

Code-switching

Changing your register

Gary Ives (2014) - Summary

Commissioned two case studies to be carried out in London and Bradford

In each study the participants were questioned and subsequently discussed their language use (more specifically their dialect)

Bradford = 95% Pakistan Students

London = Mostly Afro-Caribbean

Gary Ives (2014) - Bradford (Pakistan) Answers

“We mix Punjabi and English”

“It's all about our area”

“We might speak English to mum and dad but to our friends we add in Punjabi”

-The students also distinguished themselves from those they termed “freshies” (those born in Pakistan and then move to England)

-Students identified themselves as ‘British Asian”

-Also offered a distinction in their language use based on postcode (their language = BD8)

Gary Ives (2014) - Bradford (Indian) Answers

A teenage girl, with Indian background, was interviewed and stated that she never mixed English with her second language (Gujarati) because she was a minority in her school (not many Indian people)

Gary Ives (2014) - Conclusion of Bradford

-The subjects are using language to create a well-defined second identity

-Students felt that their lexis was influenced by a wide mixture of influences

Gary Ives (2014) - South London Answers

Majority of the students chose to talk about words and phrases they felt “set them apart” from other areas of the country

Examples:

Bare - Lots of (Afro-Caribbean slang for “Totally”)

Calm - Good, anything positive

Hype - Getting excited e.g. she's hyping

Several subjects of this case study were white British teenagers → language being synomous with group Identity regardless of ethnicity or cultural background

Gary Ives (2014) - South London Conclusion

Dialect is affected by many things: your social group, your background, where you live now etc.

Joanna Thornborrow (2004)

“One of the most fundamental ways we have of establishing our identity and of shaping people's views of who we are, is through our use of language”

Case Study - BBC News

The Daily Telegraph stated that the BBC was ignoring large proportions of the country by failing to employ people with regional accents (even on local news)

Mark Thompson (Director General of BBC) in 2008 called for more regional accents to be part of a drive to end the domination of RP.

After this, Thompson believed that there is now a variety on BBC news broadcasts HOWEVER some comments posted on the website show that not everyone is in agreement (with some even angry about the more away from a more standard accent).

Labor’s Martha’s Vineyard Study

Labor interviewed 69 people (from different social groups) who were staying on the geographically isolated, tourist destination American Island.

He was doing this to look into how most people would pronounce dipthongs like ‘ai’ (like) and ‘au’ (mouth) to see if the original inhabitants would speak differently to the tourists (group Identity)

Results: People who spoke this way were a small group of fishermen and some original inhabitants

Bristolian Accent and Dialect - Features

Dialect:

“Gurt lush” - Really nice

“Me/my lover” - Mate/pal/dear

Accent:

-H dropping

-Glottal stops

-'ing’ dropping (turns to ‘in’)

Bristolian Accent and Dialect - The ‘Bristol L’

Anything with a vowel second to the end turns into a ‘le’ and anything with a vowel at the end gets a ‘l’ put after it

e.g. “window” turns into “windle”, “idea” turns into “ideal”

“Bristol” used to be “Bristow” but became Bristol due to this pronunciation

Bristolian Accent and Dialect - Perceptions + Why

Perceptions:

-often seen as having low prestige

-has connotations of being uneducated, stupid and thick

-often used in media for comedic effect

Reasons why:

-Bristol used to have a major farming industry

-Continued stereotype of people with the accent being stupid means perpetuating usage of accent for comedy characters

Accentism

Discriminatory or unfair behaviour centred on someone's accent or language use

Howard Giles, Accommodation Theory

The idea that people have different levels of formality of language at their disposal, and will use different ones at different times depending on the situation they are in

Brummie accent

From Birmingham

Yorkshire accent

From Leeds

Mancunian accent

From Manchester

Georgia accent

From Newcastle

Scouse accent

From Liverpool

Mutiple negation/double negatives

-A statement which contains two negative words

-Perceived by a lot of people as rustic, uneducated, and nonstandard

Peter Trudgill (1974): Norwich study - Summary

-used zone sampling and had sixty subjects

-focused on age and class sampling

-used questionnaires

-one of the variables Trudgill studied was the final constant (g) in words like walking and talking, as in Norwich, the pronunciation was a hard /n/

Peter Trudgill (1974): Norwich study - Discoveries

-in all social classes, the more careful the speech, the more likely the people would say walking rather than walkin’

-proportion of the walkin’ type was higher in lower social classes