Regional Variation

• Convergence

  when accents come less different and more similar
• Dialect levelling

  convergence of accents
• Divergence 


  when accents become increasingly different
• Estuary English

  RP and cockney combined, spreading along the Thames
• Overt prestige

  conventional/speaking properly, eg. RP
• Covert prestige

  unconventional language/slang
• Carmen Llamas (2007)

  created Sense Relation Networks (SRNs) - within the mind there exists a network of interconnected words and phrases, used to explore patterns of lexical variations across regions
• Rosewarne (1996) - Estuary English

  a midpoint on a linguistic continuum between broad Cockney at one extreme and RP at the other
• Rise in Estuary English

  has gained increased media attention and may eventually replace RP
• Kerswill - Estuary English

  argued it has spread through the media to influential people, eg. sportsmen, politicians, and actors.
• Kerswill - Milton Keynes Study

  discovered the use of vowel fronting, thus found that Estuary English was increasing in popularity
• Przedlacka - Greater London Study

  found that Estuary English was used most by women, not all features of EE found were shared in all 4 areas studied
• taboo

  words deemed offensive by society, eg. swear words
• occupational register

  language shared within certain groups, eg. medical professionals or gamers
• dialect continuum

  as we move around the country, language changes (accents)
• plosives

  p/b/d/t/g/k
• fricatives

  f/th/s
• vernacular

  the language spoken by the ordinary people in a particular country or region
• geographical mobility

  increased physical movement of people in the 20th and 21st centuries
• Milroy (1977) - speech communities in 1970s

  closed networks = all friends know each other

  open networks = friends don’t know each other
• Milroy (1977) - Belfast Study

  Network strength score - the higher your score, the more people you know

  • high NSS related with NSE
  • men have more networks
• Lave and Wenger - communities of practice

  • shared passions
  • words used by a particular group, eg. sociolect
  • football terms are only know by football fans, eg. “man on”
• Sellars

  • speech codes have been relaxed
  • accent does still matter, related more to etiquette now
  • some lansbury changed with social settings
  • in the media, RP is seen as most authoritative
  • accent is not acceptable in polite society
• Giles (1970)

  a study where british teens judged accents

  • RP is more intelligent and reliable
  • regional accents are more friendly
  • A prestige continuum emerged