Accent, Dialect, Sociolect

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Accent- first clue to our identity, enables social evaluation: 
  • Align ourselves with ingrained social stereotypes of accent 
  • John Honey "Does Accent Matter", exposes accent hierarchy
    •  Reflects status and social prestige of user
    • Accent modification = identity dilution
    • Accentism = social discrimination against a social group with accent/dialect
      • 'Brummie' = connotations of NON-STANDARDNESS and lower socioeconomic status, lack of intelligence

1) Guardian Article- "Regional accents are losing the battle to Standard English" in educational and work environments
  • Linguistic stigma attached to Northern accents
    • Adversary to Received Pronunciation
      • = embodiment of Standard English and linguistic prestige
    • Introduced the North-South Divide: regional accent is stratified by social class
      • North= working
      • South = upper-middle
  • Northern teachers forced to dilute identity: "standardise their English" (National Curriculum)
    • reduce Northern inflexions and phonology, such as flat vowels
  • Influential media (i.e. politics, news) = only RP, no Northern accents
Trudgill- Norwich Study (sociolect):
Non-standard inflexion of /en/ for /ing/ in verbs with continuous progressive tense, 
  • 'running' becomes 'runnen'
  • More prevalent in:
    • Male language than female = COVERT PRESTIGE
    • Lower socio-economic backgrounds
      • 98% of working class /h/ drop in Bradford

2) English dialects losing their diversity due to dialect leveling
  • Homogenous pronunciations
  • Shared lexicon across Southern England
Kerswill- identified 'Rise of Estuary English in Milton Keynes - surrounding London = mixture of Cockney English and SE
  • Glottal stops,
  • /Th/ fronting
  • Vowel fronting 
  • /l/ becomes /w/ sound ( [l] vocalisation)
English Dialects App:
    • 30,000 responses; 4,000 locations
    • Comparing 1950 to 2016, regional dialects, such as West Country, losing characteristic features, e.g. omission of 'post-vocalic r' in "water"
    • However, North regions showed resistance
  • Tom Blaxter, Cambridge PhD, blames "increased geographical mobility" for reduced diversity

3) Multicultural London English (Kerswill and Jenny Cheshire), 
  • Immigration into ethnically heterogeneous communities in East London
  • L2 English speakers and Caribbean Englishes perpetuate cycle of non-standard inflexions in MLE 
  • Branded as multiethnolect = shared across ALL ethnicities
    • Native Anglos adopt non-standard features DESPITE cockney upbringing
    • Conform to idealistic accent popularised by black music practices (Rob Drummond)
    • Youth exert covert prestige
      • Cockney = risk of extinction
  • New neologisms coined within slang:
    • Jamaican Creole ( + Mark Sebba London Jamaican)
    • Punjabi
    • Arabic
    • West African languages
*NOTE*, linguistic evolution of Jamaican English into a national phenomenon amongst youth culture:

1) London Jamaican / Black British English (Mark Sebba) = exclusive to Afro-Caribbeans
2) MLE (youth from multicultural areas in London)
3) MUBE (youth from multicultural areas across UK)
    • Lexicon: Stormzy, Paigon, OED, Word of the Year
Features:
  • Afro-Caribbean, Arabic, Punjabi inflexions- rife in Creole loanwords, such as wagwaan, yard, blood
  • Creole and Cockney English phonology
    • /th/ dropping 'ting' (=Creole)
    • /th/ fronting 'fing', (= Cockney)
    • Monophthongisation of diphthong sounds, homogenous "Jafaican" pronunciation
  • Non-standard grammar - similar to Cockney
    • Double negatives
    • Indefinite pronoun 'man' - take first, second, third person
SOCIAL ATTITUDES = negative from middle class:

  • Labelled 'Jafaican' and 'talking black' = contrived appropriation of Jamaican culture
    • Daily Mail article
  • Perceived as 'unattractive' by employers: believe it is limiting career prospects
    • Banning 'urban slang' in North London school - 'improve academic prospects'



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