north and south accent features
(put/cup)
put/cup
southern - /ʌ/
northern - /ʊ/
north and south accent features
(bath/grass)
bath/grass
southern - /æ/
northern - /a:/
t-glottalization
- the consonant in the middle of ‘water’
- in Cockney the sound is called ‘glottal stop’, pronounced /?/
- the velar plosive /t/ has been dying out and being replaced by the glottal stop
- a process called t glottalization
Labov’s Department Store Study
- looked at the link between overt prestige and accent
- investigated the sound of the ‘non prevocalic /r/’ in the speech of New York shop assistants (which is considered prestige in NY)
- he asked shop assistants to say ‘fourth floor’ (first time spontaneous, second time careful) in Saks, Macy’s and Kleins
- he found: class and care as well as region determine accent as Saks used it the most and Kleins used it the least
Peter trudgill’s Norwich Study
Peter Trudgill studied norwich speech in the 70s to find out how and why peoples’ accents varied
He studied the final consonant, ng (velar nasal), in words such as walking and running
In Norwich, the sound if often pronounced as an alveolar nasal, eg. walkin and runnin (g-dropping)
He found that:
use of velar nasal
upper middle casual style: 29%
upper middle word list style: 100%
lower working casual style: 0%
lower working word list style: 29%
This shows:
There is a direct correlation between both accent and the use of the velar nasal the higher the class, the more likely you are to use it)
However, all classes adjust their use of ‘g-dropping’ according to the style their speaking in, this is called ‘style-shifting’
Labov’s Martha’s Vineyard study
- included three groups of people: Chillmark Fishermen, the islanders, the summer people
- Labov noticed some unusual features in the islanders’ speech eg. /ɑɪ/ in words such as ‘white and night’ were becoming /ə/ to sound like ‘wait’
- he said that the islanders were changing their accent to sound like the fishermen and distinguish themselves from the ‘summer people’ (to be perceived as true islanders)
- this suggests we use accents to mark group membership and distance ourselves from other groups
social network theory
- social network theory looks at the effect that the size and diversity of your social group has on your language
- social networks come in a continuum, loads of connections = closed network, no connections = open network
multiplex - connected in multiple ways eg. friend and neighbour and colleague - closed, multiplex networks are ‘norm-enforcing’ esp. with accents
Milroy & Milroy’s Belfast study
- Belfast was a war zone with mass unemployment
-Milroy’s investigated working-class communities in Belfast and asked them to identify their social network, to give them a ‘network strength score’ - they then measured their use of Belfast accent features eg. in ‘mother’ the consonant /ð/ becomes /d/
- they found people with a higher NSS were more likely to use these features, usually men as they belonged to tight-knit multiplex social networks
effect of changing employment on Belfast study
- as men’s unemployment started rising, women’s employment therefore increased
- this led to a higher number of accent features in women’s speech
Howard Giles’ Accommodation theory
- states that speakers change the way they speak according to who they’re talking to in order to accommodate the interlocutor
- this can be either convergence or divergence
- someone with a low prestige accent trying to eliminate some of the stronger regional features of their accent for a job interview with an RP speaker is called upwards convergence
Nick Coupland’s Cardiff study
- nick coupland recorded a travel agent at work in the city and observed the way that she changed her accent to suit her clients
- he called this style-shifting
- he found that the travel agent matched the client’s accent so closely that you could accurately tell their class from her accent as you could theirs
