Accents and Dialect theorists

Looked at Grammatical Variations found in over 80% of schools in Britain: 

-Unmarked plurality
-Demonstrative use of them/those
-Should of/Could of
-Never as a past tense negation for a single event
-What as a relative pronoun
-Ain't/in't
-Present participle use of stood/sat
-Adverb minus ly

Research into 'h' dropping in Bradford.
Found a non-Standard English and class positive correlation.
Upper middle-class 'h' dropped 12% of the time, lower working class 93%

Research in Norwich on the substitution of velar nasal 'ng' for alveolar nasal 'n'.
His study was more in depth than Petyt, was placed in different contexts such as reading and writing and speaking formally and informally.
He found that men are less formal than women in all classes

Ran a survey to rate UK accents in relation to their business appeal.
79% of business people thought a strong regional accent was a disadvantage.
77% believes that Home Counties accents are generally successful.
Followed by American (75%), Scottish (65%), continental European accent (52%) and Indian or Asian accents (25%).

Scottish was the only successful regional accent, 43% said they were successful, 40% hardworking and reliable, 31% trustworthy.
Liverpool's scouse was the worst, 15% believed them to be successful, 9% hardworking and 8% trustworthy.

Cockney was thought to be successful but not trustworthy.
Geordie was thought to be warm and caring
Indian and Asian accents are hardworking and reliable

Study into how people adapt to accents and dialects over time. Looked at an island with 6000 people but had over 40,000 visitors each summer.

Residents adapted their speech to accommodate visitors and over many years the islanders adapted their speech to the majority and it became the norm.

Younger generations spoke most like the visitors (popularity and socio-linguistic maturation)

Fisherman changed their vowel sounds to sound different to the visitors to seek solidarity/covert prestige

Looked at inner-city Belfast in the 1970s and 3 working class communities.
Milroy lived within the community which reduced Hawthorne effect but also meant more bias and human error.
They looked at the correlation between the integration of people in the community and they way they speak.
Each person was scored between 1-5 about how integrated they were/

They found that a high score was correlated with the use of more non-standard forms.
This suggests that accent/dialect was strongly influenced by the level of integration into a social network.
Close-knit networks are important for dialect maintenance as it promotes solidarity and identity

Classified language into 'restricted code' and 'elaborated code' as believed that the titles 'Standard English' and 'Regional Accent's detract from observing the complexity of language and only look at the use of regional words.
Elaborated Code - formally correct syntax, more subordinate clauses, fewer unfinished sentences, more logical connectives such as 'if' and 'unless'.
Restricted Code - looser syntax, simple connectives like 'and' and 'but', more clichés, compound sentences and pronouns