Accents and Regions

Question 1

Howard Giles

Answer 1

• developed the COMMUNICATION ACCOMMODATION THEORY.
• the theory shows how people adapt to the language they use consciously or not, to signal how they feel about the people they’re talking to.
• CONVERGENCE - becoming more similar to another persons language use.
• DIVERGENCE - becoming more different to another persons language use.

Question 2

William Labov - NYC department stores

Answer 2

• believed that social class affected the way we spoke.
• he said the higher the social class, the more people would pronoun the rhotic /r/ sound in New York.
• he asked, 3 different sales assistants from 3 different social class stores, the question ‘where are the women’s shoes?’ knowing the answer was ‘fourth floor’
• saks was high class, macy’s was middle class and kleins was bottom class.
• he found that saks used the rhotic /r/ sound the most and kleins used it the least and macy’s converged more each time they were asked to repeat.

Question 3

William Labov - Martha’s Vineyard

Answer 3

• Labov focused on the pronunciation of the dipthongs /au/ and /ai/ as in mOUse and mIce.
• he interviewed 69 people of different age, ethnic and social group so get a better representative.
• he encouraged people to say words containing the vowels he wanted to study but to reduce demand characteristic’s it was a natural conversation.
• he found that locals were starting to pronounce /au/ like ěu and /ai/ like ěi.
• young people (31-45) diverged from standard new England forms and converged to pronunciation associated with the Chilmark fisherman.

Question 4

Jennifer Cheshire - Reading Teenagers

Answer 4

• wanted to investigate how peer group culture affected spoken grammar.
• believed the higher the social group, fewer non-standard grammar forms would be used.
• she observed 3 groups- 2 of them being girls and 1 boy. they were in 2 adventure playgrounds in Reading.
• she recorded how often they would use non-standard forms of grammar.
• group A expressed their disapproval of minor crimes whilst group B approved of them.
• the working class (group A) used more non-standard forms.

Question 5

Peter Trudgill - Norwich Study

Answer 5

• believed that people in lower classes in Norwich would pronounce words ending in -ing with -in like ‘walkin’ rather than using the velar nasal /n/ sound.
• realised the more careful people were with their speech, the more people said ‘walking’.
• the ‘in’ is higher is lower classes.
• the ‘in’ occurred more in mens speech than women’s. in all social classes.
• when women were asked about what they thought they said, many thought they said ‘ing’ much more than they actually did.
• when men were asked about what they thought they said, many thought they said ‘in’ much more than they actually did.

Question 6

Lesley Milroy - Social Network Theory

Answer 6

• set out to explain why people in different social groups speak differently.
• proposed that a persons ‘social network’ accounted for the differences.
• the network can be determined by DENSITY AND MULTIPLEXITY.
• density is the quantities of social ties
• multiplexity is the qualities of social ties.
• the degree of integration in a social network can give a person a status of an ‘insider’.
• the language depends on how deeply integrated a person is in the social network.

Question 7

Milroy - Belfast Study

Answer 7

• studied 3 poor working class areas in Belfast with high unemployment.
• researched the way separate communities spoke and how language represented the way they integrated into their communities.
• she took part in the life of each community as a ‘friend of a friend’.
• to each individual she studied she gave them a network density score based on their connections in the community. the scores went from 1-5, 5 being strong ties within the community.
• factors like living close, working together, and socialising with each other led to a higher score.
• she measured the pronunciation of /th/ as in moTHer and /a/ as in hAt.
• she found that the higher the density score the more use of non-standard local pronunciations.
• those with lower scores was due to unemployment or childcare, they had weaker regional accents.

Question 8

Malcom Peyt - Bradford H-dropping

Answer 8

• wanted to find out if people in different social classes had different accents.
• he studied middle-middle, lower-middle, middle-working and lower-working classes.
• he studied the presence of the initial /h/ sound at the start of a word e.g Hat.
• he found that 93% of lower class speakers dropped the h, therefore using the non-standard regional accent.
• only 12% of upper-middle class dropped the h.
• he found that when people move up the social class, they converge to an accent closer to RP.
• those who moved up and converged made a conscious effort to change their pronunciation of vowel sounds

Question 9

Basil Bernstein - Restricted Elaborated codes

Answer 9

• restricted code = informal context, short sentence structures, lack of adjectives and adverbs, often associated with working class.
• elaborated code = formal contexts, long complex sentence structures, precise grammar and a wide range of vocabulary.
• showed pictures to children and asked them to describe what was happening.
• working-class kids used language which showed they were occupying the same physical space as the researcher.
• the middle class kids spoke as if the researcher was not there.
• working-class kids used a restricted code of speaking relating to the ‘here and now’
• the middle class kids used an elaborated code of speaking which was more explicit and independent of context.
• this could show middle class kids are more aware of their environment and adapt their language accordingly.