Accents and dialects

• Giles' Matched Guise (1970)


  • People's attitude to different accents: RP, South Welsh, Somerset, Brummie
  • Participants listened to a speaker using a guise and rated the accents on various features (personality and character)
• RP accent


  • Intelligent, prestigious, ambitious- cold, low in social attractiveness
• Regional accents


  • Friendlier, reliable + honest
• Brummie accent


  • Least intelligent
• Giles' Capital Punishment (1973)


  • People's attitude to different accents
  • 5 groups of students listened to identical arguments
• Regional accents


  • Were likely to be seen as persuasive
• Brummie accent


  • Least attractive
• Kerswill Milton Keynes


  Accent emerging in children in the area
• Children 11<

  • Features of accents native to southeast England were seen, RP + estuary influences
• Young children's pronunciation


  • Like that of their caretakers, especially mothers
• Children 12<

  • New accent had less variation and was very different from accents seen nearby
• Dr Kevin Watson's study of the Liverpool accent


  /t/, /k/ and how /t/ appears at the end of sentences /ts/, /h/
• Older women


  • Tend to use more standard forms
• Increase in use of Liverpool forms

  • In young women
• Young and older men

  • Use around the % of Liverpool forms
• Phonological features of RP

  The phonological features of RP are defined by:

  • Use of the trap/bath split – the long a (/a:/) in words like ‘bath’.
  • H-retention – /h/ is always pronounced in initial positioning in words like ‘house’.
  • Non-rhoticity – Not pronouncing the /r/ at the end of words like ‘mother’.
  • Conservative vowels – sounds like they ‘ought to’.
  • Yod-coalescence – includes the /j/ (pronouned ‘y’) sound in words like ‘rain’, ‘Spain’ and ‘Tuesday’.
• Ways of looking at RP

  • prescriptivist
  • overtly prestigious
  • artificial construct - not attached to any region
• • Peter Trudgill has investigated variations in relationship to show variations of in class and regional forms. The triangle shows that as social class decreases, regional variation increases.
• • Worcester College played participants clips from a police interview.
  • Brummie suspects were significantly more likely to labelled as guilty. Participants labelled the Brummie accent as more likely to be poor and working class
• Estuary English features

  • The accent has the following features:
  • Glottal stop (missing out the ‘t’ in the middle of words like ‘butter’).
  • The dark l (/ɫ/) – pronouncing ‘l’ sounds with an ‘ulll’ sound..
  • TH-fronting – pronouncing the ‘th’ words with an ‘f’ sound. For example, ‘thing’ becomes ‘fing’.
  • Yod coalescence - 'chuna' and 'chuesday'
• • Linguist David Rosewarne coined the term ‘Estuary English’  to describe the variation that arose from around the Thames Estuary.
  • This is defined as the mix of RP and Cockney.