Language variation - Social and age variation

Giles 1973

Speech to British teenagers about the death penalty in different accents. Argument more validated by RP

Giles 1975

Used RP and Brummie (matches guise) to deliver two speeches to 17 years olds. RP rated as higher intelligence

Dixon, Mahoney, Cocks

Used matches guise to study for correlation between accent and guilt. Used Brummie as non-standard and RP as standard. Dialogue between police and suspect voted Brummie as more guilty

Coupland and Bishop

Studied attitudes towards accents with pre conceived opinions survey. Geordie ranked high for friendliness but low for prestige

Bourhis and Giles

Used RP/Mild south welsh/ Strong south welsh/ welsh for public announcements to Welsh theatre goes. Anglo-welsh less responsive to broad welsh but bilingual Welsh responsive to Welsh and not RP

Jenny Cheshire, Reading

Studied effects of peer groups on teenagers in a playground. Tough girls used non standard like ‘ain’t’

Neulip and Steph Hansen

Matched guises test to asses ethnocentric viewpoints. Groups split based off ethnocentricity and played non native and standard American accent. Ethnocentric group gave lower attractiveness to non native

Milroy: Social network theory Belfast

Social network affects strength of accent. Concentrated family or factory ties means accent are strong, working from home means weaker accent

Trudghill Norwhich

Studied working vs upper class and men vs women. Men and working class used velar nasal (runnin)

Labov, New York

Shows correlation between social class and linguistic behaviour. Used Saks, Macy’s and S.Klein. Elicited phrase ‘fourth floor’ and studied careful and casual response. Higher social class used post voltaic /r/ more. All groups used /r/ more on careful response, with the middle class showing the greatest shift

Eckert, Detroit

Adolescent social groups shape language use. Jocks align with school values and use more standard forms, Burnouts reject school authority and use more non-standard vowel shifts, local variants; language indexes identity, social class, and attitudes to institutions.

Bucholtz, San fransico

‘geek Girls’ used hyper standard grammatical forms and metalinguistic commentaries to differentiate from ideologies and show identity through language. This is in comparison to the ‘cool’ Californian stylistic language