accent and dialect theories/theorists

• Giles - 'matched guise' 


  Research detailed that RP was seen as most intelligent and prestigious, whereas regional accents seen as friendlier and more honest. Brummie ranked bottom for intelligence
• Giles - Capital punishment experiment

  5 groups of students were given the same script and all spoke it in a different language (RP, Brummie, Welsh & Somerset). RP was rated highly in competency and reliability but was rated low in persuasiveness and was seen as 'posh and snobby'
• Jonathan Harrington

  Investigated the Queen's accent over 50 years of her Christmas speeches and believed her accent started to move towards a general Southern English accent.
• George Osborne


  When in his role as chancellor, he dropped his RP accent and used one closer to Estuary English. He returned to the RP accent when in Parliment
• AC Gimson


  Argued in 1962 that there were times RP could be a disadvantage, especially in social situations where empathy and affection are needed
• mugglestone


  believes that RP's prestige is on the wane
• trudgill


  investigated variations in relationships to show variations of in class and regional forms. As social class decreases, regional variation increases
• university of Aberdeen


  conducted a study of jokes. Brummie was the funniest and RP was the unfunniest
• Worcester college


  played participants clips from a police interview. Brummie suspects were significantly more likely to be labelled as guilty. They labelled Brummie as more likely to be poor and working class
• trudgill


  believes we can class dialectal words into 2 categories - traditional and mainstream

  1. traditional: uses 'old' and often rural lexemes and grammatical constructions
  2. mainstream dialects are more common lexical and grammatical constructions, used by a majority within a geographical area
• cockney rhyming slang (CRS)

  originated from criminal underworld in the 1800s as a way of communicating without the police knowing of their doings. it stopped being used by criminals when it was adopted into common usage - it stopped being deictic
• Rosewarne - 'Estuary English'

  describes the variation that arose around the Thames Estuary - defined as a mix of RP and Cockney. features include: glottal stop (missing out the /t/ in the middle of words), the dark l (pronouncing 'l' sounds with an 'ull' sound), the /au/ (ow) pronunciation like 'mouth' are closer to /ea/ (air) in words like hair, TH-fronting (pronouncing the 'th' with an 'f' sound)
• coggle


  suggests Estuary English works as a bridge between Cockney and RP speakers and serves as a bridge between the classes of southeast England
• Multicultural London English (MLE)


  arose from migration bringing in speakers of English where it was not their first language. features include:

  1. indefinite pronoun 'man' - 'man's not hot'
  2. 'why... for?' structure - 'why you revising English for?'
  3. /h/ retention - keeping the 'h' sound
  4. jamacian slang - 'blood' for friend
  5. TH-stopping (harsh 't' sound instead of 'th' - 'ting' not 'thing'
• Montgomery


  RP is used in adverts for technical descriptions. Regional accents are used for other things, especially food
• Mahoney et al - guilt experiment


  Students played fake police interviews of suspects with different accents. Brummie accents were likely to be judged as guilty
• Dent


  Accents are like spoken birthmarks