Accent and dialect revision booklet.docx

 One of the most obvious ways we can tell differences in language is by listening to how people pronounce things. How you speak (generally) indicates where they were raised. For example, you can tell if someone's from Newcastle because they will (generall...

 One of the most obvious ways we can tell differences in language is by listening to how people pronounce things. How you speak (generally) indicates where they were raised. For example, you can tell if someone's from Newcastle because they will (generally) speak with a Geordie accent and use terms like 'pet'. In linguistics, we use the terms **accent** and **dialect**. We say that dialect is the words that are fairly unique to that area. The term accent describes how we say words. Everybody speaks with an accent, even if they think they don't. You will often hear people say that they 'don't have an accent', but this is not true -- people have difficulties understanding that they have an accent, because they believe that they speak 'normally'. **[Writing like a linguist]** Before we can look at accent, we need to look at how you write about accents for your exam. When writing about a sound, we always write the **phoneme** (unit of sound) in two forward slashes like this: /a/. When describing longer sounds, we use ':' after the symbol. To transcribe sounds, we use the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet). If your teacher hasn't given you one of these, they are freely available online. You will not, however, be given this in your paper 2 exam, so you will have to memorise phonological features from the studies. **[Matched guise: what are our perceptions on accent?]** One way that linguists investigate accent is by performing a **matched guise experiment** in which participants will listen to a speaker using a **guise** (an accent which has been put on by the speaker) and rate that accent on various features. Giles's research details that RP (received pronunciation) was seen as the most intelligent and prestigious, whereas regional accents were seen as friendlier or more honest. Ranked bottom for intelligence, however, was the Brummie accent. **[What is RP and why is it important?]** RP (received pronunciation) is the very posh sounding accent that is spoken by the Queen. The Oxford English Dictionary defines it as being a "standard accent" of Southern England. We can look at what you need to know in sets of 5 facts: The phonological features of RP are defined by: 1. Use of the **trap/bath split** -- the long a (/a:/) in words like 'bath' 2. **H-retention** -- /h/ is always pronounced in initial positioning in words like 'house' 3. **Non-rhoticity** -- Not pronouncing the /r/ at the end of words like 'mother' 4. Conservative vowels -- sounds like they 'ought to'. 5. **Yod-coalescence** -- includes the /j/ (pronouned 'y') sound in words like 'rain', 'Spain' and 'Tuesday'. We call these features **shibboleths** which means they are a feature of a group. In this case, they are features of the RP accent. There are 5 main ways of looking at RP: 1. It is **prescriptivist** (prescriptivism is all about there being right and wrong uses of English. Prescriptivists believe we should promote the right uses and shun the wrong uses) -- it is associated with Standard English (SE) 2. It carries overt prestige (a very open form of status) -- it has high status due to association with 'The Establishment' and is labelled 'The Queen's English' 3. It is an artificial construct -- it doesn't offer any clues about background (and therefore is regionless) 4. It is outdated -- Only about 2% of the population use it 5. It is universally recognised -- it is the most widely recognised 'English' by foreigners There are 5 main theories you need to know about for RP: 1. Giles: Capital Punishment experiment - 5 groups of students given same script. Four oral and one written. All spoken in different accent: RP, Somerset, Welsh and Brummie. RP was rated highly in competency and reliability, but was rated low in persuasiveness and was seen as "posh and snobby". 2. AC Gimson argued in 1962 that there were times that RP could be a decided disadvantage, especially in social situations where empathy and affection are needed. This is backed up by Linda Mugglestone who believes that RP's prestige is on the wane. 3. Jonathan Harrington has investigated the Queen's accent over 50 years of her Christmas speeches and believes that her accent has started to move towards a general Southern English accent. This has been done via her interactions with people who don't speak RP and a gradual reduction in her accent. 4. Case study: George Osbourne. Whilst in his role as Chancellor, Osbourne was seen to drop his RP accent and use an accent closer to Estuary English (see section on Estuary) when speaking to workers. He used things like 'kinda' and 'Briddish' instead of 'kind of' and 'British'. He was seen to be using his RP again in Parliament. 5. Giles and Powesland -- these linguists had a speaker who delivered a talk about psychology to two sets of students. One set had the talk performed with an RP accent and the other had the talk performed with a Brummie accent. The group voted the RP speaker as higher saying that the Brummie was less intelligent. However, if the question asks you about something to do with 'region', you must either avoid talking about RP or state that RP is regionless. **[Why does everybody hate Brummies?]** You may have noticed from the earlier section on RP that Brummies don't have the most flattering qualities attributed to them. In a question about accent discrimination, Brummie is a perfect go-to example. Here are a few more studies you can use: The University of Aberdeen conducted a study of jokes, and they found that Brummie was often the funniest and RP was the unfunniest. Worcester College played participants clips from a police interview. Brummie suspects were significantly more likely to labelled as guilty. Participants labelled the Brummie accent as more likely to be poor and working class. Peter Trudgill has investigated variations in relationship to show variations of in class and regional forms: The triangle shows that as social class decreases, the amount of regional variation a person will use will increase. **[Dialectal variations]** One of the easiest ways to map dialectal variations is to look at what names people give to things. For example, what would you call these items? Bread roll, barm cake, bap, cob, roll, bun. Pumps, plimsolls and daps. Peter Trudgill believes that we can classify dialectal words into two categories -- traditional and mainstream. Traditional dialects use 'old' and often rural lexemes and grammatical constructions. Mainstream dialects are the more common lexical and grammatical constructions, used by a majority within a geographical area. Through a process called **lexical attrition**, the traditional dialectal words are dying out. We can further explore dialect features by looking at London. **[London: the linguistic capital too?]** Another place that is brilliant to talk about for accent and dialect is London. London is an area that has changed its accent and dialect a number of times over the past 200 years. We're going to look at three main varieties. **[Variety 1: Cockney Rhyming Slang]** Cockney rhyming slang (CRS) is a dialectal variation found in London (not really anymore, though) that originated from the criminal underworld in the 1800s as a way of communicating without the police knowing of their doings. Examples include 'brown bread' for dead and 'trouble and strife' for wife. Cockney Rhyming Slang stopped becoming used by criminals when it became adopted into common usage by non-criminals. In other words, it stopped being deictic. You can see how CRS has become spread through the fact that if I were to ask you what 'telling porky pies' means, you'd be able to tell me that it means 'to tell lies.' Another example of this is the Cockney saying 'donkey's ears', which means years. You probably know it as 'donkey's years' or simply 'donks' -- here, you can see how the dialectal term has broadened and become part of common usage. Whilst the dialectal terms of CRS are very rarely used now, a weakened version of the Cockney accent is still in use, propelled by the popular TV soap 'Eastenders'. **[Variety 2: Estuary English]** Linguist David Rosewarne coined the term 'Estuary English' (occasionally called 'London Regional General British') to describe the variation that arose from around the Thames Estuary. This is defined as the mix of RP and Cockney. The accent has the following features: - **Glottal stop** (missing out the 't' in the middle of words like 'butter') - The dark l (/ɫ/) -- pronouncing 'l' sounds with an 'ulll' sound - The /aʊ/ (ow) pronunciation in words like mouth closer to /eə/ (air) in words like hair. - **TH-fronting** -- pronouncing the 'th' words with an 'f' sound. For example, 'thing' becomes 'fing'. Estuary English acts, as Paul Coggle suggests, as a bridge between Cockney and RP speakers and thus serves as a bridge between the classes in South East England. In addition, Estuary English has spread all over the UK with there being speakers with EE elements spotted as far away as Glasgow. **[Variety 3: Multicultural London English]** Multicultural London English (MLE) is a variation that has arisen from migration bringing in speakers of English where English isn't their first language. These groups of speakers have led to this new variation being spoken very broadly in diverse inner-London cities (like Hackney). Paul Kerswill believes that within 30 years, MLE will replace Cockney completely. MLE, however, has spread, and is now becoming a part of the speech of teenagers up and down the country, spread mostly by grime music as exemplified by Stormzy. This issue for linguists comes when we have to draw the line between what an **idiolect** (your personal language), **sociolect** (the language of a social group) and dialect. Many news publications will use the term 'Jafaican' to describe MLE (fake Jamaican). Features of MLE include: - Indefinite pronoun 'man': man's not hot - 'why...for?' question frame: why you revising English for? - /h/ retention (keeping the 'h' sound in): house - Jamaican slang like 'blood' for friend. - TH-stopping (creating a harsh stopped 't' sound instead of a 'th' sound): MLE is a mad ting **[When do I write about accent and dialect?]** Your knowledge of accent and dialect can be assessed in a couple of ways: - Paper 2, Section A, question 1: Evaluate the idea that... - this question is asking you for a discussion of your knowledge of how language is diverse. It is worth 30 marks -- 10 are for your argument and terminology, 20 are for your knowledge of theories and concepts. You should write formally and in an academic style. - Paper 2, Section B, question 4: Write a/an... - this question is worth 30 marks and assesses your ability to write creatively (10 marks) and your knowledge of theories and concepts (20 marks). It will ask you to write an opinion-based piece based on two articles you will have analysed in the previous question. You MUST bring in your knowledge of accent and dialect, and it must be relevant to the topic the articles are about. You should also try to bring in these articles to your piece. In Paper 1, Section A, questions 1,2 and 3, you may get texts which are about/feature people speaking with accents or a text written in eye-dialect. You should not bring in your theories into these questions at all. In Paper 2, Section B, question 3, the texts may be about accent and dialect -- you MUST NOT bring theory into this question.