Accent and dialect

Question 1

Giles CP

Answer 1

capital punishment experiment
5 groups of students
4 oral and 1 written script
spoken in different accents; RP, Somerset, Welsh and Brummie
RP - most competent and reliable, lowest in persuasiveness, seen as ‘snobby and posh’

Question 2

AC Gimson

Answer 2

1962
RP could be a disadvantage
especially in social situations where empathy and affection needed

Question 3

Linda Mugglestone

Answer 3

RP prestige is on the wane

Question 4

Jonathan Harrington

Answer 4

investigated Queen’s accent
over 50 years of christmas speeches
believes started shifting to southern english accent
via interactions with non RP speakers and gradual reduction

Question 5

George Osbourne

Answer 5

chancellor role
drop his RP accent 
accent closer to Estuary English
'kinda' 'briddish' - 'kind of' 'british'
RP in parliament

Question 6

Giles and Powesland

Answer 6

speaker of psychology to two sets of students
RP and Brummie
RP ranked higher
Brummie least intelligent

Question 7

Giles matched guise

Answer 7

accent put on by speaker
rate on various features
RP most intelligent and prestigious
regional friendlier and more honest
Brummie rated least intelligent

Question 8

Worcester College

Answer 8

clips form police interview
Brummie labelled as guilty significantly more
Brummie labelled more likely to be poor and working class

Question 9

Uni of Aberdeen

Answer 9

study of jokes
Brummie funniest
RP unfunniest

Question 10

RP

Answer 10

‘standard accent’ of Southern England -OED
prescriptivisim
overt prestige - high status due to ‘establishment’ and ‘queen’s english’
artificial construct - regionless
oudated - 2%
universally recognised - ‘english’ by foreigners or when accent challenge

Question 11

RP phonological features

Answer 11

trap/bath split - long a /a:/ e/g bath
h-retention - /h/ always pronounced in initial positioning e.g house
non-rhoticity - not pronouncing the /r/ at ends of words e.g mother
conservative vowels - sound like they ‘ought to’
yod coalescence - /j/ pronounced ‘y’ e.g rain, spain, tuesday
features known as shibboleths - feature of a group

Question 12

Paul Coggle

Answer 12

EE never a good name but stuck with it 
accent of the lower middle classes in Greater London, Home Counties areas 
it is used by some younger people from upper class backgrounds
probably influence the speech of power-holders in the Greater London area

Question 13

Paul Kerswill

Answer 13

within 50 years, MLE will replace cockney completely

Question 14

Trudgill variations

Answer 14

variations in relationships to show class and regional forms
triangle shows as social class decreases, regional variation increases
classify dialectal words - traditional and mainstream
traditional - 'old', rural lexemes and grammatical constructions
mainstream - more common lexical and grammatical constructions used majorly in a grammatical area
lexical attrition process dies out traditional dialectal words

Question 15

Cockney rhyming slang

Answer 15

dialectal variation found in London
originated from criminal underworld in 1800s
‘brown bread’ - dead
stopped being used by criminals when adopted by non criminals - stopped deictic
‘donkey ears’ - years ‘donks’ broadening and becoming common usage
dialectal terms rarely used
weakened version still in use e.g Eastenders

Question 16

MLE

Answer 16

variation arisen from migration
bringing in speakers of ENFL
inner-London cities

Question 17

spreading of MLE

Answer 17

mostly by grime music 
Stormzy
part of teenagers speech
difficult to distinguish of whether it is an idiolect or sociolect
news publication 'jafaican'

Question 18

MLE features

Answer 18

indefinite pronoun ‘man’ e.g man dem
‘why… for?’ e.g why you doing that for?
/h/ retention e.g house
jamaican slang e.g blood for friend
th-stopping (harsh sound instead of th) e.g MLE is a mad ting

Question 19

Estuary English

Answer 19

David Rosewarne
occasionally ‘London Regional General British’
variation around River Thames
mix of RP and cockney

Question 20

Estuary English features

Answer 20

glottal stop - missing out ‘t’ in middle of words e.g butter
dark l (/l/) - pronuncing ‘L’ sound with an (ow) sound e.g ull
mouth closer to /ea/ (air) in words like hair
th- fronting - ‘th’ with ‘f’ e.g fing

Question 21

Mark Thompson 2008

Answer 21

conscious effort to move away from ‘BBC english’

wider range of accounts on BBC

Question 22

Workman 2008

Answer 22

different accents looking at people’s photos and rating intelligence
yorkshire most intelligent
birmingham least intelligent

Question 23

Malcom Petyt

Answer 23

omission of /h/ in speech (h-dropping)
social climbing in bradford
conscious effort moving up the social ladder and hyper correction
lower working class 93% h-dropping
lower middle class 12% h-dropping

Question 24

Labov black venacular english 1972

Answer 24

independent dialect of english
incomplete form of expression
deprivation in the black community

Question 25

Philip Howard 1993

Answer 25

the point of rp is to enable one tribe of pronouncers to feel superior

Question 26

Tajfel 1978

Answer 26

personal v group identities | identify and adopt personas

Question 27

milroy and milroy 1985

Answer 27

children struggle at school as SE is unfamiliar | all varieties of English should be valued equally and not discouraged

Question 28

folkes and docherty 1999

Answer 28

suggested dialect levelling is a degree of standardisation | surviving forms not common to one region

Question 29

milroy

Answer 29

open network - person whose contacts don't know each other (low density) closed network - person whose contacts know each other (high density)

Question 30

milroy belfast study

Answer 30

correlation between the density of the network the language was that the higher the density the more there was use of vernacular or non-standard forms

Question 31

labov new york department study

Answer 31

post-vocalic 'r' - prestige pronunciation in NY investigated speech sales of sales assistants -Saks (H) Macys (M) Kleins (L) Saks prestige 'r' the most when asked for directions Kleins used it least Macys greatest upward shift when asked to repeat

Question 32

mark sebba

Answer 32

london jamaican english - phonological and grammatical elements of carribbean creoles, cockney, SE and RP eveolved from language needs of immigrant countries

Question 33

beryl bainbridge

Answer 33

all children should have elocution lessons to wipe out regional accents taught to abandon her own Liverpool accent had helped her career no end bainbridge criticised for falling into the pymalion trap; higher expectations = increased performance

Question 34

paul coggle 1993 attitudes to accents

Answer 34

``` like accents for different reasons evaluated stereotypical attitudes towards different classes more soothing and friendly e.g geordie some reputable for poverty generalised so unrepresentative ```

Question 35

howard giles

Answer 35

``` accommodation theory convergence upwards convergence downwards convergence divergence ```

Question 36

choy and dodd 1976

Answer 36

teachers make judgements on students' abilities and personalities based on how they speak

Question 37

thomas pear 1931

Answer 37

people have different perceptions of a speaker according to their accent

Question 38

halliday

Answer 38

social variation theory | forms of sociolect arise in order to support subcultures seeking a covert identity

Question 39

kerswill - milton keynes

Answer 39

vowel fronting indicating influence of EE due to significant migration in the area from london represents EE has a potential in dialect levelling

Question 40

kerswill - survivor in dialect levelling

Answer 40

``` multiple negation use of aint absence of plural marking e.g 3 foot absence of adverb marking addition of present tense - s e.g i likes ```

Question 41

trudgill norwich study

Answer 41

men and women from different social classes women use overt prestige to appear higher social class due to social insecurity men use covert to appear more down to earth and tough looked at 'g' dropping, 't' glottalisaton (wa'er), loss of initial 'h' (ave) men and lower social classes dropped 'g' most women over reported their use of standard seeking overt men use more non-standard seeking covert

Question 42

cheshire 1990s

Answer 42

children's prestige explore whether adults prestige stemmed from speech as a child girls spoke to maintain/ create friendships boys spoke to install a group identity

Question 43

prestige - coined by labov, trudgill links to social values

Answer 43

``` overt - nationally recognised, offical context, high intelligence covert- loyalty and solidarity, working class with class and region using non-standard ```

Question 44

kerswill dialect levelling

Answer 44

``` caused by movement of people leading to greater dialectal contact increasing social mobility has led to the consequent breakdown of tight-knit working -class communication ```

Question 45

john honey

Answer 45

some prejudices about accents are reasonable deeply ingrained they are unlikely to be eradicated children are being disadvantaged - not equipped with an accent to succeed SE should be taught in schools status of accent reflects power and people who use it hierarchy of accent in terms of social prestige and perceived attractiveness