region

• William Labov (1963) investigated phonological variation and the ‘dipthong’ (/au/ and /ai/ sound in mouse and mice)
• Martha’s Vineyard Study population: 6000, with over 40,000 summer visitors, known as the ‘summer people’ and disliked generally by citizens
• He found that Martha’s Vineyard’s citizens’ pronunciation of the dipthong was subtly changing from the American pronunciation
• Concluded that this change was subconscious, and used to identify as a local rather than the disliked visitors from America
• Peter Trudgill (1974) investigated speech variations in Norwich, particularly the –ng sound, called a velar nasal
• Claimed that dropping the -ng sound to become –n such as in walkin’ and talkin’ was not subject to Norwich only
• Concluded 5 things from his study:

  • In all social classes, the more careful the speech, the more likely people were to say walking rather than walkin'
  • The proportion of walkin' type forms was higher in lower social classes
  • The nonstandard -in' forms occurred much more often in men's speech than in women's, and this was true for all social classes
  • When questioned about what they thought they were saying, women tended to say they used the standard -ing forms more often than they really did
• Lesley Milroy (1980) conducted a study in Belfast
• • When questioned about what they thought they were saying, men tended to say they used the nonstandard -in' forms more often than they really did
• Men typically belong to more dense networks than women
• Found that denser networks correlated with the use of vernacular or non-standard forms
• Closeness of a social group determined an individual’s use of the local dialect forms
• Braj Kachru (1985) proposed the inner circle of language:
• An inner circle of countries in which English is the first/dominant language:

  • Australia, Britain, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand and the US
• The inner circle is one of three concentric circles:

  • The outer circle: Bangladesh, India, Kenya…
  • The expanding circle: China, Egypt, Japan
• These circles represent the type of spread, the patterns of acquisition and the functional allocation of the English language in a range of cultural contexts
• Dixon and Mahoney found that defendants were more likely to be found guilty if they had a non-standard Birmingham accent
• Shows prejudice toward language variation
• Suggests that regional language affects how others see us rather than how we use language
• Howard Giles (1970) conducted the Matched Guise Technique study
• Found that people respected and favoured the RP accent over the Birmingham accent
• RP carried associations of being competent, reliable, educated, and authoritative
• RP accent was perceived as the most aesthetically pleasing of all British English accents