Everything about accents!

What change has there been to RP?

"Estuary English" is an accent associated with South East England, which can be seen as a mixture of RP and Cockney. It has been adopted especially among young people, and can be seen as a "bridge between various classes" in that it is regarded a neutral accent. Those who have come from a traditional RP background adopt it to increase their "street credibility", whereas those who have local accents adopt it because it sounds more "sophisticated". This is an example of convergence.

What are the attitudes to RP?

- The general trend is that people who speak with RP are considered more intelligent and more trustworthy than those who have a regional accent. - According to a survey by the Telegraph, nearly ⅔ of those polled felt that RP speakers gave the impression of being intelligent, and half said they sounded like they could be trusted. - In a BBC radio survey of British listeners' attitudes towards regional accents, the majority of respondents placed RP at the top of the social scale and labelled it the most honest.

Why do people use accents?

One of the ways in which people establish their own identity and shape other people's views of who they are is through their use of language. This creation of identity can involve variations in phonology and the use of regional accents. In addition, immigration and relocation of people within the UK could be an explanation for the diversity of the English language.

What is overt prestige?

Overt prestige is an accent that is widely recognised as being used by a culturally dominant group, and in England this would be RP.

How is power reflected in the way language is used?

Power is reflected in the fact that RP is spoken by people in power (educated, higher class) and is seen as prestigious and correct. People who use non-standard varieties have less power in comparison, as the are judged and discriminated against.

What is RP?

Received pronunciation is the standard form of British English pronunciation based on educated language in the south of England. This is an example of overt prestige; a dialect that is widely recognised as being used by a culturally dominant group.

How are accents important in terms of identity?

Regional accents are important because they can be seen as an expression of a speaker's identity. However, this diversity is being threatened by the prospect of dialect levelling; this is the process by which language from different areas of the country converge over time, meaning a loss of regional features and a move towards a national dialect.

How is the media influencing attitudes to accents?

Since a range of accents are now evident in the media - rather than purely RP - regional accents are becoming less stigmatised. For example, ¾ of people in the UK think that they hear a lot more accents in everyday life and on BBC TV and radio than they used to, with 78% enjoying hearing a variety of accents.

Why do these attitudes exist?

When we make generalisations simply based on the sound of someone's voice, we are not making linguistic judgements, but social judgements.

What are the prescriptivist and descriptivist views on glottal stops?

While prescriptivists would say that the use of the glottal stop suggests that the speaker is uneducated, descriptivists would say that glottal stops are inevitable, everyday occurrences which should not be stigmatised.

What is a glottal stop?

A glottal stop is when a letter of a word is missed out when spoken, for example missing out the /t/ sound when pronouncing the word "cat". Glottal stops are often seen as a "lazy" use of English, and accents which typically feature glottal stops (such as Cockney) can be heavily stigmatised. Glottal stops can be associated with the uneducated working class, and John Honey controversially claimed that users of the glottal stop have "no interest in education". However, studies have shown that t-glottaling is increasing in RP, perhaps due to the dialect levelling of the Southeast. Since glottal stops are starting to be included in RP, some of the stigma has been lost, although they have not yet acquired prestige.

What are accents?

An accent is a variation in pronunciation associated with a particular geographical region.

The Cockney accent: Features and attitudes

Cockney is the accent typically used by working class Londoners. Key accent features: - The past tense of the full verb "do" is "done" rather than "did" (RP) → "she done it" - The negative primary auxiliary verb "ain't" is used rather than "haven't" (RP) → "I ain't got any homework" - The negative primary auxiliary verb "don't" is used rather than "doesn't" (RP) → "He don't seem to be listening" Attitudes to the Cockney accent: - In a BBC radio survey of British listeners' attitudes towards regional accents, listeners were asked to match occupations and particular character traits (such as honesty, trustworthiness and friendliness) with different accents. - The cockney accent was ranked least attractive in terms of character. - In a poll of "cool" accents from The Daily Telegraph, 7% of people ranked cockney to be the coolest, compared to 20% ranking the Queen's English to be the coolest. - Cockney speakers are often stigmatised for their use of glottal stops, as glottal stops are often associated with the uneducated working classes. - However, some successful businessmen such as Lord Sugar have maintained their Cockney accents. Many would have expected him to accommodate to RP, however he is proud of his East End roots.

What is Giles' Accommodation Theory and how does it link to accents?

Giles' accommodation theory claims that speakers will adapt their use of language depending on who they are speaking to. Speakers can either converge by making their language more similar to who they are speaking to to decrease social distance, or diverge to create a barrier between the speakers. This convergence can also be identified in the accent someone uses when they speak. For example, University of Manchester academics have concluded that David Beckham has changed his speech in order to sound "less working-class", and so he has converged upwards. Researchers contrasted the way Beckham spoke before and after he moved to the USA, revealing that Beckham dropped the "h" in words such as "him" and "has" 80% of the time before the move to the US, but only 20% of the time afterwards. It is evident that while Beckham once had a broader Cockney accent he now speaks with more of a Standard English accent. Many claim that he has dropped Cockney vowels due to his high social status.

How can discrimination occur against accents?

It is often the case, according to Trudgill, that RP speakers are perceived as haughty and unfriendly by non-RP speakers until they are able to demonstrate the contrary. In addition, children with working class accents may be evaluated by some teachers as having less educational potential than those with middle-class accents unless they are able to prove the contrary.

Matched guise experiments

Matched guise experiments are carried out to discover people's attitudes to different accents. The most common method of gauging subjective reactions is to ask people to rate speakers talking in different accents in terms of a set of personal qualities, which might include friendliness, intelligence and self-confidence. Howard Giles carried out a famous experiment on this in the 1970s. He found that: RP accented speakers were perceived more favourably in terms of "competence" → ambition, intelligence and self-confidence. Speakers using certain regional accents were perceived more favourably in terms of "personal integrity" and "social attractiveness" → talkativeness, good-naturedness and sense of humour.

Martha's Vineyard

One example of people using accents to establish identity was Labov's research on the dialectology of Martha's Vineyard. Martha's Vineyard is an island in Massachusetts which is a popular tourist destination. Labov was interested in the pronunciation of the diphthongs /au/ and /ai/. Labov interviewed 69 residents of the island, asking them questions which encouraged the use of these vowel sounds without telling them what he was researching. Labov found that a small group of fishermen, people between the ages of 31 and 45, and Up-Islanders shared the tendency to pronounce the diphthongs more like /əu/ and /əi/. Labov concluded that the islanders were subconsciously doing this to establish themselves as Vineyarders, distancing themselves from the frequent visitors. There was a need to retain social identity, and they did this through the use of a regional accent. The Vineyarders' accent is an example of covert prestige; a dialect which is perceived by the dominant culture group as being inferior, but which compels its speakers to use it to show membership to a community.

The Brummie accent: Features and attitudes

The Brummie accent is the accent of Birmingham. Key accent features: - The vowel of goat (RP [əʊ]) can be close to [ɑʊ] (so to an RP speaker, goat may sound like "gout"). - The majority of Brummie speakers use the Northern [a] in words such as "bath" and "chance" Negative attitudes to the Brummie accent: - 3 psychology lecturers from Worcester College hired male actors to reproduce police interviews with suspected armed robbers and cheque fraudsters. - The suspect's guilt was judged by 119 students. It was found that someone with a Brummie accent was more than twice as likely to be convicted of the crime than a suspect with a standard accent. - Although past research has found that people who use regional accents are typically seen as kind and friendly, this was not the case in this study. - The Brummie suspect was regarded as less intelligent, more likely to be poor and working-class and less socially competent. - This prejudice needs to be tackled as this bias toward speakers using standard accents may well be evident in the legal process. - In a study by ITV which polled the preferred accents of 4,000 British people, only 15% of people rated the Brummie accent intellectual. - The negative attitudes towards the Brummie lilt can adversely affect a speaker's health, education and career prospects. Positive attitudes to the Brummie accent: - Although the Brummie accent regularly comes out at the bottom of British surveys about people's favourite accents, it is highly favoured by foreign visitors who are unaware of the negative connotations the accent holds in Britain. - It is regarded as "lilting and melodious" by overseas visitors according to researchers at the University of Birmingham. - Overseas visitors are therefore less discriminative towards Brummie speakers.

What is prescriptivism and descriptivism?

There are varying attitudes to regional accents. Prescriptivism involves evaluating one accent as better than others, whereas descriptivism is a non-judgemental approach to language, focussing on what is actually being said.