Activity two

Accents and dialect:
Accent relates only to pronunciation and intonation as opposed to the grammar or vocabulary. Accents act as identifiers for social and regional origins for example, someone from central London will pronounce words differently from those from Newcastle. Additionally, foreign accented speech is negatively evaluated by native speakers of a language. This is because the native speaker believe that the way they talk is the “right” way to talk. There is no right or wrong way to speak in terms off accent, only in terms of grammar and vocabulary.
James Neuliep and Kendall Speten-Hansen Are two men who focused their works on ethnolect, the way in which people from different ethnicities speak. They performed an experiment on 93 men and women to see if there was a correlation between non-native and native speakers, their studies show that the correlation was negative.

Language and age:

With age, language has developed but with this development has introduced the use of non-frequency features such as fillers. These mainly occur during interviews and when questions are asked, they are used to mimic the thought process of an answer. Examples of filler are “um, err, like.” Studies of James Pennebaker showed that women tend to use the filler of “like” most often. However the studies showed that it wasn’t necessarily linked to gender, but to age instead. Older people, typically women, tend to use fillers more often or elongated fillers which conveys an extended thought process.

Language and power:
To exert power through language, most people go to offending others in order to convey power over an individual or group. Most language that is used tends to be taboo language. One researcher Adam Croon categorized powerful language into three groups. Descriptive, expressive and slurring. The example he gave is that if someone were to be named X and we were to describe them, the speaker would typically say “ X is African-English”- this shows no offence but is telling you what they are. For expressive, the speaker could describe “X is a prick”- an opinionated view, which may not been seen by others. However, “X is a nigger”. This is classed as slurring as it alienates and deeply offends the individual in terms of their race.
Nevertheless, some of these racial slurs have adopted a new positive connotation within the race in which it concerns.

London Multicultural language

London English has a new pronoun. Young people living in multicultural areas of the inner city use ”man” as an alternative to I.
Jenny Chesire researched the use of past BE terms (was/were).
1. Variable use of was with all subjects in positive contexts (e.g. I was but also we was, you was) and wasn’t with all subjects in negative contexts (e.g. I wasn’t but also they wasn’t, you wasn’t)

2. Variable use of was with all subjects in positive contexts (e.g. I was but also we was, you was) but weren’t with all subjects in negative contexts (e.g. we weren’t but also I weren’t, she/he weren’t)

The researchers found that adolescents in outer London (the borough of Havering) conformed to the expected non-standard British was/weren’t pattern but in inner London (the borough of Hackney) they found that the use of was in positive contexts was increasing but that there was competition between the two non-standard negative forms of was and wasn’t.

Overview on dialect

Overview on dialect

Hackney London accent notes

“The pronunciation of <th> as a <f> sound in words like thing or as a <v> sound in words like brother is a characteristic feature of London speech spreading across much of South East England and beyond. Notice, however, that Freddie occasionally produces a more ‘standard’ pronunciation of <th> and that, like other speakers prone to TH-fronting, he uses a <d> sound here for ‘grammatical’ words, such as the, this, that, they, them, those and there. In the second set, Freddie substitutes a sound that is more like a vowel or a <w> sound for a syllable final <l>. This process — known as L-vocalisation — is a long-established feature of speech across much of the southern half of England and, to a lesser extent, occurs in the speech of East Anglia and parts of the East Midlands”*

The Geordie dialect

“The dialect of the City of Newcastle-upon-Tyne and the surrounding area is arguably the most distinctive of all British English dialects. It still has a rich vocabulary that includes words here such as our lass, gan, bairn, wrang, naebody, dae and clarts, meaning respectively, ‘my wife’, ‘go’, ‘child’, ‘wrong’, ‘nobody’, ‘do’ and ‘sticky or claggy mud’.”

“Geordies also share a number of instantly recognisable accent features. Perhaps the most distinctive pronunciation feature is the tendency for speakers across the whole of North East England to use glottalised consonants for the sounds <p, t, k>. This is an extremely subtle phonetic process, and most noticeable when the consonant appears between vowels in the middle of a word or at a word boundary between two vowels. We can hear this feature frequently in Mark’s speech here, but it is perhaps best illustrated by the way he pronounces these consonants in the following words: lucky, happy, attitudes, better, automatic and sometimes.”*

The Belfast accent

“Paul speaks with an instantly recognisable Belfast accent. First of all, he is a rhotic speaker — that is he pronounces the <r> sound after a vowel. Listen to the way he pronounces the words whatever, sort of, personal, later, three percent blue card holders, lecturers, Bangor Tech., computer studies, computer operator, eleven years, working, government, Board Room, upstairs, worked, ever, covert, as regards, by and large, personally, first, sorted out, information, signers, simplified version, learning disability, visual impairments, wheelchair users and broader picture.”*

An accent can determine the origin of the speaker, a locational marker. It is a way that a language is pronounced as the examples above show, the language is English in each example but as the evolution of language has developed, so has the accent. Accent is the culmination of many factors, as Britain was ruled by kings and queens from numerous different countries, the dialect in the regions of the UK are different. For example, The north has similarities to Scandinavian dialect whereas in central London, the dialect has adapted from miners and factory workers of Britain.

Some traits that come with accent are pronunciation features. In the Geordie accent the letter ‘T’in words will commonly be replaced with the letter ‘r’ for example. Getting here =Gerring ‘ere. Another trait that comes with accents is the speed at which someone speaks, typically the speaking the faster the person speaks the more north westerly you head. One of my examples is from Belfast northern Ireland, their accent is quickly paced and is very easily misunderstood by those more southern. In the south west E.G somerset, the accent tends to be slower. A final trait of an accent is the vocabulary used. Majority of accents contain words that have been created and used in everyday speech.For example, the term "innit" is a fromof elision as it has made two words "isnt" and "it" and formed them into one. 

Transcript work

English Transcript: Speech with further maths “Gods” –(Their words, not mine)

 

 

Ben: so a quarter N squared yeah (.) plus N plus 1 squared(.) plus three lots of half N

Will:  I thought N over two (1) open brackets (1) n plus one closed brackets/

Ben: (Laughs) no that’s the formula you pleb /

Charlie: yeah will that’s the formula/

Ben: its in the book /

Will: (moans) ahh its not in the formula

Ben: (sniggers) (3) then its general knowledge then then you’re a pleb (2)

Charlie: the N isn’t its N over two N plus one (2) so you get a quarter N squared plus one squared/

Ben: (cocky) this kid/

Charlie: (continuing) plus three N over 2 (.) n plus one plus two N

 

 

Analysis:

Apparent in the start of conversation is the use of elision.Ben says "a Quarter N squared" instead of having the word "of" inserted before. This has been used by ben to aid the flow of the sentence and make his speech faster. Secondly, Ben uses referential language in the form of conversational markers. Ben is uses the phrase "yeah" after each statement to check to see if the person he is addressing is understanding what is being asked, this also shows that Will is an active listener. Later on in the conversation there is the use of turn taking, by will speaking after ben has finished, the conversation is able to be shared between each person and adds to the co-operation between the two. However, we get the impression that Ben is the more dominant character as he interrupts will, mocking him with a laugh in the process. Also, ben uses a colloquial term in "Pleb" this informal lexis shows that Ben is not trying to be offensive but is trying to humour the group. Later on In the conversation, will uses a non-fluency feature in "ahh" this slows down the pace of the conversation and allows him to think of his answer, the use of the prosodic feature of moaning emphasises his disappointment in what he got wrong.