Accent and Dialect Theorists

Thomas Pear - 1931

• People have different perceptions of a speaker, according to the accent they hear them talk with

William Labov - 1961

• Martha's Vineyard:
  • An island in Massachusetts
  • Every summer, many tourists ('summer people') come
• Fisherman are seenas independent and strong - 'Yankee' values, compared to the consumer-oriented 'summer people'
• Younger speakers were sounding less like typical New Englishmen and more like the fishermen
  • Mainly 31->45-year-old men who:
    • Wanted to be seen as Vineyarders
    • Rejected the mainland's values
    • Resented the 'summer people's' presence
• This change seemed to be subconscious
• The innovation gradually became the norm

Howard Giles - 1973

• People will sometimes try to make their language resemble that of their audience
• This is done to improve communication
• It is called 'linguistic accomodation'

Howard Giles - 1970s

• The matched-guise approach is a way of studying perceptions of accents (coined by Lambert in 1960)
  • The same speaker says the same thing with a variety of accents
  • Subjects then pass judgement on the speaker
  • The only independent variable is the accent
• Death penalty speech
  
  • British teenagers heard the same speech arguing against the death penalty in different accents
  • The argument was valued more when given using a more prestigious accent
  • After a week, the only speech that changed perspectives was the one using a Birmingham accent
• Psychology speech
  • Two groups of 17-year-olds heard the same speech
    • One used a Birmingham accent
    • One used an RP accent
  • The RP speech was rated higher in both competence and intelligence

Choy and Dodd - 1976

• Teachers make judgements on students' abilites and personalities based on how they speak

Peter Trudgill - 2000

• Non-RP speakers assume that RP speakers are 'haughty and unfriendly', until proven otherwise
• Children with working-class accents may be seen by their teachers as having less education potential than their middle-class peers, until they can prove otherwise

Paul Kerswill - 2001

• Increasing social mobility has led to the 'consequent breakdown of tight-knit working-class communities'
• Dialect levelling and standardisation have been caused by:
  • Movement of people, leading to greater dialectal contact
  • Movement of people, leading to radical change in social networks, which now encompass more strangers
  • More social mobility

Dixon, Mahoney, and ***** - 2002

• Subjects listened to a dialogue between a police officer and a suspect
• Used the matched-guise approach, with a Birmingham accent as the non-standard form
• The suspect was seen as significantly more guilty when speaking with the Birmingham accent

Neulip and Speten-Hansen - 2013

• Used the matched-guise approach to examine links between ethnocentrism (seeing one's own culture as 'the norm', and any others as 'abnormal') and perceptions of 'non-native' accents
• Two groups watched the same male speaker
  • He was dressed the same, in the same place, said the same things, and used the same elements of body language
  • In one video, he used an American accent
  • In another, he used a non-native accent with 'no detectable regional, ethnic, or national associations'
• Those who, in a prior survey, gave answers indicating an ethnocentric attitude gave the non-native speaker lower ratings on credibilty, attractiveness, and similarity to the subject
• How a non-native speaker is perceived can depend on the ethnocentricity of the person they are speaking to

• The Sun - the Geordie accent is the 'sexiest'
• The Daily Mail - cabin crew from Liverpool have the friendliest accent
• The Daily Telegraph -
  • Pilots with London accents are the least reassuring
  • Business executives admitted to having doubts about hiring someone with a working-class Essex accnt
  • The Birmingham accent is the least 'cool'
• Sitel - the Geordie accent is the friendliest and the most likely to put you in a 'good mood', as well as being amongst the top five for trustworthiness, helpfulness, and efficiency