Accent and Dialect
Dialect is what you say, the vocabulary and the Grammar.
People from different social groups such as teenagers, children, adults and
pensioners will most likely all have different dialects. The regional area you
are from will also determine what dialect you use e.g. ‘Alright my Luver’ from
Bristol.
Accent is how you say it, the pronunciation of utterances.
People will be recognised from their regional areas by their accent, each
regional area usually has a distinctive accent which is familiar by the public.
E.g. Bristolian, Scouse, Brummy, Geordie. Different social groups usually have
varied accents as well.
William Labov
William Labov was known as one of the creators of
sociolinguistics. He was born in 1927 and was the professor of linguistics at
Pennsylvania Uni. Labov was interested in how social class affected the use of
language.
Martha’s Vineyard
Labov had two theories. Martha’s Vineyard was one of his
studies. Martha’s Vineyard was an Island located off the east coast of the USA.
It was a popular tourist attraction for in the summer. There are people that
live in the Island all year round called ‘the Islanders’, most of which lived
on the eastern part of the Island. ‘Down- Island’ is the populated part of the
island and ‘up-island’ is the less populated however it is where the fishermen
live. There are three social groups within the Island. ‘The Islanders’ who were
a mixture of working and middle class, ‘The Summer People’ who were middle and
upper middle class and ‘The Fishermen’ who were working class.
The Fishermen were seen as a desirable social group for the
rest of the Islanders; they had old fashioned values and were also very hard
working. They spoke with non-standard, old fashioned pronunciation. Their vowel
sounds were especially different from standard punctuality, especially the
diphthongs. A diphthong is a sound made by joining two vowels, specifically
when it starts as one vowel sound and goes to another, like the (oy) sound in
oil.
Results
Findings- Labov found that the young Islanders were making a
deliberate shift to using the old-style pronunciation. He found that they
wanted to be like the fisherman because they respect them. They don’t want to
be like the summer people so they diverge from them. Even the islanders who
were well educated were using the non-standard dialect.
The social stratification of the post-vocalic R
Also known as the Department Store Study, this is one of
Labov’s other theories. It is based in Manhattan in New York. He was looking at
the link between social class, department stores and language. Labov was
testing the patterns of language usage and their link to prestige and social
class. He looked at three different department stores of varying degrees of
prestige. Saks 5th Avenue was the highest, Macy’s was the middle and Kleins was
the lowest. The social stratification of the post-vocalic r looks at the final
‘r’sound at the end of words such as guard, beer and fourth. Labov rested the
word ‘fourth’in his study. He asked a question designed to elicit the answer
‘fourth floor’ or similar, he then pretended not to hear the response and asked
the sales assistant to repeat the answer.
Results
The results illustrated that (r) in New York City was
stratified by class. The pronunciation of (r) depended on the social class
membership of the employees.
Those with higher socioeconomic status pronounced (r) more
frequently than those with lower socioeconomic.
Good. Use more terminology e.g. overt and covert prestige and cite multiple sources, please.
ReplyDeleteVery good. Can it be expatiated further?
ReplyDelete