Research task

Research Task

Accent relates only to pronunciation and intonation rather than grammar or vocabulary. If there's two people speaking the same language, who use the same grammar and lexical choices and the only difference between the way they speak is their accent then this indicates their social and regional origins, ethnic group membership or class. As listeners, we naturally pick up these indications about people’s ethnic, socioeconomic and geographical background. In addition, experimental research has shown that listeners can also make judgements on others’ intelligence, warmth and even height just by listening to recordings of accented speech.

Many studies from the UK, USA and Australia from the past six decades all show that foreign accented speech is negatively evaluated by native speakers of a language. People who view their own group or culture as the centre of everything are said to be ethnocentric. Ethnocentric people tend to
strongly identify with people in their own group and are biased against outsiders.

Sociolinguists have traditionally argued that accent accommodation can only happen through face to face interaction. However recent evidence from a number of studies is suggesting that this isn't the case and that engagement with TV programmes can have an influence on the way young peoples' speech develops.

Eckert and Cheshire

Eckert focused her observational research on social groups in America and what language they use to interact with one another. In order to do this she distinguished two groups within the high school, the 'jocks' who participated with school activities and were enthusiastic when doing so. The second group she decided to study was 'the burnouts' who refused to take part in school activities and had a negative attitude towards school life. She purposely choose groups of opposite characteristics in order for her results to be more distinctive. She found that people tended to speak similarly to the people that they interact with most often because they are the people they share the same social values as.

She found that 'the jocks' spoke with a sophisticated vocabulary to reflect their middle class background, whereas 'the burnouts' were not as concerned to how they may come across to other people when they speak so they used more exaggerated pronunciation associated with the urban accents of their neighbourhood.

She also studied the attitudes to language within the school, and found that 'the jocks' had preconceptions of 'the burnouts' because of their grammatical incorrect language and lack of articulation. Whilst 'the jocks' were seen as sounding like their parents.

Cheshire studied the use of grammatical variables and they link that has to peer groups culture by boys and girls in reading. She found that girls who didn't agree with the use of taboo words and the acts of violent behaviour tended to speak using standard English. However the girls who did agree with that type of behaviour spoke using incorrect grammar and pronunciation in their speech.

This study is similar to my findings of everyday life at school. I have recognised that there's a distinctive difference between they way people speak depending on what social group they are from. For example, when studying the way people in my year speak I looked at the differences between the way people on the school council speak in regards to the language they use, their pronunciation and their dialect as opposed to how the boys that are apart of he football academy speak. I noticed immediately that the two groups had completely different ways of speaking but the individuals amongst the same group spoke almost Identical to one another. This implies that your peers/ the people you surround yourself with on a daily basis have a significant influence on how you speak. I recognised that the people on the school council used language of a high register as well as pronouncing all of their words to a level considered to be standard English, which links to another feature that I picked up on, how strong their accents were. The people on the school council had a much less prominent 'Essex' accent in comparison to the boys that are apart of football academy. Due to the strong accent majority of the football academy boys obtain, this leads on to why the way they speak wouldn't be considered standard English because they do not pronounce their words in a way that is deemed correct. I also noticed that they used a lot of non fluency features in their speech such as 'like, err, umm' as well as a lot of colloquial language and taboo words. Finally they also shortened their sentences by using Ellison in their speech, for example 'gonna' instead of 'going to'. Whereas I noticed someone who is apart of the school council will use the full words instead of shortening them to speed up their conversation.

Accent and dialect analysis

Dialect

 Dialect is the actual lexis that is used within speech, it differs from other varieties of language in three specific ways, these are; lexis, grammar, and phonology. English dialects may be different from each other, but all speakers within the English-speaking language can still generally understand them. An example of this would be a speaker from Newcastle who might use localised language such as, “gan” instead of “to go”. Another example may be if the individual uses regional grammatical constructions, such as the past tense sentences like “i’ve went” or “i’ve drank”. Finally they may also use a range of local vocabulary which leads to someone referring to them as a Geordie dialect speaker.

Accents

Accents however refers to the differences in the sound patterns of specific dialect. It comes under dialect aswell as many other linguistic features. An example of this is someone from Newcastle who generally uses vocabulary and grammar of a high frequency but their pronunciation is distinctively different from someone who lives in East London for example because they obtain a hint of Tyneside to their voice when pronouncing words. This would be described as a Geordie accent, despite the popular debate, everyone speaks with an accent.

Conversation Analysis

J: I was stalking his insta today actually(.) not even gonna lie(laughs)

O:(laughs)

Je:(laughs)

Ol:(laughs)

J: What's it like working there/

Je:                                           / yeah what's it like?

O: Urm it;s alright(.) the pays good which is the main thing.

Ol: Work at The Fat Turk doesn't even count as work to be honest (.) everyone working their is so peng and the money's good/

Je:                                            /and they give you alcohol on the job(.)i need to come work there/

Ol:                                                                                                                                                  /same! and the man who served me last time i was in there(.)i need to see him again.(laughs)

O:(laughs)

Je:(laughs)go on! 

J:(laughs)

This conversation consists of four people, speaker Ol and Je are the most dominant speakers within the conversation because they have used the most context throughout. The conversation obtains language of a low register and high frequency throughout, with words such as 'gonna' used, instead of 'going to', this is a representation of informal language called elision, where the speaker is being lazy or out of  bad habit they choose to slur together two sounds or syllables to increase the speed of the conversation.The conversation begins with a declarative sentence from speaker J, within this sentence there's elision language for example, 'gonna' and there's also use of abbreviation. Instead of the speaker naming the app by its full name, i.e Instagram, they have decided to shorten it to 'insta' to save time. The response to this sentence is laughter from the other 3 participants in the conversation,this is a common response to a sentence throughout the conversation, and this magnifies the relaxed relationship between the participants and conveys the informality of the conversation aswell as giving a more accurate representation of who the participants may be and what environment they are in. For example a couple of friends having a general chat as opposed to an interview type scenario. Furthermore, there's over-lapping of speech several times throughout the conversation, for example when speaker Je interrupts speaker J and again when speaker Je interrupts speaker Ol etc. This again emphasises the informality of the conversation because turn taking is being used but participants over-lapping speech within the conversation is still very common. Another example of where the informality of the conversation is conveyed is through the use of hiatus and non fluency features, for example 'urm' used by speaker O. By speaker O using this language it implies the speaker was unprepared which is expected because they were responding to the use of transactional language from speaker J and Je.