language and region NEw

Question 1

Abercrombie 1951 - the accent bar

Answer 1

There is a separation between accents which he described using the metaphorical ‘accent bar’ in which one side is RP and the other is all other accent. RP is the privileged accent in which one who possessed it would have a much greater chance at success.

Question 2

Wilkinson 1965 - accent prestige

Answer 2

First class accents - RP as well as forms of scottish and irish RP associated with intelligence
Second class accents - british regional accents - honest and generous
Third class accents - certain large industrial towns - blue collar jobs and gritty cities

Question 3

Accent bias in britain

Answer 3

In 2020, Queen Mary university of London and the University of York conducted a study into accent bias in Britain where they found that attitudes to accents have remained unchanged. RP is still rated very positively against urban working class and ethnic minority accents which are associated with less status and prestige.
Considered accent linked to professional competence and found that while working class and ethnic accents were still ranked lower, the difference was smaller.

Question 4

Matched guise experiments

Answer 4

Many researchers use a type of experiment known as the matched guise approach. Involves participants listening to the same speaker using a range of different accents and then passing judgement on them - honesty, trustworthiness, friendliness.

Question 5

Strongman and Woosley 1969 - London vs Yorkshire

Answer 5

Two groups - 1 group with people from Yorkshire and another group with people from London
Both groups judged yorkshire speakers to be more honest and reliable and London speakers to be more self confident
Northerners judged yorkshire speakers to be more industrious and southerners judged them to be more serious than London speakers.
Northerners judged Yorkshire speakers to be more generous, good natured and kind hearted than the london speakers whom they rated as mean, irritable and hard

Question 6

Howard Giles 1970s - a range of accents

Answer 6

RP, North American, french speaking english, german speaking english were the most prestigious accents
Somerset, indian speaking english, cockney and birmingham were the least prestigious accents

Question 7

Dixon, Mahoney and Cocks 2002 - accent and guilt

Answer 7

Used the Birmingham accent as the non-standard form, participants listened to dialogue between a policeman and suspect.
The results showed that the suspect was perceived to be significantly more likely to be guilty when he spoke with the non-standard birmingham accent.

Question 8

Dialect levelling

Answer 8

the process by which language forms from different parts of the country converge and become more similar over time with the loss of regional features and reduced diversity of language.
We are moving towards a more national dialect

Question 9

Leslie Milroy - geographical mobility

Answer 9

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

Question 10

Paul Kerswill

Answer 10

The movement of people led to greater dialect contact
The movement of people led to radical changes in people’s social networks, away from strictly local ones comprising family and neighbours to ones that encompass far more strangers in different walks of life.

Question 11

David Rosewarne - estuary english

Answer 11

Estuary English is a variety of modified regional speech. It is a mixture of non-regional and local south-eastern English pronunciation and intonation. If one imagines a continuum with RP and london speech at either end, estuary english speakers would be somewhere in the idle ground.