Regional Variation/ Accent and Dialect

Question 1

What is standard English?

Answer 1

The generally accepted, prestigious form of the language; particularly lexis and grammar

Question 2

What is dialect?

Answer 2

Variation in words and grammatical structures associated with a particular geographical region

Question 3

What are prescriptive attitudes?

Answer 3

The enforcement of a rule of method; insistence on particular lexis, grammar and phonetics

Question 4

What are descriptive attitudes?

Answer 4

Describing what actually occurs in an objective and non judgemental way

Question 5

What is received pronunciation?

Answer 5

• A social accent rather than a regional accent
• Sometimes considered to be a standard accent of British English
• Usually regarded as the most prestigious of British accents
• The accent on which the IPA and phonemic transcriptions are based
• Widely used around the world for teaching English as a foreign language

Question 6

How many British people still use received pronunciation?

Answer 6

Around 2%

Question 7

How popular is received pronunciation around other parts of Britain than just England?

Answer 7

• Negligible presence in Scotland and Northern Ireland
• Falling number of speakers in Wales

Question 8

What is the origin of received pronunciation?

Answer 8

• 14th century regional accent of the East Midlands
• By the 16th century, many of these accent features were adopted by the social elite further South
• Soon became the prestigious accent of the royal court
• Oxford and Cambridge spread the accent among the wealthy educated elite
• By the 19th century it became the accent of public schools in England
• In 1932 the BBC began broadcasting in English overseas using the RP accent

Question 9

What are the 3 types of received pronunciation?

Answer 9

1. Conservative
2. Mainstream
3. Contemporary

Question 10

What is conservative received pronunciation?

Answer 10

Very traditional variety particularly associated with older speakers and the aristocracy

Question 11

What is mainstream received pronunciation?

Answer 11

An accent we might consider extremely neutral in terms of signals regarding age, occupation or lifestyle of the speaker

Question 12

What is contemporary received pronunciation?

Answer 12

Speakers using features typical of younger RP speakers

Question 13

What did Jonathon Harrington et al find about received pronunciation?

Answer 13

Found evidence of RP accent change and influence of less prestigious Southern accents within Christmas broadcasts made by Queen Elizabeth II

Question 14

What was the Matched Guise Experiment and who conducted it?

Answer 14

• Giles
• Found that RP speakers tend to be rated more highly than speakers with a regional accent in terms of their general competence
• RP speakers earned respect but weren’t associated with personal integrity
• RP speakers tend to receive high ratings for qualities such as: intelligence, self confidence, ambition
• RP speakers emerge less favourably than speakers with a regional accent in terms of personal qualities
• RP scores less well for qualities such as: friendliness, warmth, sense of humour

Question 15

What are the 3 negative attitudes to regional accents as summarised by Dennis Freeborn?

Answer 15

1. The incorrectness view
2. The ugliness view
3. The impreciseness view

Question 16

What is the incorrectness view and who defined it this way?

Answer 16

• Dennis Freeborn
• All regional accents are incorrect compared to the accent of RP

Question 17

What is the ugliness view and who defined it this way?

Answer 17

• Dennis Freeborn
• Some accents don’t sound nice

Question 18

What is the impreciseness view and who defined it this way?

Answer 18

• Dennis Freeborn
• Some accents are described as lazy and sloppy

Question 19

What did Andersson and Trudgill argue?

Answer 19

Attitudes towards accents are based more on social connotations and prejudices surrounding the location or social group associated with that accent than on the sound itself

Question 20

What is the ITV Tonight and ComRes study?

Answer 20

• Found that 28% of Britons feel they have been discriminated against because of their regional accent
• 80% of employers admit to making discrimination decisions based on regional accents

Question 21

What is William Labov’s Martha’s Vineyard study?

Answer 21

1. Conducted on an isolated island in Massachusetts which had lots of tourism
2. Labov was in pronunciation of diphthongs /aʊ/ and /aɪ/ (concrete nouns ‘mouse’ and ‘mice’)
3. Interviewed 69 people from different social groups and asked specific questions to encourage participants to use words containing these vowels
4. Found certain group pronounced diphthongs differently: small group of fishermen, people aged between 31-45 and uplanders
5. Concluded this was done to establish an identity of themselves as vineyards, distancing themselves from tourists
6. There was a need to retain identity and a create a ‘them and us’ mentality by using language

Question 22

What are the types of phonetic variation?

Answer 22

1. /ʌ/ absence in North and Midlands
2. /a:/ vs /æ/
3. Post vocalic /r/
4. Final nasal: /ŋ/ or /n/
5. velar fricative /x/ and uvular fricative /χ/

Question 23

What is the /ʌ/ absence in North and Midlands?

Answer 23

• Accents in the North and Midlands don’t have the /ʌ/ phoneme et all
• Where RP is pronounced /Pʌt/ in Northern and Midlands accents, we would expect /pʊt/, where the /ʊ/ phoneme is realised instead

Question 24

What is the /a:/ vs /æ/?

Answer 24

• RP includes the /a/ phoneme in words such as path, laugh and grass
• Northern, Midlands, Scottish and Welsh accents realise the /æ/ vowel instead

Question 25

What is the post vocalic /r/?

Answer 25

• In RP, the /r/ phoneme only appears before a vowel, yet in West Country, Scottish, Irish and some Lancashire accents, it appears after a vowel
• RP: /træktə/
• West Country: /træktər/

Question 26

What is the final nasal /ŋ/ or /n/?

Answer 26

• Most non RP speakers do not realise the /ŋ/ phoneme in the <ing> progressive aspect inflectional bound morpheme, but pronounce /n/ instead</ing>
• West Midlands, Liverpool and Manchester accents often produce the /ŋ/ phoneme immediately followed by /g/

Question 27

What is the velar fricative /x/ and uvular fricative /χ/?

Answer 27

• RP doesn’t include either a velar or uvular fricative sound, but regional accents from Liverpool and Scotland do
• Liverpool: back [bæx] dock [daχ]
• Scottish: loch [lax]

Question 28

What are features of Cockney?

Answer 28

1. H dropping
2. Glottal stop
3. TH fronting
4. L vocalisation
5. Final nasal substitution

Question 29

What is dialect levelling?

Answer 29

The process by which language forms of different parts of the country converge and become more similar over time , with the loss of regional features and reduced diversity of language

Question 30

What are the possible causes of dialect levelling?

Answer 30

1. Transport (geographical mobility)
2. International migration
3. Media
4. Prescriptive attitudes

Question 31

What does Leslie Milroy argue?

Answer 31

Increased geographical mobility leads to the large scale disruption of close knit, localised networks

Question 32

What does Paul Kerswill argue?

Answer 32

The increased interaction with people of other speech varieties is a possible cause of dialect levelling

Question 33

What is the history of regional variation within Britain?

Answer 33

1. First speakers of English in British Isles weren’t 1 unified speech community (many separate tribes whose accents varied)
2. Germanic invaders mixed with pre existing Celtic speakers
3. 9th and 10th centuries saw influence from Norse speakers as they settled in the North and East Midlands
4. After Norman conquest, French accents became prestigious in England
5. Industrial revolution brought people together in large numbers in towns/cities producing recognisable urban accents
6. Broadcast media in the 20th century allowed many people to hear other UK accents

Question 34

What is an example of a non standard grammatical structure in Northern Ireland?

Answer 34

“I was a backseat passenger in a car accident so I was”

Car= /ka:r/ post vocalic /r/
Emphatic tag ‘so’

Question 35

What are examples of different regional variation speech styles?

Answer 35

1. I play football me (emphatic pronoun)
2. Sorry I were late (regularising verb ‘to be’ simplification)
3. I like them shoes (non standard construction)