English Language - Social Groups and Region

• MILROYS BELFAST STUFY 1975

  Where you are, what you do and who you are affects individual language

  Open network - personal contacts tend not to know each other

  Closed network - personal contacts all know each other

  Working class communities - Clonard (Catholic, West), Ballymacarrell (Protestant, East), Hammer (Protestant, West)

  Men in close knit groups - high use of the non-standard form

  Women in loose groups - less use of the non-standard form

  Men overall - less use of non-standard form

  Women overall - more use of non-standard form
• TRUDGILLS G-DROPPING 1974

  How and why peoples way of speaking varied in Norwich

  The more careful the speech, the more likely people were to say the g consonant

  G-dropping = high in lower classes and more often in men's speech (this is true for all social classes)

  Higher up the class system = more likely to use -ing terms

  Women thought they used the standard -ing form more than they actually did (this is the opposite for men)
• SNELL'S 'ME' OR 'MY' 2010

  Primary school children from different classes (2 schools; 1 working class, 1 middle class)

  5 girls and 5 boys from each school

  Argues that children choose to use 'me' as a stylistic choice

  Found that 'me' forms = 30/33 in the working class school "working class speech"

  'me' forms = exaggerative/performative, detaching/distancing

  Only used 'me' with other children and not adults

  'me' occurred instead of 'my' 33 times out of 670 person possessive forms
• COUPLAND'S TRAVEL AGENT 1984

  Compared travel agent speech to that of the client

  Predictions of accommodation theory (Giles 1975)

  Found that the travel agent altered her accent to match that of the speaker

  Travel agents speech shifted towards less standard phonological variants
• ECKERT'S JOCKS AND BURNOUTS 1989

  The role of social practice affects language use

  Detroit, Michigan

  Jocks = burnouts both contained individuals with a mix of social class

  Jocks = enjoyed school, participated in school activities

  Burnouts = engaged in rebellious behavior

  Found that people tend to speak like their friends who share social practices together
• CHESHIRE'S TEENAGERS FROM READING 1982

  Studied how peer group culture affected spoken grammar

  Believed that lower the social class, the higher the rate of non-standard forms

  3 groups - 2 were boys, 1 girls

  Recorded how often they used a non-standard variable

  Studied the girls closer (2 groups; 1 = disapproval for criminal activities, 1 = showed approval for criminal activities)
• CHESHIRE'S TEENAGERS FROM READING 1982 PT2

  Found that working class girls had more non-standard forms,

  Found that young language users = more varied than older ones

  Found that boys = girls = patterns of non-standard use were an important part of the identity of each group
• LABOV'S SOCIAL STRATIFICATION OF 'R' 1966 - NEW YORK

  Believed social class altered language use - higher the social class, the more people would properly pronounce /r/

  /r/ = considerable prestige in New York

  3 stores = Saks (upper class), Macy's (middle class), Kleins (working class)

  Noted variable = age, sex, race, accent, floor number

  Subjects asked the same thing twice - 'fourth floor' (allowed for 2 different uses of /r/ - preconsonantal and final position)

  Found that Saks used /r/ the most and Kleins the least

  Found that Macy's showed the most upward shift when asked to repeat
• PETYT'S H-DROPPING - BRADFORD

  Found that the upper middle class rarely h-dropped (12%)

  Found that the lower working class frequently h-dropped (93%)

  When an individual moved up the social scale their speech modified towards RP and would use less of the non-standard features

  Those moving up the social class underwent hypercorrection (changed their pronunciation of vowel sounds)
• FOULKES, DOCHERTY'S TH FRONTING 1999 - BRITISH ISLES

  Interested in urban voices

  Studied consonant changes in London accents - Cockney

  /th/ fronting = relatively new innovation in British English (originated from London and Bristol in the early 19th century)

  /th/ fronting = when people pronounce /th/ as /f/

  Common in children, particularly young men and working class occupations
• DIXON, MAHONEY, COCKS - GUILATY ACCENTS 2002

  Interested in attitudes to different accents

  Recorded conversation = British male criminal suspect and a British male policeman

  2 tapes - one with the criminal speaking in a brummie accent, one in rp (both accents done by the same man)

  Participants were asked to rate each suspect on a scale of innocent to guilty

  Found that the brummie accented criminal sounded guiltier than the rp accent
• BARRATA TEACHER CASE STUDY 2016

  North England teachers were asked to tone down their accents for better understanding

  11 were from 2 northern universities, the other 12 being from 2 southern universities

  Southern university = 4 were asked to change or alter their accents (accents had; Irish, Cockney, Estuary, Kurdish)

  Northern university = 9 were asked to change or alter their accents (accents had; Manchester, Yorkshire, Liverpool)

  Revealed a 'linguistic prejudice' culture - discriminatory
• GILES CAPITAL PUNISHMENT 1973

  5 student groups = presented identical arguments (4 groups gave oral presentations, 1 group a written presentation)

  Oral presentation accents were Brummie, RP, South Welsh, Somerset

  Found that the RP and written presentation was the most impressive

  Found that the Brummie presentation was the least impressive

  Found that RP was deemed professional and persuasive

  Found that regional accents (Brummie, Somerset, South Welsh) was deemed persuasive
• MOORE'S 'WERE' 2010

  Investigated non-standard 'were' in teenage girls

  4 groups (Populars = anti school, Townies = risky behaviour, Geeks = institutionally orientated, Eden Valley Girls = desirable home area, shopping and dancing)

  The more rebellious the group - the more likely for the non-standard 'were'

  The higher the class, the less likely for the non-standard 'were'
• LLAMA'S MIDDLESBROUGH STUDY 2000

  Variation and change in the dialect of Middlesbrough

  Variation of the phonemes /p/, /t/, /k/

  Found to be pronounced as full plosives (an RP pronunciation), glottal stopped (RP pronunciation with glottalized features) or full glottal stops

  Age and gender = factors in the pronunciation

  Found that females used the glottal stop the most - goes against that glottal stops are mostly used by working class male speakers

  Found that younger speakers used glottalized + glottal variants more than older speakers