Accent and Dialect revision sheet


Accent and Dialect revision sheet

You must:  (in no particular order!)
1.    Learn the research/theories, and remember that how they connect and contrast in relation to the question should be the focus of your answer.  Have examples, quotes, statistics and know if the research was reliable.
2.     
       Briefly the theories are as follows:

  • Cheshire (Reading Study) – she found that boys use more non-standard English than girls as a result of group pressure. Also it depended which social group children belonged to.
  • Labov (Martha’s Vineyard Study) – locals strengthened their dialect (to emulate local fishermen) in order to differentiate themselves from tourists (covert prestige).
  • Labov (Fourth Floor Study) – the pronunciation of /r/ (the rhotic r) is associated with higher status in USA.
  • Giles (Capital Punishment study) and/or ComRes survey – rural accents are more trustworthy; RP more convincing intellectually.
  • Matched-guise test (see Wikipedia for some good evaluation of the research)
  • Giles (Accommodation theory) – we prefer accents which are most like our own.
  • Kerswill – children don’t use the same speech as their parents – example of dialect levelling – because we are more ‘mobile’ (ie. we travel more) – our accent and dialects are not necessarily associated with where we come from.
  • Milroys (Belfast Study) – found that men lived in a ‘closed network’ (tight knit group of friends/work colleagues/neighbours) more than women who tended to live in an ‘open network’ – as a result men are more ‘linguistically homogenous’ (they speak the same way within groups) and tend to use more non-standard English due to group pressure.
  • Trudgill – an investigation into the pronunciation of ‘-ing’ in Norwich.  Men used non-standard pronunciation ‘-in’ instead of standard ‘ing’ more than women (covert and overt prestige) and both over-reported how much/little they used the forms he tested (link to prestige)
  • Berstein and Labov – did a study that found there was no clear link between spoken language and logical thought (ie. level of intelligence and whether you used RP/dialect.)

3.     Understand and be able to write about issues concerning dialect change:

  • Dialect levelling
  • Impact of Estuary English
  • Impact of Black English/multicultural society (MLE).

     3.   Understand and be able to write about attitudes to accent and dialect:

  • Discrimination (cf. research by John Baugh)
  • Accent and dialect as social indicators – perception of status/intelligence/’cool’ factor
  • Influence of culture and media – TV/books/music/film/advertising
  • Persuasion (Giles – Capital punishment)
  • Accent and dialect as part of heritage
  • Creation of in-groups. We want to fit in with friends.  Convergence/divergence.

 4.    Be able to apply frameworks to data – lexis/phonology/grammar/pragmatics/discourse etc.

5.  Avoid using phrases like ‘correct’ or ‘incorrect’ grammar – stick to standard/non-standard.

6.    Be clear that the phoneme (sound) and grapheme (letter) do not always correspond.

7.    Understand the difference between accent and dialect.

8.    Understand how accent and dialect can be represented in a text through non-standard spelling (‘eye dialect’).  Remember this can only give us a rough idea of pronunciation.  Consider also the reasons why accent/dialect is used.


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